Advertising statistics. The effectiveness of advertising in social networks: indicators and stages of evaluation Is advertising in social networks effective?

It's no secret that any social network today is a huge community of people who spend at least an hour a day in front of a monitor. Most often, each of the participants in any social network “sits” in it for several hours, chatting with friends, watching entertainment content, reading some news, and so on. All this time he remains "within" this site, being a potential advertising contact. It would be foolish not to use different advertising tools to monetize and make money on such a large audience.

Therefore, today advertising on social networks is both a powerful tool for making money (for owners of groups and promoted pages), and a channel for selling their goods and services (for entrepreneurs, business owners). And not to use such an effective tool is tantamount to giving up a powerful flow of customers.

In this article, we will try to learn a little more about how social media advertising works. To do this, we will analyze different formats for buying advertising in the most popular Russian network VKontakte, as well as collect the opinions of some advertisers working with different types of advertising (for comparison of effectiveness).

What are they advertising?

So, to begin with, we will determine what (most often) advertising on social networks is used for. Who buys it and for what purpose? How much money are advertisers willing to pay in order to get their share of traffic?

If you ever went to VK, you probably noticed an ad block on the left of the page. It is arranged quite simply: on top of it is a headline offering a certain product or service, below is a picture with a company logo or “face” - a person representing the product. Text may follow (although this is optional). In fact, the formats in which social media advertising is offered are quite different, and you could meet them all.

To understand who and why buys a place on the VK page, you should understand the audience of this resource. Considering that there are millions of users in this social network, we can say that the audience here is quite diverse, and it can be targeted using different filters. Remember for yourself: you indicate in the questionnaire on the site your gender, age, as well as the place of study and work. Advertisers who need to sell any product can customize their ad to show it to you.

Therefore, the answer to the question of the purpose for which VKontakte advertising is ordered can be completely different, because the audience of the site is different, which means that there are all sorts of product manufacturers - companies that need the attention of all these people.

In other words, social media advertising is used by a wide variety of businesses, from the owners of a local cinema to the largest online lingerie store. Everyone can find their buyer on VKontakte (as in any other network) and “get through” to him with their ads.

Where do they advertise?

Of course, despite the diversity of people spending time on their favorite sites, their age, gender, income level and place of residence, advertising on social networks is also different. VKontakte, for example, has a more youthful focus. And if we talk about Odnoklassniki, then this site is more likely for an older audience. The Mamba dating site is unlikely to be visited by children and older people, as well as those who already have their soul mate. Here you can find lonely, adventurous people. That is, each social network has its own "core" - a group of users united by some common features. You should be guided by it if you are promoting advertising on social networks of one kind or another.

Advertising types

Each social network uses its own advertising format. Often sites work with different types to give the advertiser more tools to reach their client. It is rather difficult to cover all types of advertising materials that operate on the RuNet, so we will talk about the most popular network - VKontakte. Here is the largest audience, and hence the most active market for advertising services. Therefore, using her example, we will see what online advertising in social networks is.

Ad block

The classic and most popular, apparently, format for promoting your services is placing ads in a side ad block. The latter is located on all pages of the VKontakte website, and you can see it every time you visit this resource, on the left side. We talked about it a little higher.

This block is configured from the advertising account, available to all users. In it, you can change settings such as payment format (per clicks or per 1000 impressions), audience (gender, age, groups, preferences and a host of other settings), cost, ad appearance (image and title, image + title and text- description) and more. In fact, placing ads on social networks in a specially designated block (which is probably available on all sites, since this is a fairly common format) is represented by a special configurator. It also gives a wide range of options for what your ad will be. Your task is to set it up in such a way as to interest your client, replenish the account balance and start showing ads.

Record promotion

Another interesting option for providing information about your products is promotional posts. You can see them if you open the "News" section. Advertising services on social networks using such posts is a common way to promote yourself as "organically" as possible without causing irritation to users.

1. Paid traffic- a product offered by the social networks themselves, as a rule, in the format of teaser ads with pay per click. When we say “paid”, we mean that this traffic is officially sold by social networks.

2. - in this case, we mean all the ways by which you can attract traffic to the community. This can be both paid traffic offered by social networks, and various ways of self-generating traffic using posting, direct mail (group invitations), etc.

3. Reputation management in social networks- this type of advertising activity involves identifying the structure of opinions of social network users about a brand or a specific product and carrying out work to improve reputation.

Depending on the type, both KPIs and ways to measure them in social networks will differ. So, let's begin.

Paid traffic

For this type of advertising, all the methods of analytics that are used to arbitrate traffic from other sources (contextual advertising, display advertising, search engine optimization, etc.) are applicable. The most popular tool is Google Analytics, the capabilities of which are used to assess the quality of traffic and its further conversion into active actions and sales. However, the analytics of paid traffic in social networks has its own characteristics that must be taken into account:

Alexander Bolshov

1. Synergistic effect. A user who came from a social network, unlike a user who came from search advertising, is less ready to make a transaction. This is because at the moment when you showed him your ad, he was not looking for your product, in fact, you yourself created the demand. The disadvantage of this situation is that a person who came from a social network is, on average, less likely to make a purchase right away (for example, he does not yet have the necessary amount of money). But he may return to this issue next time, so tracking of associated conversions plays a special role in social media advertising analytics, that is, the sequence of visiting your site when the user first comes from one source, and makes a purchase the next time, coming from another source. The synergistic effect here is achieved due to the fact that the simultaneous action of several tools: advertising on social networks and, for example, search advertising, leads to better results than the separate use of these tools.

