Page 37 - Social Media Marketing for Dummies

measuring how much those ads are viewed and clicked. It’s as much an art as it is
a science because knowing which sites your customers visit, where they’re most
likely to engage with an advertisement (where on the site as well), whether the
site charges the appropriate amount for the advertisement, and how much that
advertising affects purchasing is not always easy. We work with media buyers all
the time, and their jobs are harder than you think, especially in the world of digital
ad exchanges, data management platforms, and remnant inventory. (Books could
be written on each of those terms alone.)

But the online advertising space is important even in an economic downturn. The
reason is simple: It’s one of the most measurable forms of advertising, especially in
relation to print and television, along with search engine advertising. You can track
those who view the advertisement, what they do with it, and in some cases, whether
they eventually buy the product based on that advertisement. It’s no surprise that the
relationship to social media marketing is an important one as a result.

This relationship with social media marketing takes various forms. Here are some
of those connection points:

» Market to the social influencers who surround the customer, as well as
the customer.
One of the ways in which you market to those influencers is using display
advertising. So rather than just placing advertisements on websites that your
customers visit, you place some advertisements (doesn’t have to be a large
percentage of your budget) on websites that their social influencers frequent,
too. Is this as measurable as those advertisements targeting your customers
directly? Maybe not, because these influencers are less likely to click the ads
and make a purchase. But nevertheless, they remember the brand and
influence your customers.

» Communicate and advertise on the social platforms — such as Facebook
and YouTube — that your customers frequent.
Most social platforms accept advertising in some form, and this serves as an
important part of their revenue model. Figure 1-5 shows an eBay display
advertisement on YouTube.
Granted, display advertising on social platforms used to produce bad results
(users didn’t notice the advertisements and didn’t click them), but the ad
formats for social platforms are evolving, and today Facebook is the second-
largest advertising platform on the Internet after Google. One example of the
evolution, is video-based advertising in the Facebook newsfeed itself. Another
innovation that has been honed over the last two years is where consumers
are asked to like the ads that they’re viewing on Facebook, resulting in their
action appearing more aggressively in the newsfeeds of their friends. This
helps the platform target ads more appropriately to them in the future.

CHAPTER 1 Understanding Social Media Marketing 21