During the pandemic, Frank had accomplished what all Shopify owners strive for: his store had not only survived these trying times, sales had quadrupled without spending a cent more on advertising. Frank was a traditional MBA major, but it was discouraging to see how “cutting-edge” online marketing strategies moved a “mile a minute.” By partnering with Ad360, Frank was convinced he could wrap his head around the brave new world of online promotion.
Frank started by streamlining all his ad campaigns to Ad360’s central dashboard. From there, automated software analyzed his store’s data, optimizing exactly where and when to best his online ads for maximum sales returns. In doing so, Frank was no longer spending precious dollars on wasted ad space.
Even more, Frank broadened his Shopify store’s visibility across all web, mobile apps, search engines, and social media platforms. Frank’s favorite strategy was investing in digital video ads that brought his products to the TV, concentrating on his neighborhood’s most popular video apps. When his neighbors sat down to Netflix and chill, guess whose ads popped up? Ol’ Frank! He had no idea there was such a cost-effective way to expand his promotional efforts onto the big screen.
With “hyperlocal” ad targeting features at his disposal, Frank never wasted money blasting ads out into the Internet ether. He highlighted the exact neighborhoods he wanted his ads to reach, increasing their efficiency by concentrating on “likely” customers with surgical precision.
Neighbors began commenting on seeing his ads flash across their computers, phones, and flatscreens, flattering him with compliments like, “Hey, did you design that banner yourself? It looked legit as Amazon’s, but you’re all local!” Frank would grin and explain he had found a “smart marketing” service that automatically generated his banners – no graphic designer or technical expertise needed.
After checking out the various data visualizations generated from his store, Frank saw his store operations from multiple perspectives, catering directly to his niche audience. To celebrate his life-changing boost in sales, Frank threw a COVID-safe Bbq block party… everyone left with a full tummy and coupon code for checkout at his Shopify store 😉
By then, the neighborhood considered Frank a wily marketing guru, asking him questions like, “Are Super Bowl ads worth the money?” Frank would tilt his head to the sky, and begin speaking fondly about the “CPM efficiency” and “digital ad viral potential” of the ad spots. Over the course of the pandemic, Frank went from a brick-and-mortar mentality to the savviest online marketer on the block.
And it was only up from there – congratulations, Mr. Frank!
If you want to realize your Shopify store’s full potential, reach out to Ad360 for a free demo today – we cannot wait to make you the next Shopify success story. Maybe you’ll become the talk of the town, too, just like Frank 😊
How can Smaller Businesses Achieve the Same Value for Their Ads?
For most business owners, talking about a $6.5 million Super Bowl advertisement may seem like a moot point. Few companies, even large ones, are willing to dole out that kind of cash for a single 30-second ad spot. However, there are ways online to achieve even better CPM, regardless of the size of your business. To get the highest-value CPM, business owners online need to streamline whom they reach: it simply is cost-ineffective to blast out ads randomly across the web. There are three key traits business owners can target to raise the value of their ad dollars spent:
By showing ads to these highly targeted groups of customers online, even local business owners can achieve a similar CPM on their ad dollars as major brands do at the Super Bowl – perhaps even better!!
Digital Video Ads: The Most Cost-efficient Way for Small Businesses to be Seen on TV
Traditional business owners may be unaware that they can run these highly targeted ads on smart TV apps – welcome to the big screen!! When picturing TV promotions, most business owners probably think of local car salesmen running 30-second spots on cable.
Now, businesses can run remarkably efficient ads on Smart TV apps, like Netflix, Hulu, Roku, and so forth. That technology really exists! Your products can be seen on the family’s big screen when folks settle in to Netflix and chill. In fact, with the technology available to target such specific groups of customers, digital video ads are arguably the most cost-effective ad formats available to business owners today.
For example, imagine you are a local shop owner, and so you only want to pay for ad space that reaches your neighborhood – literally a couple of blocks. Furthermore, within that neighborhood, you only want your digital smart ad to be seen by those who have expressed interest in products like yours, through social media or other shared information. If you were, say, a medical apparel company, you could target local families with individuals working in the medical field – and not waste a cent more on anyone else. That is the secret to making digital video ads so cost-effective. The surgical precision on where and when to spend your ad dollars is made so much more efficient with this “smart ad” marketing strategy.
We recorded a video to explain in more details how this is possible:
These “hypertargeting” promotional tools save business owners from shooting blanks with their ad spots. That is why we at Ad360 can claim that our marketing sales apps could make your advertisements 10x more efficient. Instead of spending money showing ads to people who will quickly ignore and scroll past, all your resources are concentrated on the very specific groups of customers very likely to take an interest in your Shopify store!
