Unless you are a complete beginner within the worlds of marketing and advertising, you will most probably have heard of Direct and Indirect Marketing. But what are these types of marketing? How do they differ from each other and which method is most effective? The aim of this article is to introduce those unaccustomed to both forms of marketing, to demonstrate their differences, to show how both operate and how they can become effective towards your campaign.

What is Direct Marketing ?

Simply put, Direct marketing is when you as an advertiser have full control of your campaign and have no assistance. An established advertiser, with experience, will opt for a direct marketing campaign as they have the knowledge of what is expected of a successful campaign.

What is Indirect Marketing

In comparison, Indirect Marketing involves the use of a Media Buyer or Media Buying company. The advertiser will allow full reign of their campaign to be organized and managed by the Media Buyer in exchange of a commission for the work undertaken.

Characteristics of each Model

Using the Direct approach, you will be fully responsible for the entire advertising campaign. You will have to:

• Design and create your banner(s) to best compliment your campaign.
• Choose the type of campaign (CPC or CPM) and adjust specific parameters to target your audience
• Decide which platform within the network is best suited to your campaign
• Set and adjust your bids prior to and during the campaign
• Make use of the statistics to evaluate the success of your campaign and adjust if necessary.

Decide your campaign type

Design your banner(s)

Setup your campaign & all parameters

Set Budget and Bid Amounts

Begin your campaign

Evaluate the statistics and amend your campaign, bid amounts and parameters.

Though using an Indirect Marketing approach, you will have to:

• Brief the Media Buyer about your campaign (Target Audience, Aim of Campaign, Budget Allocation)
• The Media Buyer will then decide how best to promote your campaign following the type of offer, target audience, campaign budget and the length of the run.
• Media Buyer sets up the campaign and manages it for the advertiser
• Evaluation at the end of the campaign and commission paid to media Buyer

Brief Media Buyer about your product / service / company

Media Buyer assesses Campaign Aim, Target Audience & Budget

Media Buyer organizes and runs the campaign (Campaign setup, banner creation, budget control

Advertiser and Media Buyer evaluate campaign success and Commission is Paid to media Buyer

Pros & Cons of each Method

With Direct Marketing, there will be a need for:

• A good knowledge of online advertising and how the platform works
• Being able to create strong and precise banners
• Being able to evaluate the real-time statistics and make adjustments to your bids and campaign as it evolves

Pros	Cons
Full total control of your Campaign	Prior knowledge to online marketing and our platform is necessary
Full control of Budget Spend	No insider information on how to better succeed with your campaign.
Management of campaign is more flexible and personal	A greater amount of work is needed
Great for beginners who are willing to take the time to get trained through the use of our tutorials and free training sessions	Possible budget waste due to incorrect targeting for ad

For Indirect Marketing:

Being able to convey your aim to the Media Buyer

Pros	Cons
An ‘insight” experience of how to best achieve results for future campaigns	Less budget control
Media Buyer’s knowledge will allow a more precise and quicker interaction with your target audience	Commission based service
Less work, less stress	Less flexible and less personal approach

When to Use Direct & Indirect Marketing?

Use Direct Marketing if:

• You are an established advertiser with prior experience and feel confident of running a successful campaign
• If you are accustomed to our platform and know how to best achieve results with our multitude of options.
• You wish for a more flexible and personal management of your campaign
• You are a beginner and you want to take the time to train yourself up via our tutorials and free training sessions.

Use Indirect Marketing if:

• You wish to have an experience of what online advertising involves (How to create banners successful for your particular campaign)
• If you are new to online advertising and can’t afford to make waste of what budget is at your disposal.
• You wish to know exactly how using our campaign options can better your campaign.
• You have a tighter budget as the media Buyer will be able to make the best use of your budget according to your campaign criteria and make better use of the funds available.

– Conclusion – 

How CPC and CPM compete in general?

