2021 has flown by! And before you know it, it'll be another year full of exciting opportunities, unforeseen challenges and plenty of digital advertising changes to boot. As you're doing your holiday shopping for family and friends, don't forget your business' digital marketing strategy!
Whether it's continual privacy updates from Apple, social media targeting restrictions, or the emergence of new technologies, it's never been more crucial that you trust your digital marketing to the best around! How do you know if your digital agency or staff is truly providing you top-notch service? Here are 10 key questions to ask your current digital provider or one that you're considering partnering with (Plus, Wheeler's answers to all 10!):
1. What digital products are available to me? Here is our list of products and a short description of each.
What is Live Chat? Get more leads by engaging your prospects with a chat box on your website.
What is Display? Display ads go across all devices, appearing on websites or apps, using targeting strategies including Retargeting, Behavioral Targeting, Artificial Intelligence, and Keyword Targeting.
What is Online Audio? Audio ads served to targeting online listeners who are consuming audio content across all types of devices, using the targeting strategies of Behavioral Targeting and Artificial Intelligence.
What is Facebook and Instagram Targeting? Targeting people across all devices with display or video ads on Facebook and Instagram in their News Feed, on Facebook Audience Network, Messenger, Facebook Instant Articles, Stories, Marketplace, Search, or a custom audience of your database of emails or addresses; using any of the types of Facebook/Instagram ads.
What are Native Ads? Native display and video ads go across all devices and match the look, feel and context of the website or app where they are seen, using targeting strategies of Retargeting, Behavioral, Targeting, Artificial Intelligence, and Keyword Targeting, or to a custom audience of your database of emails and lookalike audience.
What is Mobile Conquesting™? Reaching people with display and video ads on their mobile devices using targeting strategies including Behavioral, Geo-Fencing, Geo-Retargeting, Geo-Retargeting Lookalike, and Weather Triggers. OR a custom audience of your database of addresses. On-Site Visit Tracking to your business is available.
What are Video/OTT ads? Video can be Pre-Roll ads that play before the content someone has clicked to watch and appear on websites or apps across all devices, or can be Over-The-Top (OTT) video ads which are embedded into programming content people stream on their Connected TVs. On-Site Visit Tracking to your business is available with OTT.
What is Household IP Targeting? Matching IP addresses to your database list of names and street addresses and showing your display, native or video ads only to those people, across all devices.
What is SEO and Reputation Management? Improving and promoting a website to increase the number of visitor the site receives from search engines.
What is Pay-Per-Click? Showing your text ads on the Google Search Engine Results Page when a user searches keywords related to your business, across all devices.
What is Geo-Framing? Going back in time to previous events where we have captured people’s mobile Device ID’s, mapping to their homes, and showing them display ads now.
What are Amazon Premium Ads? Using Amazon targeting data to reach people with your display, video, or OTT ads on Amazon.com, Amazon owned properties and thousands of other websites and apps Amazon has partnered with, across all devices (display only on Amazon.com).
What are Social Mirror™ Ads? Social Mirror™ ads look like your social media display or video posts but appear on other websites and apps, linking back to the social media platform and your website, and run across all devices using our targeting strategies of Retargeting, Behavioral Targeting, Artificial Intelligence, and Keyword Targeting.
What are LinkedIn ads? Using the largest professional network to reach the people you want to target, in their News Feed and on the LinkedIn Audience Network, across all devices.
2. Can your mobile product track people who see the ad and then come to my client’s location?
Yes! With our Mobile Conquesting™ product, we can track “on-site visits.” It’s an additional way for you to see return on your advertising investment. This product can also track the top 10 characteristics of people who either click on your ad or come to your location whom we have been geo-fencing, and report on what those characteristics are. With our OTT With On-Site Visit Tracking product, we can track people who have been served your OTT ad on a Connected TV and then visit your location with two weeks of seeing that ad.
3. What types of video products are available?
We do many different types of video products: Retargeting, Keyword Targeting, Behavioral Targeting, Artificial Intelligence Targeting, IP Targeting, Facebook/Instagram video, YouTube, Native video, LinkedIn video, Amazon Targeting video (including Twitch TV), and OTT/CTV. We buy across multiple video exchanges: SpotXchange, GoogleADX, BrightRoll, LiveRail, Facebook/Instagram, Amazon owned properties.
4. What type of reporting will I receive?
We provide you monthly reports that include impressions, clicks, conversions, and view throughs on all reports. In addition, for certain products we are also able to provide website/app breakout, creative performance, video completion, and device performance. Compare our reports to other providers! We also provide an online dashboard that you can log into to view your campaign’s progress and give your client’s access as well.
5. Do you measure View Throughs and Conversions on my website?
Yes, we do. A conversion is any action that a person takes on your website including filling out a contact us form, making a purchase, downloading a coupon or info, signing up for a newsletter, scheduling an appointment, and many others. A View Through is when we track when someone sees an ad, doesn’t click, but returns to your website via search or directly typing in your website address at a later date. Most people don’t click on an ad (less than 1 in one thousand people) so tracking the people who see your ad, don’t click, but come to your website later (View Throughs) is an important indicator of the effectiveness of your ad.
