What are Sponsored Campaigns?
Brands are increasingly redirecting their digital marketing budgets toward native advertising, including paid social media posts, paid search, influencer marketing, and sponsored content.
The shift is not happening without good reason. By definition, native ads are a form of paid promotion that takes form, function, and quality of content in the platform where it appears. Native ads, therefore, promote without making audiences feel they are being targeted, opening up even more opportunities to engage them.
We at Hezz divide native ads into three categories: programmatic native ads, native ad units, and sponsored content. Each native ad type has its own potential, undergoes a unique technical process and addresses specific needs.
Programmatic native ads target audience based on metadata collected from certain channels or media. These are generally displayed with recommendation widgets, from services like Taboola or Outbrain.
Native ad units allow advertisers to promote content on a particular platform. Examples of these are capabilities to post ads on Facebook, to have ads appear as part of search results on Google, or as to have promoted listings on Amazon.
So what is sponsored content?
Sponsored content is a form of advertising put out by publishers or social media influencers in a format and quality they are known for–whether they be articles, photos, video, or other executions. Brands co-create these content to generate conversations around their product category or even their product.
We refer to content co-created with publishers as branded content. It is a form of native advertising that allows brands to get their messages across by riding on the credibility, unique voice, and audience affinity that publishers have developed over time.
When brands work co-create content with influencers, we call it influencer marketing. This allows marketers to expand their reach on social media beyond their own pages and ads by tapping into the network of popular or sometimes niche individuals and groups.
Platforms
Must-haves for every digital advertising platform
The digital advertising platform you choose should be suitably equipped to lead potential customers to your products or services. At a minimum, the most effective platforms will be able to provide you with the following:
- A range of potential ad placements. Diversify your campaign by running ads in a variety of formats, such as display or search ads. This ensures you’re broadening your reach. Just remember, not every ad format will be a match for your product, so don’t force it.
- Access to the global market. You want your campaign in front of as many eyeballs as possible, in as many places as possible, and that means working with a widely-used advertising platform that builds your brand’s presence worldwide.
- Advanced analytics tools. Possibly the most critical trait of an effective digital ad platform, the platform you choose will provide you with the insights you need to determine the success of your campaign. Without proper campaign analytics and tracking, you’ll never know if your ads are resonating with your audience and, if not, what to do to correct the situation.
- Ad options that suit your budget. A lot goes into determining the cost of a digital ad campaign, and it often depends on how competitive your industry is. However, it doesn’t have to cost a lot, and there should be at least a few available formats you can afford to test on a small scale before committing.
Campaigns Adjustments
The process of setting up, brainstorming, planning, and ultimately delivering digital marketing campaigns is an exhausting, challenging, yet fun and extremely rewarding process.
Once the campaign goes live, you can witness the fruits of your labor. However, all digital marketing campaigns must at some point come to an end and there is always one final step in the process: campaign analysis.
Every company, brand, or agency will approach the end of a campaign differently, with some going into detail and others taking a much broader view. However whilst digital campaigns can be quite simple and straightforward, perhaps with maybe just one or two channels, others may be more complex and multifaceted.
We, therefore, believe it’s always best to observe on the side of detail so that you can get a true picture of how different elements of a campaign performed in the context of the overall campaign objective. The main advantages of campaign analysis include:
- Understand what elements of the campaign worked well/ not so well
- Learn how the target audience responded to the campaign
- Review the ultimate effectiveness of the campaign versus objectives
- Discuss the campaign with key stakeholders
- Provide valuable learnings for future campaigns
Because digital campaigns vary so wildly, I’m going to use this article to provide an overview of what in my experience are the most important components to include within a post-campaign analysis dashboard. This can be useful for in-house marketing teams or for discussion with supporting agency partners to create something that works for everyone.
If you’re either creating or initiating marketing analysis, I would also advise that you arrange a meeting or forum to discuss the outputs of the report. By all means, send the report out in advance as a pre-read but it’s usually best to get all the key stakeholders together as a group to discuss the campaign results.
We have a wealth of marketing campaign solutions to help support marketers and managers in creating efficient and effective campaigns. From strategy and planning, actions and tactics, to post-campaign reviews, all our marketing tools are observed real-time and analyzed after.