2. Quality quality is different. If you have an estimated KPI that shows the quality of traffic coming from, for example, search advertising (SEO, contextual advertising), it is recommended to double-check it before using it as a KPI for social networks. It’s not for nothing that Google Analytics has a separate section that allows you to look at traffic quality indicators from various social networks and compare them with each other. Why is it so? First of all, this is due to a special behavioral model of the audience that came from social networks, because a person came to the social network not to buy your product - it was you who made him go to your site. This is a fundamental difference from search advertising, where the user purposefully enters the search engine in order to find a specific product or service that he needs at the moment. In the case of search advertising, the user will be guided by the relevance of the offer to his query at every level of decision making, from clicking on the ad to clicking the "Checkout" button. In a social network, he will be guided by the emotion with which he is associated with the purchase of your product - after all, this is the only way a person can be taken out of a semi-meditative state of viewing a news feed or new photos of friends. It is not for nothing that social media advertising materials use an image, and search advertising uses text. The graphic image includes figurative perception, and the text - only rational.

- bounce rate- the basis for evaluating the effectiveness of a single landing page to which advertising leads. A high bounce rate is the first sign of irrelevant landing page traffic.

- time spent on the site- this indicator is necessary for those sites whose goal is to keep the user on the page for as long as possible, for example, for online games, dating sites and other sites with entertainment content.

- average number of pages viewed- this indicator is interesting for content projects, since their monetization is directly related to how much the user is involved in the content of the site, for example, how many articles he read on the site. Such projects are selling ads on their pages with pay per 1000 impressions, so each page viewed by the user is one impression, which means that you can directly calculate the ePC (earning per click) using Google Analytics data.

- % of traffic conversion to goals- no matter what goal you set on the site (sending an application, visiting the Contacts page, etc.), you can evaluate the quality of traffic in relation to it. This indicator is suitable for online projects, the monetization of which is tied to action. For example, these are credit and insurance organizations (sending an application), bulletin boards (submitting or viewing an ad).

- profitability of traffic- This indicator is used by online stores. To calculate it, you need to install an add-on in Google Analytics (electronic commerce). Revenue data will also be required from the account of the site on which the placement is made, from Google Analytics or from another source that can show the level of advertising costs. Profitability is calculated as the ratio of income to costs and shows the effectiveness, or payback, of advertising costs.

Attracting internal traffic to communities

Another type of advertising in social networks is to attract internal traffic to communities, the purpose of which is to increase the number of participants and / or increase the activity of those who have joined the community. Both goals lead to an increase in effective referral traffic from communities in social networks (traffic leading to sales) or an increase in sales directly from communities, if such an opportunity is provided and does not contradict the policy of the social network.

The number of group members or page followers;

Number of active users per day/week/month;

The number of retired participants for a certain period of time;

The number of uploaded photos, photo albums, videos;

As you can see, there are a lot of indicators. To understand how they affect ad monetization, you need to answer 2 questions:

1. At what quality indicators of the community does effective monetization occur in the form of further conversion into sales?

2. What sources of traffic to the community and events within the community give the greatest increase in these indicators?

For example, we held a competition in the community of an online fitness store, promising the winner, second and third place a discount of 10%, 7 and 5%, respectively. The condition of the competition is to do as many push-ups as possible and upload a video to the group as confirmation. As a result, 34 new videos were added, more than 100 comments and about 200 likes were collected. During the contest, 8 sales were made based on the traffic that came from the group. Based on these indicators, we can determine what intermediate indicators we need in the community in order to achieve the ultimate goal of increasing sales.

Reputation management in social networks

Reputation management starts with monitoring the brand's current social media presence. To monitor reputation in social networks, the statistics of social networks themselves are not enough, Google Analytics will not help here either. There are many systems on the market that offer independent analytics of this kind: Wobot etc. To choose which system to use, you need to understand what indicators we need to monitor and manage reputation in social networks:

1. Dynamics of the number of brand mentions. This indicator reflects the results of the media activity of the brand. When analyzing the indicator, you need to remember about seasonality and superimpose the resulting graphs on the graphs of seasonal fluctuations in demand for your products.

2. The number and proportion of positive reviews. The technology for analyzing this indicator is very simple: the higher the proportion of positive reviews, the better.

3. Number and proportion of neutral reviews. This indicator is not self-sufficient. With an increase in the proportion of neutral reviews, a deeper analysis should be carried out in order to establish its nature. For example, this may mean that the audience does not have enough information about the product, and neutral reviews are questions about certain properties of your product.

4. The number and proportion of negative reviews. These indicators allow you to set the relative and absolute share of negative reviews. It should be remembered that the presence of negative reviews in itself is not so bad. It's worse if they don't talk about you at all. In SMM practice, there are 3 main areas of work with such reviews:

Identification and removal of custom-made negative;

Working out a negative review;

As such, acceptable values ​​for the share of negative reviews have not yet been identified, however, as practice shows, if on a forum or in a community there are at least 3 positive reviews (25%) for 1 negative review, then the effect of a negative review is neutralized.

5. The ratio of the number of authors and the number of reviews allows you to identify the concentration of positive or negative reviews on the author, which will help to highlight either a fan of the brand, or a reputational terrorist, and possibly the author who fulfills someone's order for black PR.