When CPC and CPM campaigns compete for the same Ad placement, the two types of ads are compared against each other on how much they’re effectively willing to pay for the impression. With a CPC model, first, you need to determine the eCPM after the first casting period in order to know how it will compete against CPM. On the other hand, a CPM model depends on the maximum bid amount that you are willing to pay for every 1,000 impressions.

How CPC and CPM compete inside Traffic Factory?

CPC and CPM campaigns actively compete against each other based on an eCPM vs CPM inside impression and re-impression system. CPC and CPM impressions are usually displayed first, but when the re-impressions have a better eCPM/CPM, they can be displayed before some impressions and get better positions. So in both models and systems, the better your eCPM/CPM is, the higher will be your position. Always consider that the “frequency cap” can make a difference since this determines how long you want your unique user session to last. Both models have the chance of obtaining first-page view positions and the competition is equal for all campaigns.

CPC vs CPM

SYSTEM

CPC	CPM
Needs more attention on CTR / Campaigns targets / Banners with clear offers	More attention needed on Bids / Positions / High CTR Banners / Conversions
Gives a slower position evolution	Gives a faster position evolution
Can be optimized with Bid + CTR, and smart & precise target filtering	Can be optimized by tweaking with your bid and banner quality
Must include clear offers on banners	Must include very attractive banners
Better on lower spots	Good for all ad placements

How to figure out which one is the best? In every model, the Key Point is ROI. But in order to get an accurate ROI analysis, it’s important to first optimize banners, campaigns and landing pages based on the chosen bidding model. 1- Determine if your banners are built for very targeted clicks (CPC) or a higher click volume strategy (CPM). 2- Figure out what is the main goal of your campaign; Budget Control (CPC) or Fast Statistics & Results (CPM). 3- Make sure to include the potential of exposure as your final choice, lower exposure spots like footer or horizontal (CPC) or higher exposure like header or square (CPM). 4- Your type of offer is also a decisive factor. CPC is a better model for paid offers (memberships, content, stores, …) and CPM for free offers (trials, free subscription, …)

GOALS

CPC	CPM
Avoid creating “miss-click” banners	Mass click banners
Paid memberships / paid websites / web store	Convert free trials / Collect email addresses / branding
Long term strategies	Faster results, short term strategies
Budget control	Volume control
Less campaign management	The system is easy to understand

Tips An efficient:

• CPC banner give a clear and precise offer, mainly information based to avoid miss-clicks.

• CPM banner is very attractive and makes users want to click on them to discover what is behind it.

A good:

• CPC campaign takes advantage of target filters to only display the offer to its intended audience.

• CPM campaign takes advantage of campaign options (re-impression, reservation, custom frequency cap, display rate) to optimize the volume of traffic.

OPTIMIZATION & OPTIONS	CPC	CPM
CTR optimization
BID optimization
Daily budget control
Global budget control
Dayparting control
Frequency cap control
Re-impression control
Display rate control
Reservation

– THE END-

GLOSSARY

RTB: Real Time Bidding.

CPC: Cost Per Click.

CPM: Cost per thousand impressions or technically Cost Per Mille.

eCPM: Effective Cost Per Mille. (Ad Spend x 1000) / Ad impressions

CTR: Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks per one hundred impressions.

ROI: Return On Investment. This is a value that measures the performance of your campaign and to find out how profitable your ad is. The most basic formula to ROI being: Ad Profit / Ad Cost  x 100 = ROI %

– 2nd Part –

Welcome back to our 3 articles trilogy…in this second part we will focus on the CPM method and we will give you all the information you need to get the best from this bidding model.