6. What types of targeting do you do on Facebook & Instagram?
Carousel News Feed, Collections Ads, Event Response Ads, Branded Content Ads, Job Listing Ads, Lead Ads, Offer Ads, Custom Audience Matching to Email & Phone Database, Lookalike Audience Ads, Video. These types of ads go across all devices (Right Hand Column Ads are desktop only so we don’t buy those). We also run across Facebook Messenger, Facebook Audience Network, Facebook Marketplace, Facebook & Instagram Stories, Facebook Search and Facebook Instant Articles.
7. Can you target down to individual households or just neighborhoods?
Yes, we can target individual household with Household IP Targeting or Mobile Conquesting™ Address Targeting and Address Retargeting. We can target:
Any data list you have. All you need is: First Name and Last Name (if possible) and Full Address
Any data list that can be purchased from a direct mail vendor – any public data
8. Can you target people who see the ad on one device and then follow them onto another device?
With our product called Mobile Conquesting™ we can target people on their mobile devices and then use our Cross Platform Targeting to follow them onto other devices and platforms they might use. This includes display ads, native ads, video pre-roll, Facebook and Instagram and Social Mirror™ Ads.
9. Do you offer a Live Chat function for my client’s website?
Yes, we have Live Chat which can be customized to the information you want conveyed to your website visitors. It is staffed 24/7 by the Live Chat agents and they are humans, not bots. You receive an emailed transcript of the chat immediately after it concludes. You only pay for the chat lead if the agent has gathered the person’s name, email or phone, what they are interested in is something you offer, and that the person is in your designated service area
10. How do you protect my campaign from fraud?
Your digital advertising with us will automatically include a DoubleVerify filter layered on top of the campaign.
What is DoubleVerify? DoubleVerify authenticates the quality of digital ad impressions for the world’s largest brands ensuring fraud-free, brand-safe, ad environments. With this partnership, we now will only bid on inventory that matches your stipulated targeting strategies AND is on websites/apps that are authenticated by DoubleVerify. This comes at no additional cost to you. With most digital providers there is an additional surcharge to use DoubleVerify’s filters. We are absorbing that cost.
In addition to the questions and answers above, you should also ask who their technology partners are. Here is some additional information about Wheeler and terms to know:
We work with an estimated 444 Private Marketplaces (PMPs) and 1385 Ad Exchanges, through our Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) partners.
Some of the major Ad Exchanges we work with are:
Our Behavioral Targeting data comes from our partnerships with 3rd party data providers including:
What is a Private Marketplace (PMP)?
PMP is a programmatic marketing term that stands for Private Marketplace. Private Marketplace is a private advertising auction, as opposed to public marketplaces. Advertisers can only access the private marketplace with an invitation, and it’s a real-time bidding environment.
Typically, top publishers (websites and apps) take part in private marketplaces and offer their ad inventory to highest bidders among the select advertisers. The buying platform or DSP directly enters the publisher’s inventory, each buyer gets a Deal ID, the terms are pre-negotiated, and the advertiser needs to get approval to buy the advertising space.
This approach allows publishers to select who advertises on their pages, and they retain exclusivity. On the other hand, ad buyers (like Wheeler) can create a relationship with the publisher, get access to premium inventory, and custom deals. Another advantage of a PMP includes access to inventory not available on open auctions and premium access at a lower price.
What is an Ad Exchange?
Ad exchanges are digital marketplaces that enable advertisers and publishers to buy and sell advertising space, through real-time auctions (also called buying programmatically). They’re most often used to sell display, OTT, video and mobile ad inventory.
Ad exchanges work with multiple seller sources to auction off impressions through real-time bidding or programmatic direct. Ad exchanges often connect to DSPs and SSPs, which are software platforms that link up to the exchanges’ inventory and enable you to place the bids. Those bids are made in real time based on information such as the previous behavior of the user an ad is being served to, time of day, device type, ad position and more.
What is a Demand-Side Platform (DSP)?
It is a technology platform that allows buyers to manage, purchase and optimize programmatic inventory from multiple ad exchanges and SSPs through one interface. Inventory can be purchased through real-time bidding or programmatic direct.
What is a Supply-Side Platform (SSP)?
A technology platform that allows publishers (websites and apps) to manage, sell and optimize programmatic inventory for advertisers to bid on. SSPs connect to multiple ad networks, exchanges and DSPs at once to maximize the opportunity to sell inventory.
For example, a publisher (website or app) has an ad space that’s coveted by multiple advertisers. Its supply-side platform will tell the ad exchange that the space is available and wait for the different demand-side platforms (DSPs) to send their bid. Here’s the difference between an SSP and a DSP: The role of a DSP is to aid media buyers in bidding and optimizing digital inventory across the entire media landscape. The purpose of a SSP is to help publishers manage how they sell impressions, manage their inventory and its price, as well as maximize the advertising revenue. In a way, it’s the publisher’s counterpart of a demand-side platform.
What DSP do we use?
We use multiple DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) to offer the most diverse and targeted product set and our inventory reaches a majority of online inventory. Additionally, we integrate with top 3rd party data providers like BlueKai, DoubleVerify, Eyeota, Factual, Lotame, and Oracle, so almost any audience we want to target is available to us. We work closely with our technology partners and are involved in “beta tests” for new products and offer feedback and direction to shape and improve the platforms we buy across.