How I Ran An Ad on Fox News via Google TV Ads
slatev.com
slatev.com
I spent about $15K with my last company on google tv ads. It was a sports site and we got on espn etc. I poured over server logs and google analytics and didn't see any value from these ads - no spikes or noticeable conversions whatsoever.
CPM was super cheap so we got a TON of impressions.
We had a pretty decent ad too I think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUfTjtOQ8fM
It ended up being more of a vanity thing of having our ad on TV - total waste of time and money for us.
Someone should do the same test for a regular ad, i.e. this is our product come buy it at oursite.com. I bet the number of hits will plummet.
Oh and I bet the production values matter a lot, their ad was actually good, anything a regular person comes up with, will probably be junk.(i.e. the equivalent of those dealership ads)
But I guess the point of the video was to show how easy it is to setup a TV campaign. In that regard it really seemed easy. It was surprising that it didn't require a large minimum to get air time.
You can go through the local network stations or the actual cable providers. Both will help you put together the ad (cheap if not free, quality depends on the idea, ie horrible car ads)
You can also pick your channels and general time frames that you want your ad to air in. So if you are targeting parents who own their home, you could select HGN, DIY, etc. and set the time frame to between 5 pm(afterwork) to 12 am(pre-sleep).
Same with radio in terms of dealing directly with the radio stations. You can write your copy, tell them you want one of the on air personalities to read it to some music. In a couple hours you can have a few different ads to choose from. It is surprisingly cheap to dominate any given radio station if you are in the right media market(not Boston or the likes).
When it comes to internet startups, the real problem with TV, Radio, or offline advertising in general is the bad conversion and lack of metrics like we are used to in the online world.
We are already used to single digit(or less) conversion rates for online advertising campaigns. You can imagine how much more that drops when your ads are reaching people who might not even be by a computer and are expecting them to remember your brand/product next time they are.
As for metrics, the easiest thing you can do is have control and variable zip codes. See how registration/purchases fair for zip codes outside of the market you are doing media buys in(but still relatively close geographically), compared to the rates for the area that you are advertising in.
* $1300 total outlay
* 7 times during Glenn Beck episodes (starting at 2:49am)
* 54 times total on 4 networks
* 1.3MM people reached
* 1000+ visitors to ad website
Not sure how it would play out for conversion but cost of acquisition seems high, of course, the branding you get out of a network TV ad probably has its own benefits (especially if your core audience is 18-35 males awake at 3am. uhh.)
Nowadays with Google, it's much easier and much cheaper to get your ads on TV, but it's still much more expensive than going through media buying agencies.
As an example, AWS's one simple price structure for bandwidth is way above what you'll get from most other providers given some negotiation. Of course, your negotiations with other providers will start higher, but you can get em down substantially.
I see a parallel to the fixed-price used car lots. While a good negotiator can get a better deal elsewhere, an uninformed buyer can be somewhat assured that he's not getting ripped off.
Rule #2: Negotiate.
Showing 1.3 million people 30 seconds of your band's music is bound to build at least a little awareness.
If this isn't the best of the last week, it's easily in the top ten.
Lots of little details and nit-picking that should be done, but bottom line is that nationally-advertising on TV is not the impossible thing it used to be for young startups.
Very cool.
Too many features and we will soon become reddit :/
Ad "frequency" - eg how many times users see a given ad - is the most important metric for TV.
Without a large budget commitment it's extremely difficult to gauge the success or failure of a given campaign – even if you get a handful of visitors. That’s why you see brand advertisers continue to fill up the majority of TV spots.
Nearly everybody in this space has had a lot of trouble getting traction, internet advertisers don’t have the headspace for TV, and TV isn’t suited to small budget / small frequency campaigns.