Of course, a big plus for a social network analytics system will be the automated ability to determine the sentiment of reviews (positive or negative), since many brands have a large reputational capital and manually counting the number of reviews, not to mention determining their sentiment, becomes quite costly. However, when determining tonality in automatic mode, it should also be taken into account that the system will not always be able to take into account all the features of morphology. For example, if you want to collect statistics on the reputation of the iPhone 4, the advantage will be on the side of positive reviews due to the large number of people who want to sell iPhone4 in " excellent condition."

Of course, social media advertising analytics is not limited to the above list of indicators, and, for sure, the toolkit will be replenished with the development of technology, but you should always remember that the analysis should be based on concrete figures and facts that you can trust.

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Today it is almost impossible to find a person who is not registered in one or more social networks. That is why SMM promotion becomes a full-fledged marketing method. The effectiveness of advertising in social networks cannot be ignored, losing the opportunity to use this tool, because it is in Odnoklassniki, Facebook, VKontakte, Twitter, etc. is a significant part of the target audience of your business.

Why evaluate the effectiveness of advertising in social networks

Planning the marketing activities of the company is impossible without the direct participation of management, which determines the course of business development. When developing a strategy, market indicators are taken into account, on the basis of which it is possible to forecast the dynamics of consumer preferences. Conventionally, they can be called indicators. Data for evaluation can also be obtained from social networks, in which advertising of your brand or product helps to see changes in the characteristics of the target audience (demography, age, location, preferences, interests, etc.).

Each of these indicators is able to answer important questions for marketing strategy and business in general:

Metrics such as budget, resources, timelines, products, and processes can be both quantitative and qualitative in terms of how social media users interact with your brand. In addition, they can be optimized and adjusted to improve the effectiveness of social media advertising. In the long term, improved performance can lead to a more cost-effective allocation of social media investments.

Latest research on the effectiveness of advertising in social networks

The Content Marketing Institute partnered with MarketingProfs to organize a survey of 3,714 marketers from around the world. Content was chosen as the research topic, as well as success in online marketing. Despite only 263 respondents being B2C marketers and business owners, the results of the survey were found to be indicative.

Sponsored posts (for example, posts on Facebook or Twitter and Pinterest) are used by 76% of B2C marketers. 61% of them confirmed the effectiveness of this type of advertising in social networks, the effectiveness of which was rated at 4 or 5 points on a five-point system (3 shows a neutral attitude).

Advertising on social networks itself received a rating of 4 or 5 on the effectiveness scale from 59% of respondents (this method of promotion is used by 74% of all respondents). Facebook was recognized as the most successful platform for promotion, Youtube took the second place.

The effectiveness of social platforms for B2C:

Most of the respondents who took part in the CMI survey belong to the B2B sector (1521 people). Of these, 93% use advertising on social networks: 52% - advertising posts, 41% - advertising directly. 48% of marketers rated these tactics a 4 on a 5-point effectiveness scale, 45% a 5.

However, 55% of B2B professionals rated above average (4 or 5) paid search ads, as well as PPC (Pay-Per-Click - pay per click). And only 29% of respondents consider traditional banner advertising to be sufficiently effective or super effective.

The effectiveness of social platforms for B2B:

What are the metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of social media advertising?

Social network users are partly attracted to metrics that allow you to see how many subscribers your community or channel has, how many comments, likes and reposts your content has. Business owners should also pay attention to these indicators in order to measure them and evaluate the opening effectiveness of advertising for the company.

The audience

Entrepreneurs rely on the target audience being aware of their brand and the services they offer. This awareness can be measured using the following criteria:

1. The number of subscribers, that is, those people who are in your community on a social network and regularly receive mailings about content updates.
2. Dynamics of audience growth, showing the increase or decrease in the number of subscribers over a certain period of time.

Awareness represents the top of the sales funnel. Here are such incentives for customers as an incentive to realize the need, the desire to satisfy their requests and loyalty to the company.

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Coverage

The reach indicator reflects how many users out of the total audience of the social network have viewed your content, including paid advertising. This indicator is applicable both to a single post and to the entire page. With it, you can evaluate the effectiveness of advertising impact on the target audience.

Involvement

There are 4 main ways to interact with the audience using social networks. They allow you to measure the reaction of the audience.

1. Likes, with which you can see the number of users who have viewed and rated your content.
2. Comments that demonstrate the effectiveness of your content, which stimulated users to enter into a dialogue.
3. Reposts that reflect the increased interest of the audience that found your content relevant for posting on their pages, as well as for further distribution.
4. Mentions, showing how many times your brand name is quoted during user interactions.

The more activity the audience demonstrates, the higher the effectiveness of advertising in social networks. The engagement indicator helps you gauge the degree of user interest in your content. Thanks to this, audience loyalty grows, which in the future can lead to an increase in sales.

social mood

This indicator is one of the most revealing. By researching social mood, you get the opportunity to assess the attitude of users towards your company and find out what people are saying about your brand.

The difficulty lies in the fact that in the process of communication, social network users can mention your brand without referring to it directly. To understand in what context the audience is talking about your company - in a positive or negative way, specialized services are involved that are used by marketers for evaluation. Sentiment analysis of reviews is carried out on the basis of specified key parameters. The higher the percentage of mentions of your brand on social networks, the higher the effectiveness of advertising on social networks. In addition, by measuring social mood, you get the opportunity to quickly respond to criticism and adjust your strategy to avoid the appearance of negativity in the future.