What is CPM? CPM stands for Cost Per Mille meaning that you pay “X” for thousand impressions. CPM is based on pure bid. In this model, you need to focus on getting as many clicks as possible. This is more like a mass click method to get to the biggest audience possible. CPM needs more attention and management than CPC. How CPM works ? CPM is based on pure bid (the higher your bid goes, the higher your position is). In this model, you need to focus on structuring well your bid to achieve a higher ad position but you will also have to create high-quality banners in order to appeal to your target audience and drive them towards your offer. i.eg.  Is better to get 3 clicks and 3 conversions than to get 10 clicks and 2 conversions. How CPM works inside Traffic Factory? Inside our platform, your page view position will be determined by your bid, so consider that, the higher you go, the better the chance to be on the first-page view position. If your bid has the same bid amount as multiple competitors ’ campaigns, the first who set the bid will get it. Let’s say that the first bidder reaches his budget limit(s) before receiving all impressions of the position, the second bidder will receive the unused traffic that remains! Keep in mind that spots like pop-under and pre-roll are only displayed once a day in our network, which means you can only target a single position (1). With pre-roll, if you set a frequency cap shorter than the first top bidder, you may get some leftover impressions. CPM model also gives you the opportunity to increase volume potential by controlling re-impression and its price. CPM Strengths & Weaknesses? CPM is good as a short-term or long-term strategy. This model will show you fast results, statistics,  and a clear position evolution just a few minutes after campaign activation. Playing with your bid is the only way to optimize ad position. This bidding option is easy to understand but requires more management to control prices, positions, conversions, etc... CPM model offers you more options like set a banner distribution rate, a custom frequency cap, and a re-impression option. With CPM you will also be able to use the reservation option which is a flat rate deal that guarantees the position(s) you reserve. (keep in mind this is a – First come First Serve service –so be sure you will always be on time) Reservation tool works only with CPM campaigns. CPM Tips?

• CPM is not influenced by CTR so try to impact your final customer with your creatives to maximize your potential of conversion.
• Create attractive banners to maximize the traffic flow.
• You can use this model as a fast testing tool in order to see which banners are interesting for CPC campaigns.
• Used mostly for branding, convert free trials and collecting mail purposes.

to be continued…

GLOSSARY

RTB: Real Time Bidding.

CPC: Cost Per Click.

CPM: Cost per thousand impressions or technically Cost Per Mille.

eCPM: Effective Cost Per Mille. (Ad Spend x 1000) / Ad impressions

CTR: Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks per one hundred impressions.

– 1st Part –

We all know that this decision is one of the most difficult to make at the beginning of the advertising process… So, which option to choose? We will go through both models in the next 3 articles and explain a bit from scratch so it will be easier for you to get all further information.

What is CPC ? CPC stands for Cost Per Click meaning that you pay for each click on your ad/banner. In this model, you need to think about targeted clicks. It is known to provide less stress and requires less management as you will only pay for a potential conversion (a click). How CPC works ? A CPC bidding model takes two variables into consideration to give you your page view position, these are your bid and your CTR. After a determined period, your banner will have an eCPM that will give your impression position. The better your eCPM, the higher your position is. The formula for eCPM calculation is: (Ad Spend x 1000) / Ad impressions How CPC works inside Traffic Factory? Using our platform, your banner will be casted at positions 19 and 20 for a while. After a sufficient amount of impressions, it calculates your first eCPM. Then a new eCPM is calculated every “X” impressions. It might help to set a higher bid during the casting period to boost your eCPM. CPC Strengths & Weaknesses? CPC works as a long-term model. It takes a while to calculate the right page view position since banners need to be casted to generate their eCPM. Your budget is under control as long as you pay attention to your CTR! Your creatives and campaigns must be very precise and targeted and they have to fit your audience to give you the best potential of conversion. CPC tips

• Do not use strong CTR banners for CPC campaigns.
• CPC is more adapted for Ad spots like footer and horizontal.
• Avoid miss-clicks so you won’t miss your target.

to be continued…

GLOSSARY

RTB: Real Time Bidding.

CPC: Cost Per Click.

CPM: Cost per thousand impressions or technically Cost Per Mille.

eCPM: Effective Cost Per Mille. (Ad Spend x 1000) / Ad impressions

CTR: Click-through rate (CTR) is the number of clicks per one hundred impressions.