Having trouble figuring out how exactly you’d do that? Contact Ad360 for a free demo and 24/7 support today. Ad360 is a fully automated promotional platform that streamlines all your ad campaigns to one place. We can set up your highly targeted ad campaigns, find the best customers… and then you can brag not only about knowing the CPM of Super Bowl ads next year. You can celebrate sales of your Shopify store multiplying several times over – that’s what we call a game-changer.
Impress Your Friends at the Super Bowl: A Fun Breakdown of Why Insanely Expensive Super Bowl Ads are Worth it.
Life-Changing Money for You = 30 Second Super Bowl Ad for Brands
Think of all the things you could do with $6.5 million cash today. Buy a home, maybe 2. Definitely a few cars. Hell, I’d go for a boat. That kind of money would be not just life-changing, but would bring a new meaning to the phrase “generational wealth” for your family.
… That’s what companies spend for a 30 second Super Bowl ad. Money that would change your entire life is blown in 30 seconds for some silly commercial.
The question is, is that marketing exposure worth it for brands? Is ad space on the Super Bowl really that likely to drive traffic to their stores? Check out this fun, simple breakdown that makes sense of why brands would be willing to throw so much money for a 30-second spotlight on Super Bowl Sunday!
Think in Terms of “Cost per 1,000 Viewers”
In the marketing world, promotional efforts are evaluated based on cost “per 1,000 viewers” – expressed in the acronym CPM. (Actually CPV, but we’ll get back to the difference between CPM and CPV in another article).
Now, you have to remember, the Super Bowl is the most-watched event of the year in the largest market in the world – the USA.
$6.5 million for a 30-second ad may sound ludicrous at first, but consider the fact that 117 million people watch the Super Bowl. That is a lot of eyeballs on your product.
To calculate CPM on this, follow the simple math below:
$6,500,000/117,000,000 people = $0.055 so just about ~5 cents a person
$0.055*1,000 viewers = $55 spent for 1,000 viewers of your ad
When you break it down like that, the value of super bowl ads starts to make a little more sense… but still. The sheer scale of this money is hard to wrap your head around. Furthermore, you have to consider reruns and “viral moments” on social media, bringing further exposure to the brand message. Imagine your friend makes some silly meme on a commercial, and it gets viewed millions of times… that value of that ad just shot up exponentially.
Thus, when factoring in reruns and the viral nature of social media, we can guesstimate that the CPM of a super bowl is probably 2-3 times lower: maybe around $20-22 for 1,000 viewers.
Want more details on how we got to the result, here is a YouTube video we recorded on this topic:
…Only $20 to reach 1,000 likely buyers? Now the Super Bowl ads are starting to make a LOT of sense. And hey, bring this up at your next Super Bowl watch party, and you’ll definitely sound like the smartest kid in class 😉
How can Smaller Businesses Achieve the Same Value for Their Ads?
For most business owners, this may seem like a moot point. Few companies, even large ones, are willing to dole out that kind of cash for a single 30-second ad spot. However, there are ways online to achieve even better CPM, regardless of the size of your business.
If you’d like to know more, stay tuned for tomorrow’s article. We’ll explain some alternatives for small business owners to run much cheaper but potentially more effective ads.
Do you want to know more today about running clever ads for a fraction of the cost of Super Bowl ads? Contact Ad360 for a free demo and 24/7 support today. Ad360 is a fully automated promotional platform that streamlines all your ad campaigns to one place. We can set up your highly targeted ad campaigns, find the best customers… and then you can brag not only about knowing the CPM of Super Bowl ads next year. You can celebrate sales of your Shopify store multiplying several times over – that’s what we call a game-changer.
If you’ve been following the “Odyssey of Frank’s Shopify Store” with Ad360, you know Frank went from a dated brick-and-mortar salesman to selling online during the pandemic.
He could even implement savant geolocation targeting and other advanced advertising features thanks to Ad360. His ads no longer went unnoticed in Google and Facebook.
Moreover, he now had access to millions of websites and mobile apps to advertise on.
However, there is a final promotional piece to the puzzle missing here…
Frank and many Shopify store owners getting started with digital advertising face this roadblock.
Sleek, professional, truly eye-catching ad banners.
Who generates them?