With the help of specialized services (for example, ReviewPro), the social mood of your audience can be expressed in numbers that are easy to use when evaluating the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

Share of advertising exposure (SOV - Share of Voice)

Measuring this indicator can help:

• Evaluate the effectiveness of advertising in a social network, that is, answer the questions:
• Clarify the degree of recognition of your company (whether customers mention your brand on their own during communication or only after actual advertising or promotions).
• Supplement the analysis of competitive activity:

Customer acquisition

In the matter of achieving business goals, activities in social networks simply cannot be based only on communications with users. The task of marketing activities in social networks is to create a need for services, to generate leads and to increase sales.

Based on these goals, you should create your own sales funnel and create a channel for profiting from promoting your brand on social networks. Many social media platforms offer the user the ability to generate a standard traffic report. However, to conduct a full-fledged analysis, it is better to use specialized services, such as Google Analytics, which helps to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts, which contributed to the transition of potential customers from your page on a social network to a corporate website. With the help of UTM links placed in posts, Google Analyticscs helps to find the traffic channel and evaluate whether it led to the generation of a lead and the closing of a deal.

How to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising in social networks: the main stages

Step 1: Define your social media marketing funnel

This process consists of several stages:

1. Acquaintance.

The tasks of this stage include attracting the attention of users and stimulating their interest in your brand.

1. Involvement.

You can engage users with entertaining or educational content, thanks to which an interested audience participates in the discussion by leaving comments, and distributes it with the help of reposts.

1. Conversion.

Now it's time to convert interested users into future buyers by offering them an attractive product, filling out a form, or signing up for a newsletter.

1. Involvement.

One of the great features of social networks is that users who enter the sales funnel involve other people with their activity. Therefore, the number of your potential customers is constantly growing, and each of them leads to your sales funnel people who are part of the circle of friends and relatives.

Step 2: Define social media attribution for business

Social media attribution- the process of identifying revenue channels, campaigns and publications. This is where Google Analytics comes to the rescue. However, not all attribution models offered by this service are suitable for social networks.

Assuming that your brand was first introduced to you by watching a video on Facebook, the next user steps would look like this:

• After visiting your brand page, the user subscribes to it in order to receive regular updates.
• After a couple of days, your page is replenished with an article, which can be read in full only on your site, where the link in the post leads.
• The user goes to your site and subscribes to the newsletter to keep abreast of new products and current events.
• A week later, the user receives an email with a code, by entering which on your site, he receives a discount on the product that attracted his attention on the page on the social network.

Google Analytics offers last-click attribution, but it doesn't take into account social media influence. In this case, multi-touch attribution is more effective, with which you can track all the channels of the user that led him to purchase.

Stage 3. Calculation of CPA in social networks

CPA (cost per acquisition, acquisition costs) is an advertising model in which the advertiser pays only for certain user actions: clicks, subscriptions, purchases, registrations.

When you run a Twitter campaign and use it to grow followers, you can see how many people in that audience have become customers (that's the acquisition). If you know the amount of investment spent on publishing, you can calculate the cost of acquisition by dividing the price of the posted post by the number of users who eventually clicked on your link and subscribed.

Stage 4. Calculation of ROI of social networks

ROI = (income minus investments) * 100 / investments

Social media revenue is calculated using an attribution model. If we assume that the income from one conversion action is $120, of which 30% belongs to social networks (this was suggested by the attribution model), then the ROI will be equal to $40. Of course, this indicator is not always accurate, but it gives an idea of ​​the level of expenses.

Social media is an important source of lead generation for business, especially B2B. If you follow the algorithm above, it will help you evaluate the effectiveness of social networks for your chosen marketing strategy, as well as adjust your actions within this policy to stimulate profit growth.

How to determine the effectiveness of advertising in social networks depending on the type of project

1. Shops (services), whose activities are carried out only in social networks.

For such sites, the effectiveness of advertising on social networks is calculated very simply, since all sales are carried out only here. Profit is the sum of the cost of all goods sold, and the amount of costs is determined by the cost of production, increased by the amount of investment in promotion in social networks. In this case, the ROI indicator is calculated using the following formula:

D- income from the sale of goods;

Z1- the total cost of goods;

1. Public pages and groups whose income is based on the publication of paid guest posts, links to affiliate programs, etc.

For these sites, the effectiveness of advertising in social networks is also easily calculated using the formula of the ratio of profit to total costs, which is presented above. In this case, the income part is the total cost of all paid posts for the period under consideration (month, quarter, etc.). The cost part includes the cost of man-hours for the reporting period, as well as the amount of investment in the promotion of the group.

1. Shops (services) and companies selling services for which social networks are one of the promotion channels in the general sales funnel.

For these sites, it is quite difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising in social networks, since it is difficult to find the weight of a separate promotion channel in the overall range of ongoing marketing activities. Therefore, first you need to find the right approach that will help simplify the task of calculating the ROI of social networks.

Types of advertising that show the greatest effectiveness of advertising on social networks

• Branding.

Brand awareness is the key to its winning position against competitors. With the help of social networks, you can reach a huge target audience, the size of which exceeds the number of viewers of television advertising. Do not ignore the effectiveness of social media as a tool to increase brand awareness.

• Hidden marketing.

Pop-up full-screen banners and other annoying ads have long taught social network users to close such pages without even getting acquainted with their content. In this regard, there was a need for such advertising in social networks, the effectiveness of which is expressed in the hidden manipulation of the attention of visitors.

