4 High-Performing Ad Types to Consider in 2023

It’s officially media planning season and a good time to look back at what worked well in 2022, as well as what trends may require some shifts in your approach for 2023. Here are 4 high-performing ad types we’d encourage you to consider in your 2023 plan (depending on your goals and budgets).

#1 Programmatic High-Impact Interstitial

• What it is: A high-impact interstitial ad is an HTML-based ad designed to take over the full screen on a viewer’s mobile device. They allow for highly interactive features and are served programmatically, meaning they could appear anywhere on the web, based on audience targeting parameters such as interests, industries and job titles.

• What we like about it: It allows for total creative control. You can integrate video, animations, interactive buttons, quizzes, gamification elements, lead forms and more. A programmatic partner once told us, “if you can storyboard it, we can build it,” which proved to be true. Plus, it takes over the whole mobile experience, which makes it impossible to ignore. 

• How they perform: We’ve seen click-through rates (CTRs) as high as 4% in some cases, which is roughly 20 times (yes, 20 times!) the average CTR of display programmatic. And although the cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is much higher on these high-impact ads, the high CTR often results in a much lower cost per click (CPC).

• Example: Check out this awesome example of a high-impact interstitial ad from Disney, which includes interactive gamification and video to promote The Mandelorian. 

#2 Facebook Lead Generation

• What it is: A Facebook lead generation ad allows for capturing leads directly within the Facebook platform, rather than driving the user to a landing page with a form. It appears in the user’s news feed the same way other Facebook ads do, but after clicking the CTA button, will open up a customizable lead form directly within the ad.

• What we like about it: Ads optimized for lead generation can take a lot of different creative forms — including video, single image or multi-image carousel. It’s also possible to connect the Facebook lead form directly to your CRM and set it to trigger an email or roll directly to an assigned salesperson. So, whether you’re looking to simply capture and nurture marketing leads (e.g., with a gated piece of content as the bait) or looking to pass sales leads directly to someone on your or your distributor’s team (e.g., using an offer or incentive as the bait), Facebook lead generation is an excellent option.

• How it performs: Time and time again, we’ve seen much higher conversion rates and lower cost per lead (CPL) when running Facebook lead generation ads versus Facebook traffic ads that drive to a landing page with a form. It eliminates the extra steps of going out of the platform, and Facebook even auto-populates most of the form for the user, making conversion super quick and easy. Although Facebook lead generation campaigns are more expensive than Facebook traffic ads, the higher conversion rate often leads to a lower CPL, justifying the expense.

• Example: Check out how Tecobi used carousel lead-gen ads, connected with their CRM, to get higher conversions and automated follow-up with prospects.

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#3 Trade Media Partner Social

• What it is: Many trade media partners now offer paid campaigns pushed out via their social channels, to their audience (or subsets of it, as chosen by the advertiser) with the advertiser’s message and content.

• What we like about it: Just as with running a Facebook campaign from your own channels, you can work with most trade media partners on desired format and goal of the ad (whether it’s awareness, traffic, lead generation, click-to-call, e-commerce, etc). Those partners that are a bit more sophisticated can even use the subscriber list in their CRM to target only certain job titles, industries or company types within their audience, helping to deliver highly targeted campaigns for the advertiser.

• ‍How it performs: We’ve consistently seen CTRs above 2%, which is roughly 10 times the average CTR of most display options through the same trade media partners — often at a comparable CPM. If you’re advertising with a trade media partner, it’s a no-brainer to have partner social as part of your mix with them (if they offer it).

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#4 First-Party Cookies and Hashed Email Retargeting

• What it is: Using a snippet of code known as a pixel (aka first-party cookie), advertisers can continue retargeting, despite Google, Apple and Mozilla phasing out the use of third-party cookie tracking in their browsers. The pixel code placed on a landing page can be used to build custom audiences for retargeting on Facebook and Instagram or via programmatic, based on where the website visitors were browsing on your site.

• What we like about it: Retargeting is perfect for reaching an audience with the right message for the stage of the journey they’re in. For instance, if someone landed on a pixeled blog post about how to solve an issue, you could retarget them with an ad for a product that helps address that issue. Likewise, you could create dynamic Facebook ads that serve the right message based on where the visitor previously landed on your website.

• How it performs: With retargeting, you’re reaching people who already know and have interacted with your brand. So long as you’re serving them the right message based on their past behavior and where they’re at in the journey, it stands to reason that a retargeted audience will be more engaged with your ads than someone who has never interacted with your brand.

• Additional considerations: It’s important to note that first-party cookie retargeting is only effective in building an audience when users opt into the cookie consent policy on your website. We’ve seen cases of opt-ins as low as 4% in some instances, so building a sizable audience would require a significant amount of traffic. However, if you have a decent list of opted-in CRM contacts that’s easily segmentable, that is a great way to supplement and build your audience size. It also opens up the possibility of hashed email retargeting.

• The future of retargeting: hashed emails – A hashed email is essentially an encrypted form of an email address that acts as a unique identifier for an individual, across all devices and platforms where they use that email for login purposes – making it more effective than any cookie retargeting, which only works on a single device. The trick to making this work is to match your CRM’s emails with first-party cookie IDs and the hashed emails for those email contacts. This process is called identity resolution – and it can be complex. But doing so will allow you to retarget known CRM contacts across all their devices — e.g., on their desktop, tablet, phone, TV — anywhere they use their email address to log in.

We’re ready if you are

If you’re ready to work through your media strategy for next year, we’d love to help. 

Let’s chat!

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