Integrating Marketing Campaigns & Scaling For High Volume

Integrating Marketing Campaigns & Scaling for High Volume Traffic
Brandon Adcock 9/3/2009

My Background
VP of Marketing for Video Game startup, sold to Games Media Properties
Search Marketing consulting for tech/video game companies
Managed Search program for Lowe’s
Founded Holey Duck in 2008 – direct to consumer marketing company

Objective
How to prepare for, scale to, and optimize high volume traffic.
Geared toward direct response, but can be applied across objectives

Preparation
Quality servers to handle load
Separate SQL Server?
Cloud computing for images/files?
Server Monitoring
Alertra.com (SMS, Email, Phone Call)
Downtime costs money, don’t be cheap
Proper tracking in place
Visitors, referrers, keywords, ad variations, country, city, etc…
User Testing/Data of Landing Page
Heat maps/User Interaction in place
Focus groups for landing pages

Buying Traffic
Paid Search
Are you on branded terms?
Social Media Platforms
Facebook, Myspace, Digg, Technorati/Engage
Text Ads
Pulse 360
Adsonar/AOL Sponsored Listings
Google/Yahoo/MSN Content
Kontera & Chitika
Display Ads
Networks (Burst Media, Tribal Fusion)
Yahoo & MSN (Own site and network)
Self Serve (Adsdaq, AdBuyer, AdBlade, AdBrite)
Direct Site Purchase
PPV – Pay per View
TrafficVance (Gamevance), Media Traffic, Zango
Pop Up or Pop Under
Few cents or less per view
Can cause heavy server load, use content distribution

Media Buying Explained
Media Buying is typically considered the act of purchasing a predetermined amount of display media through a contract
I Will spend $x over x days
All rates are negotiable and are flat, on a CPM basis. Usually ~15-25K Min
Signed contracts are called Insertion Orders (IOs)
Performance goals need to be assigned
Multiple ads for each standard ad size
Frequency caps and CTR rates

Self Serve Platforms Explained
Facebook
Huge amounts of inventory
Ability to target by age, location, gender, keywords, birthday, sexual orientation, marital status
CTR is extremely important (headline & image)
Myspace
Uses standard ad sizes (300x250 & 728x90 get most impressions)
Target by age, gender, area within US, interests
Bid high at first 0.8+ then drop bids
Google Content
Target by keywords or site
50-75 keywords per ad group, related terms
High CTR = lower CPCs
Optimize by dropping keywords or blocking sites
Use placement reports
Adsonar
Expensive clicks
Target based on site mostly
Tons of inventory (AOL Network, ESPN, People, TMZ, etc…)
Optimize by removing placements that don’t convert

Using Data to Optimize
Track every keyword, every ad, every referrer
Remove poor performing keywords and ads, block poor performing sites/referrers
I even track IP blocks (exclude in Google)
Track countries or states, weed out bad ones
Remember CTR matters, so don’t cut ads based solely off CVR, look at EPC(earnings per click)
Test new headlines, colors, images, call to actions on landing pages with high volume traffic

My Journey
Started in PPC
Moved to Myspace
Then Facebook
3 Failed Media Buys
Focus mainly on media buys now

Q&A
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