This approach requires patience. To begin with, around your brand, you need to gather an audience loyal to it, and then proceed with promotion, which is free from the obsession of conventional advertising, but at the same time pursues the same goals. Most firms for which social media is one of the main promotion channels emphasize the effectiveness of social media advertising.

• Viral marketing.

High-quality viral marketing can require much more effort and qualifications. It is very difficult to generate viral content and achieve its rapid distribution, but the effectiveness of such promotion in social networks is really great. In this case, humorous or curiosity content that will help increase brand awareness is a great help.

• Black PR.

Black methods are quite unpredictable, because in the end, the "dirt" may also be on the company that sought to denigrate competitors. In this case, you should act more skillfully and delicately, not descending to the level of spreading gossip and false information in order to push the user to the idea that the reputation of competitors is much more modest compared to the brand in question.

All your actions within the framework of applying the black PR methodology should not leave "tails" so that competitors do not have the opportunity to prove your involvement in what is happening or make claims.

How to improve the effectiveness of advertising in social networks

1. Use the social potential of your employees.

About 89% of brand advertisers use free marketing tools on social networks, thus generating their own advertising campaigns. 71% of agencies whose clients place an order for business promotion also use them. At the same time, 81% of agencies implement marketing campaigns for their customers using paid social media tools. They are also used by 75% of companies promoting their brand on their own.

From this we can conclude that most brands prefer to attract their own resources and free social media tools to promote and generate content, as well as to interact with the target audience. At the same time, third-party agencies are most often used to create and publish paid ads.

If the experience and qualifications of your employees can effectively participate in promoting your brand on social networks, you have the opportunity to save money. In addition, communication with users will be more personalized.

1. Post ads on social networks used by your target audience.

The results of market research confirm that a significant part of advertisers is convinced of the need to increase the cost of advertising in social networks. The effectiveness of this approach is beyond doubt. However, 40% of respondents plan to increase the budget by only 10% or even less. This means that brands are aware of the high performance of paid ads on social networks, but they are not ready for significant investments in this promotion channel.

If your budget is limited, every little thing should be taken into account. To increase the effectiveness of advertising on social networks at a minimum financial cost, carefully choose the time and place for publication, and for this you need to know all about the features of social networks that your target audience prefers.

1. Use social media to increase your audience reach.

Television and other types of advertising are gradually losing their positions. The effectiveness of advertising in social networks is recognized by the majority of advertisers, 40% of which increase investment in this type of promotion. It is social media that is recognized as the very phenomenon of modernity, which combines various channels for the dissemination of information. If we turn to the results of marketing research, curious facts are revealed:

• Over 50% of advertisers promote their brand through offline advertising and paid ads on social media. This is due to the fact that with equal costs of creating advertising, the cost of posting on social media is lower.
• More than 25% of advertisers reallocate their marketing budget to social media advertising.
• About 75% of brands conduct marketing campaigns both on the pages of their own corporate website and in online communities.

With the help of advertising on social networks, you can significantly increase the reach of your target audience, since these sites provide a wide range of paid and free tools. The easiest way to attract users is to promote your community with ads while posting interesting content.

1. Determine the goals and objectives of the advertising campaign in social networks.

To drive sales growth on social networks, you first need to purchase advertising on these sites, with which you will attract the target audience and engage them in interaction. Placing a paid ad in online communities does not generate an immediate increase in profits through sales. However, it is quite possible to turn every subscriber of your community into a buyer. The main thing is to give him something that can interest him, that is, a product with which you can evaluate the effectiveness of advertising on social networks.

1. Create a relevant landing page for social media users on your site.

More than half of advertisers believe that the same criteria can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of paid ads in online communities and offline advertising, for example, sales growth, brand awareness and free publications about the company. However, advertising using paid tools on social networks does not always guarantee an increase in sales of your product. Only 10% of ad sellers in online communities are committed to achieving such a result. In addition, other criteria are used to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising on social networks, which are used by almost half of the sellers.

To get the most reliable results, you need to analyze the performance yourself. To do this, you can create a landing page on the corporate website for users who follow the advertising links of social networks. Keep a count of the visitors who completed the necessary steps to start the sales process.

However, not all visitors are ready to complete the transaction immediately after the first visit. This is why your landing page should have compelling content that will help the user continue to explore your business. For example, you can offer potential customers a discount for registering on the site.

1. Measure the effectiveness of social media advertising.

However, almost a third of advertisers doubt the ability to measure the effectiveness of paid advertising in online communities. To obtain data, it is enough to choose the appropriate metrics that will be most effective for evaluating your particular campaign. For example, you can evaluate the result using the number of subscribers attracted by a marketing campaign or the number of mentions of your brand in online communities. Such indicators will be useful for analyzing the effectiveness of advertising in social networks.

1. Use social media advertising to both inform customers about your brand and to support sales.

After launching a social media campaign, almost 50% of advertisers expect sales and brand awareness to increase. It is necessary to gradually involve users in the conversion process, attracting their attention during the first visit to your page on social networks.

With the help of advertising in online communities, brands get the opportunity to start interacting with the audience and inform potential customers about the product and new products. However, social media promotion can also act as a sales support tool. The main thing is to choose the appropriate methods and evaluation criteria.