Frank read online that most Shopify store owners in his position relied on some third-party app, no matter what they approach. Some downloaded Canva online to paste together a basic ad (which they had to remake over and over), while others hired an Adobe pro illustrator… for hundreds of dollars per banner. Oof.
Frank majored in business management – not graphic design…
Yet, here, he felt the success of his Shopify store depended on having a variety of ad banners to deploy across the web. Being a one-man-show, Frank already handled all the daily responsibilities of keeping his Shopify store running and his social media at a “base engagement” level. Adding on the burden of pumping out creative ad banners gave the guy a headache. He made one while rushing, and within 30 minutes, his buddy reached out: “Dude, you know that Shopify store ad you just posted on Instagram? It’s off-center dude. It looks like you were drunk when you made it. Just a head’s up.”
Before slamming his head on the desk in frustration, Frank reached out to Ad360’s 24/7 support. They reminded him their software has one of the most powerful creative generator tools in the industry…
Ad360’s creative ad banner feature generates 15 distinct ads of different shapes, colors, and sizes. Even better, the pictures and pricing were automatically extracted from his Shopify store data.
The guy didn’t have to lift a finger – all these creative, professional-standard ads generated instantly from Ad360’s suite of features.
Frank no longer felt “washed out” or limited testing different Shopify store ads on the web. Some were designed for “above-the-fold” viewing, some for “below-the-fold” placements, and others for almost any ad inventory shape you can think of.
Even better, Frank found it super simple to keep track of which of these ads performed the best – Ad360 kept that data organized on his Shopify store dashboard. Plus, Ad36 automatically focused on the ads bringing the most visitors and buyers to Frank’s website.
Are you spending hours creating your own ads, only to throw them up and get a less-than-stellar return on ad spending (ROAS)? Please reach out, and try our free demo of Ad360 today for access to our “instantaneous ad generation tool.”
Never again will you waste your precious hours centering a single ad on Canva or Adobe: you’ll get 15 original designs with the snap of a finger.
All powered by Ad360’s suite of services – try our free demo today to see if it can boost your sales and change your life!
A step-by-step guide to starting a line item from scratch in Ad360 App for Shopify
A Line Item contains settings allowing Ad360 to know which audiences to target (e.g. focusing on specific geolocations) and which creative asset to show them.
1. Select your Campaign
Firstly, you need to select the Campaign under which you want the line item to be created. To do this, go to the campaign section and you will see a list of your campaigns.
2. Add Line Item
You can add a line item from the campaign page, or directly from the “Add a Line Item” button.
3. Select a Line Item type
If you click the “Add a Line Item” button you are given the following options: Menadex, Google Ads or Facebook.
Google Ads and Facebook allow you to import into Ad360 advertising campaigns even if they run on the Google Ads or Facebook platforms, so that you can manage all your ads in one place.
Menadex is our own media offering, enabling your ads to run on millions of independent websites and mobile apps. More details below:
➔ Menadex line item option.
When you have clicked onto the “Menadex” option, you will be redirected to the Menadex line item creation page. Here you can add the name for your line item and enter a specific budget.
● You can choose a “Smart Collection” from your store to use for the line item.
4. Choose an Option For Targeting
This determines where, and how many ads are going to be seen by users on theweb.
The different tabs can be accessed by clicking on the cards.
5. Option: Geotargeting
Geotargeting allows you to select specific places where your ads will be seen:
● You can select an entire country for example: the United Kingdom.
● You can also select specific cities for example: Berlin, Germany and Paris, France.
● Additionally, you can choose specific types of places, such as an airport, for example: JFK Airport. You can add as many places and types of places as you require for your ad to be displayed to web users.
6. Option: Hyperlocal Tab
Secondly, you can add an area in the Hyperlocal tab, this will allow you to draw a specific zone on the map for your ad to be seen.
For example: San Francisco, over the Pacific Heights neighbourhood. – Your ads will only be seen in this area, and in the locations, you have selected in the Geotargeting tab.
7. Option: Devices
In Devices you can even select which devices your ad will be displayed on, by default, all devices are selected, however you can select only one or two if you prefer.
The options are: Desktop, Mobile, Tablet.
8. Option: Creatives
Finally, you can decide which ad banners or videos to show users: if you have creatives, you can upload them by using the “Upload Creative” button.
You can add standard banner display creatives, as per the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) specifications.
Choose a size in the list which matches your creative, or a video in one of the given aspect ratios.
If you already have creatives uploaded, you can associate them from your library, and you can link using the “Associate Creatives” button.
If you do not have any creative assets, don’t worry because you can create these in the Creatives Studio.