Interactive Offers’ platform makes setting up direct sold campaigns simple and painless. Oftentimes the most difficult step is selecting what kind of direct sold campaign to run— branding or performance? Guaranteed or non-guaranteed? What share of voice?
These questions can be overwhelming, so we’ll go over them to ensure you get the most out of your direct sold campaign. But first things first, you must set up a dedicated direct sold or house advertiser on our platform in order to run one of these campaigns.
What exactly is a direct sold campaign?
A direct sold campaign is one in which you sell advertising inventory directly to an advertiser. As a publisher, you’re free to share deals with advertisers and monitor the performance of those campaigns. But before one begins the publisher and advertiser must agree on which goal type should be used for the campaign. During a direct sold campaign an advertiser’s ad will run on a publisher’s newsletter inventory for a set duration of time, or until the impressions or clicks are fulfilled. Now let’s go over the details…
Guaranteed vs. Non-Guaranteed Campaigns
A guaranteed direct sold campaign (aka a sponsorship campaign) ensures that an advertiser (or sponsor) is guaranteed an ad placement. The ad is exclusive and it will run the entire campaign duration, or until the impression goal is met. On the other hand, non-guaranteed campaigns must compete against the Interactive Offers exchange for an ad placement. This process is often referred to as “unified auction.” Although they are initially less guaranteed, these campaigns can also have branding or performance goals.
Branding vs. Performance Campaigns
A direct sold branding campaign will have a predictable impression goal, as it bids at the CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) of your choosing. These campaigns can be optimized by clicks, conversions, or impressions. Direct sold branding campaigns that are optimized to clicks or conversions will bid at a specified CPM. Campaigns that are optimized to impressions will also bid on all available impressions at a specific CPM.
The difference?
Our algorithm will only bid on users who are deemed more likely to convert for campaigns optimized to clicks or conversions. Whereas impression-optimized campaigns will bid on all available impressions at your specified CPM.
Performance campaigns, unlike branding, do not have a predictable impression goal. In order to reach users that are most likely to convert, the bidding will fluctuate. These fluctuations are based on set impressions, conversions, or click-through rates.
So why take part in a non-guaranteed performance campaign?
Well, they typically maximize email revenue by improving yield management. Due to competition for impressions, publishers are able to ensure the ads served are appropriate and valuable to users. Maximum value equals maximized revenue for publishers.
Share of Traffic
Share of Voice (SOT) is the percentage of the market your brand owns compared to your competitors— the more your brand is mentioned on the web, the larger your percentage will be. This measure is used to allocate impressions when multiple guaranteed campaigns are competing for the same spot. A 25% SOT will guarantee you only a quarter of the available impressions. This means it could take four times as long to fulfill one's budget. The SOT is easy to work with when every campaign vying for an ad slot totals to 100%. Yet, it’s possible for things to get complicated and the SOT to fall below or above 100%— leading to under and overbooking. Although we do not recommend you under or overbook, we still account for this and ensure each guaranteed campaign delivery is based on a percentage. This percentage is calculated by dividing each sponsor’s SOV by the overall SOT percentage.
I know this can get a bit tricky, so here’s an example:
Two guaranteed campaigns have targeted the same ad slot. Campaign A has a 100% SOV, while Campaign B has a 75% SOT. The true delivery percentage of Campaign A would be (100/175) 57%. Campaign B’s true delivery percentage would be (75/175) 43%. Add these up and they equal 100%. In a scenario where the total SOT is less than 100%, the same calculation would be applied to bring the combined SOT up to 100%. NOTE: A campaign’s line item priority must be filled in order for Share of Traffic to take over.
If you have more than one newsletter, you can add each of these on your “placements” tab. From here, choose how many ad units you want on each newsletter.
There’s also an option to pull the custom ads you’ve created from the native editor, as well as display ads for your emails.
If you have more than one property, they can be added to your direct sold— meaning multiple campaigns and multiple properties can be managed on one convenient platform.