In recent years, the active development of the Internet has stimulated the spread of online advertising. Increasingly, the Internet is used simultaneously with television - both by users and advertisers. The spread of the Internet does not replace other media, especially TV, but rather complements them. The Internet is gaining recognition as an important tool for influencing shoppers and preparing them for purchases. For example, the FEVAD-Mediametrie barometer study conducted in 2010 showed that 78% of Internet users study product information on websites before making a purchase. The Internet also facilitates the emergence of new platforms for advertising, such as social networks, the influence and role of which in modern society is already difficult to underestimate, and the presence of companies in social media is becoming an integral part of their marketing strategy. The expansion of advertising opportunities thanks to the Internet leads to the emergence of new formats and methods of advertising aimed at the target audience. At the same time, the growing number of advertising formats and spaces requires new methods for assessing the real visibility and effectiveness of advertising. New methods of targeted advertising based on behavioral stereotypes are emerging, which increases the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, and multimedia and video advertising open up opportunities for new consumer relationships with the brand, including in social media.

Seven key approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of online advertising

The main task is to monitor the effectiveness of online advertising.

Numerous metrics exist, but the most widely used metric is the click through rate (CTR). However, this ratio underestimates the real impact of graphic advertising on brand image.

A study by comScore in 2009 shows that the number of people who click on sponsored links and banners online is gradually decreasing. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of Internet users clicking on advertising links and banners decreased by 50%, and in 2009 only 16% of Internet users clicked on advertising links. Moreover, almost all "clicks" are made by a very small part of Internet users (85% of clicks are made by 3% of users). The characteristics of Internet users who click on advertisements are also very specific (young people between the ages of 25 and 44 with an income of less than $40,000 per year), and they do not always match the target audience of advertisers 1 .

The main disadvantage of CTR is that it does not provide information about the impact of an advertisement in terms of potential buyer awareness, ad recall, customer loyalty, or customer intent.

Therefore, special evaluation tools are needed to effectively monitor online advertising.

Below are the main approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of online advertising.

1. Determining the goals of the online communications strategy

To be effective, the Internet must be included in the overall marketing strategy.

There are many indicators that allow for a more specific and often faster evaluation of online advertising. However, a wide range of indicators does not always provide a proper assessment of the effectiveness of a marketing strategy. Some advertisers face the risk of "infobesity". It is more important for advertisers to bring together and compare data across different media (Internet, TV, radio, press, etc.) rather than simply evaluate data using a wide range of metrics. Most advertisers stress the need for integrated scoring and monitoring systems, especially in the following three areas:

• Understanding media reach and repeatability
• Analysis of the impact of advertising campaigns on the brand
• Sales Impact Assessment

More sophisticated advertisers develop strategies that cover all types of media. Thus, an Internet strategy should not be considered in isolation, but in terms of its contribution to the achievement of overall marketing and commercial goals.

Given that the goals may be different, it is necessary to define and implement indicators that correspond to these goals.

We have formulated a rough list of different goals that can be set before an advertising campaign on the Internet.

• Branding: The purpose of branding campaigns is to enhance the various components of a brand such as awareness, image, or buying intent. These campaigns are usually part of a broader media strategy and are most often evaluated in conjunction with other media for their combined effect.
• Work to increase customer loyalty is also carried out within the framework of branding and is aimed at enhancing the consumer's relationship with the brand online, but with the specific goal of interacting directly with the Internet user.
• The growth of offline sales (traditional sales) continues to be the ultimate goal of a brand campaign, with the exception of image advertising. Achieving this goal may be more important for specific campaigns, and therefore the evaluation can be carried out with greater accuracy.
• Growth in online sales: These campaigns are primarily aimed at increasing sales on the brand's website or in partner networks. Such campaigns can also simultaneously pursue the goals of achieving the effectiveness of advertising and branding.
• Targeting is based on a results-based approach, but is not intended to increase online shopping. The aim is to study the range of people who use interactive Internet resources such as games and questionnaires for classification purposes.
• Increasing Reach and Repetition of Messages: As the Internet's penetration grows, it is quickly becoming a medium that allows you to increase the impact of your advertising message. One of the objectives of Internet campaigns may be to expand the scope of the message and ensure repeatability in other media.
• Reducing customer acquisition costs can be another goal of online campaigns. For result-oriented advertisers, it is the main one.

Different indicators can be used to achieve each of the above goals. The following is a basic, but by no means exhaustive, list that provides an idea of ​​the assessment tools available to advertisers. The same indicator in many cases can be used to assess the achievement of different goals.

9 types of indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of online activity

Indicators corresponding to certain goals

2. Assessing the contribution of the Internet to achieving branding goals

In addition to CTR, several studies have assessed the impact that the Internet has on brand awareness, recall, and brand image.

Impact on brand awareness

To determine the impact of advertising on brand awareness, Nielsen analyzed the impact of several campaigns shown on TV and then online. 2 In some sectors, such as the automotive and beverage industries, the Internet was found to deliver twice as much brand recall as TV (see Figure 2). Such high performance of the Internet can be explained, in particular, by the number of advertisements.

Brand Image Improvement

Several studies have also identified the positive impact of the Internet on brand image. For example, an analysis from the 2009 McDonalds display campaign shows that the online advertising campaign increased brand identity by 10%. Similarly, a campaign led by L'Oreal resulted in a 9% increase in brand identity 3 .

Positive impact on buying intention

In a study of image ad campaigns run by four advertisers across multiple industries, Mediametrie NetRatings found that the buying intent of Internet users who viewed these ad campaigns increased by 11% 4 .

