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:

1. Targeting customers based on precise geographic location
2. Targeting customers who have explicitly expressed interest in stores like your yours
3. Retargeting “likely customers” who have already browsed your store once before

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.

Contact Ad360 for a free demo today! 

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.

Contact Ad360 for a free demo today!  

A step-by-step guide to using the Creative Studio to immediately get creatives from scratch in Ad360 App for Shopify.

1. Go the Creatives. tab

Firstly, click on the “Creatives” link on the navigation panel to go to the Creatives page. There, click on the “Creative Studio” button to access the Creatives Studio.

2. Creative Studio Page.

On this page, you will see banners that are automatically generated by Ad360, based on your product information in your Shopify store. You can choose a Shopify collection of products so that multiple products are automatically included in the dynamic banner.

• They will include: a product image, the product title, price and comparaison price (if you have a sale on the item in your store).

• You will have banners created in multiple formats and sizes. If you select the template you prefer, all the formats in the template will automatically be saved when you click the “create” button at the bottom of the screen.
  
• The banners are dynamic, meaning that if you change a product’s name, image or price, the advertising banners will automatically be updated. Plus the banner feature multiple products and will show the right one to each user based on their interest to maximize the sales opportunities.
  
  

3. Personalize your Banners.

After choosing a product collection, you choose the template (e.g. with or without logo), and multiple sizes are automatically generated with your products info.

You can customize background and text colors using the buttons in the middle of the screen.

• You can change the display URL in the text box, which is shown at the bottom of your creative.

•  This will not affect where the users go when they click on your product, they will still be automatically redirected to the product page within your shop, but it will simply display your website address on the creative.
  
• Finally, you can change the logo address which will be used for the templates containing a logo.
  

4. Save your template.

Click the “Create” button to save the templates and all formats at once. All sizes will be added to your Creatives library and can be easily added to any of your Line Items.

This article continues Frank’s story, after the Part 2 in which Frank discovered ads across the web and mobile to reach more interested customers.

While Frank had moved his Shopify store online during the pandemic, he had spent years building a grassroots local business. All the worldwide web stuff was cool… but he felt he had last connection to the streets he used to market on.

Local Geotargeting changed that. Now, Frank could focus ads on folks specifically in his region.

This feature of Ad360 is what brought Frank’s marketing efforts full circle. Instead of burning money on ads that were shown to people halfway around the world – who could care less – Frank was able to place ads precisely on individuals closest to his locale. Suddenly, old customers he hadn’t heard from since before the pandemic began trickling back in!  

In fact, the local groundswell was so big that Frank was able to organize a local event by his old brick-and-mortar location, celebrating his reconnecting with the neighborhood. Ad360 had helped take Frank’s Shopify store across the web, but its geotagging feature had brought his marketing efforts right back home: full circle 😊  

Using the “hyperlocal” function on Ad360, Frank was able to go beyond targeting his city – he highlighted his exact neighborhood to maximize his chances of new customers and new sales. The level of specificity made Frank as visible to his neighborhood as any major Fortune 500 company: he didn’t have to burn money placing ads all over. 

Every ad focused on the couple of local streets that held his most likely customers. As the bevy of data shared from Shopify increased, Frank became a bit of a local celebrity because his customers saw his ads as much as Walmart or Amazon. When it came to his locale, Ad360’s hyperlocal targeting had made Frank’s Shopify store more visible than the largest companies on the web. Instead of wasting money with unfocused ads across the region, Ad360’s hyperlocal tech helped Frank thrive in his neighborhood niche!

Frank had gone from considering bankruptcy, at the start of the pandemic, to advertising across all social media, mobile apps, and webpages seamlessly. The whole experience became surreal as visitor traffic and customer engagement reached a groundswell of support. Frank was officially back in business, thriving off the visibility and geotargeted grassroots support.

If you want to expand your Shopify store’s online reach while strengthening your connection to your local customer base, try Ad360’s free demo today!