Post-testing is still the benchmark method for evaluating the impact of advertising campaigns on a brand. Realizing this, advertisers are increasingly doing ad hoc analysis online. The use of metrics other than CTR can help determine the impact of online advertising on branding.

Figure 2. Brand recall among viewers after watching video ads on TV or online, Nielsen IAG Panel, 2009.

By measuring advertising exposure (measuring exposure), advertisers understand how noticeable graphic ads are and learn the average duration of exposure of Internet users to advertising. This indicator will be increasingly used in the future as assessment methods become standardized.

Measuring interaction is also one of the primary ways to analyze the impact of a video or multimedia advertising campaign on a brand.

Several studies have proven a strong link between interaction and impact on brand reputation and image.

The following measures of duration and frequency were developed to evaluate the interaction:

• The Dwell rate measures the percentage of Internet users who interact with a particular banner (move the cursor to the banner, but do not click on it).
• Interaction time - Dwell time reflects the average time that users interact with an ad (for example, the time it takes to watch a video or the time it takes for an expanding banner to unfold).
• The interaction indicator (Dwell indicator) is calculated by multiplying the interaction coefficient by the interaction time.

These metrics offer an interesting alternative to CTR, which is often inappropriate for formats that don't necessarily include a call to action. A recent study by Eyeblaster found that the interaction rate for multimedia formats is around 10%, while only 4 out of 1,000 Internet users use standard formats 5 .

Browsing behavior analysis allows you to evaluate the “brand experience” that occurs when viewing online advertising.

Advertisers whose main goal is not to increase sales, but to increase the presence and influence of their brand on the Internet, seek to create a "brand experience". On the Internet, this may be in the form of visits to the brand's website or partner websites, or participation in a specific promotion associated with the brand.

In order to determine the impact of these promotions, we can evaluate the loyalty of the target category of Internet users by determining the impact of the campaign on the user's subsequent browsing behavior.

This can be assessed in several ways:

• Time spent by a user from the target category on the advertiser's or partner's website;
• The number of pages viewed by the user from the target category;
• Actions performed on the site (watching a video, registering for a contest, subscribing to a newsletter, etc.);
• Browsing depth (i.e. the number of pages visited in one link click);
• Activity in social networks.

The potential of the Internet as a branding tool depends on the ability to compare different media in terms of reach and replicability.

Over the past few years, advertising agencies have been using the concept of Web GRP* to make it easier to compare different media.

However, some of the advertisers we interviewed use GRP in developing their media strategy, often in conjunction with a "recognition beta" that assesses the level of awareness for different media within a specific target audience. This data is then used as the basis for determining the level of ad memorized coverage.

* GRP (Gross Rating Point) = the percentage of the target audience reached by the ad multiplied by the average number of repetitions of the message per member of the target audience. The limitations of using this metric for the Internet are mainly due to the quality of the method used to estimate the Internet audience due to the large number of publishers (eg compared to the number of television channels).

3. Evaluate the impact of online campaigns on offline sales

In 2009, 24% of French Internet users surveyed by the IFOP responded that they might be influenced by advertising to purchase a product advertised on the Internet. The same number of respondents said that television advertising could have affected them in a similar way. 6 In 2010, eight out of ten Internet users surveyed by Mediametrie reported having done research online before purchasing a product. 7

An analysis of the purchasing behavior of a group of 185 million consumers conducted by the marketing research institute comScore showed the importance of influencing Internet users with advertising campaigns that increase online sales by an average of 42% and in-store sales by 10% 8 .

The study also showed that the cost of the average basket of goods of an Internet user who saw an ad was 7% more than that of a user who did not see it.

This system makes it possible to evaluate the impact of an advertising campaign in terms of cost, frequency and type of purchases on the example of a specific consumer group. Analysis parameters can be fine-tuned to focus on specific target groups or exposure levels to determine how advertising campaigns should be adjusted in the future. Traditional media have used post-tests to analyze the impact of online campaigns on sales for many years. However, it should be noted that the influence of the Internet has never been tested in isolation, as very few large nationwide advertising campaigns are carried out using the Internet alone.

Econometric models can be used to estimate the impact on Internet and other multimedia advertising sales over time, but they require a fairly long observation period.

Figure 3. Advertising media (advertising media), having the greatest influence on purchase intentions (% of respondents), France, 2009

As a rule, advertisers often use an empirical method of evaluation through cross-validation of sales data against the strategy of advertising campaigns in the media. Many advertisers understand that this method needs improvement, as a number of organizational and technical aspects make it difficult to use these indicators.

4. Finding the most effective combination of the Internet and other media

The use of the media is becoming increasingly interconnected. In 2009, 40% of European consumers watched TV while using the Internet at least once a day. 9 The Internet is considered to be a means of expanding outreach and optimizing results on a fixed budget. A study conducted by Nielsen for a alcoholic beverage manufacturer found that reallocating 10% of the television advertising budget to the Internet would allow an advertiser to increase their audience by 3-4% and increase the final GRP of a campaign by 20.7 points. The combination of different media is an effective branding mechanism, which in some cases can increase brand awareness and commitment by 20%. ten

There are no hard and fast rules for optimal budget allocation. However, a recent study conducted in Germany among the largest advertising networks in partnership with Procter & Gamble examined the question of how much of the advertising campaign budget should be allocated to advertising on the Internet 11 . The study showed that for the same budget, advertising campaigns were more effective when at least 15% of the budget was spent on online advertising. The study also found that graphic ads had almost the same effect as TV ads at a lower budget.

Brand Impact

Figure 4. Number of respondents who said they would use/buy this brand in the future

A quantitative and qualitative study by Thinkbox 12 in 2008 found that the use of online advertising in addition to a TV campaign increased branding scores by an average of 18 points (see Figure 4) and purchase intent by an average of 21 points. .

Panel studies help evaluate the impact of the mix of media used.

Conducting post-tests in consumer groups is one way to evaluate the results of advertising campaigns in various media. By comparing the impact on consumers who have seen ads in one media versus those who have seen them in multiple media, an advertiser can take actions to improve results such as:

• optimization of budget allocation by determining the best combination of media;
• adaptation of the advertising format to the type of message;
• ensuring the consistency of messages transmitted over different channels;
• clearer definition of campaign objectives.

5. Analysis of the result of the impact of Internet advertising on the behavior when viewing information

Advertising influences the behavior of Internet users visiting a brand's website. A 2009 study by the Online Publishers Association found that Internet users spent 50% more time on websites, on average, after viewing image ads 13 . Advertising drives activity on the site, and this activity needs to be assessed across all dimensions: depth, duration of visit, purchases, and registrations. Tracking, which targets both sites and users, is often viewed by advertisers as a way to measure and monitor the effectiveness of ads. Viewing advertisements on the Internet also contributes to the increase in search volume. Graphic advertising leads to a significant increase in the volume of searches associated with an advertising campaign, which indicates the relationship between graphic advertising and search. According to comScore, European consumers are 2.3 times more likely to search online for a brand or brand-related keywords when exposed to an online advertising campaign 14 .

Approaches to the analysis of user behavior when searching and viewing information after an advertising campaign.

When analyzing browsing behavior, there are two approaches to keep in mind: the "site-centric" approach and the "user-centric" approach.

The first comes down to the analysis of information about the number of visits (visits by category, time spent, actions performed) and can be correlated with advertising if Internet traffic occurs as a result of clicking on an advertising banner. A lot of information can be obtained using this approach, but it is not possible to cross-check against previously exposed users. It also does not allow analysis of the impact of advertising on browsing behavior on the site.

The second approach involves the use of identification files stored in the client system (cookies) to analyze the browsing behavior of Internet users after exposure to advertising. This system is installed on the advertiser's ad server and provides an accurate assessment of the impact of advertising based on performance metrics.

Both approaches complement each other and allow advertisers not only to get more information about Internet users, but also to improve sites, bringing them closer to users' expectations.

Multiple exposure analysis and the impact of message repetition are unexplored areas with great potential.

A Millward Brown study of the effectiveness of advertising formats suggests that the higher the number of repetitions, the greater the impact on brand performance 15 .

At the same time, this method is not without its risks. Advertisers must correctly determine the required number of ad impressions to the user so that the ad does not seem intrusive, as this can negatively affect the brand image. To achieve greater effectiveness of an advertising campaign, it is necessary to analyze three aspects:

• The effectiveness of advertising, taking into account the setting to limit the number of ads displayed to one user. This allows advertisers to optimize the number of repetitions of the message and increase the advertising effectiveness rate.
• Analysis of advertising exposure on buyers who have purchased a product or are in the process of purchasing it (requested information or product recommendations but did not complete the ordering process). This allows advertisers to determine the number of repeats that will achieve the highest advertising success rate.
• The impact of repetition on brand awareness and recognition.

6. Evaluation of the impact of targeted advertising (targeting) on ​​all aspects of advertising campaigns

Online advertising allows advertisers to more accurately define their audience and interact with users. There are six main types of targeted advertising (targeting) 16 , the use of which provides advertisers with a complete solution. The table below gives a brief description of each type. The first four types of targeted advertising have been widely used for many years. Behavioral type of targeted advertising and selection of the target audience based on user actions are also beginning to be used more and more often, especially in e-commerce.

Behavioral targeted advertising is actively used to increase the advertising effectiveness rate. The use of targeted behavioral advertising is rapidly gaining momentum. According to a study conducted by eMarketer, over the next five years, its growth rate in the US will increase by 23% per year 17 . When determining the target audience based on user actions on the Yahoo! we also analyzed the impact of targeted behavioral advertising within the Dell advertising campaign. From the results of the analysis, it follows that the effectiveness of post-click and post-view ads increased by 8.5% and 6.5%, respectively, when targeted ads were shown to Internet users (see Figure 5).

Figure 5. Impact of targeted advertising on performance indicators. Dell/Yahoo Advertising Campaign (Comparison Base: 100)

Although the main purpose of behavioral targeted advertising is to increase the effectiveness of advertising, it also has a positive effect on branding. To assess the impact of targeted behavioral advertising on brand awareness and brand awareness, Wimderloop analyzed the results of a family car advertising campaign. The results of the study showed that, despite the fact that the target audience of this advertisement is families, it had little effect on the brand image and awareness in this target group, while the level of brand awareness in the high-tech target group increased twice. The use of behavioral targeted advertising allows you to increase the effectiveness of their advertising campaign by identifying the most targeted audience. Over time, behavioral analysis will allow advertisers to pinpoint the advertising preferences of different segments of the population and offer them useful decision-making tools.

Determining the target audience based on user actions is the most effective way to sell online.