So, what is CPM Advertising?
Three Benefits of using CPM Advertising
Viewable impressions – Google recently made a change to their algorithm to ensure that 100% of their impressions for CPM ads are viewable. A few years ago, this was not the case. Many advertisers left Google, because of the fact that so many of their ads were on the page, but not in view of the user.
However, Brad Bender from Google stated, “I’m pleased to announce that GDN is moving to 100% viewable. We’re going to migrate all of the CPMs in the system to viewable CPMs. All advertisers will be able to see viewable metrics so they can make better decisions.”
According to research, 56% of online display ads are not viewable. As you can imagine this causes a lot of problems for Google advertisers. If 50% of the ad money you pay for is not even seen by prospects, your conversion rate does not stand a chance.
That lines up with a case study done by Luna Metrics last year. They found that their conversions on Active Views was a lot higher, and in some cases the comparison between active and regular impressions was greater than two to one.
This could be a game changer for businesses that use CPM ads now. Because many companies still shy away from them, due to past problems with active impressions there could be easy pickings at the moment.
Enhanced Audience Insights– Furthermore, Google has been working on improving their audience insights. One of the biggest reasons advertisers use CPM ads is to extend the reach of their marketing budget.
Therefore, it makes sense that Google enhance their audience insights as well. Google tweaked their analytics to improve the demographic, interests, location, and device usage information they provide to advertisers.
Now you can use this information to track larger ad audiences with a good CPM campaign. Like we mentioned before, CPM ads can be cheaper ways of reaching a larger audience. With General Display ads are hovering around $1.90, it provides a lot of potential to reach prospective clients.
These ads become a test to ensure that the targeted ads hit the mark with prospects. At the same time, you still have the opportunity to connect with prospects.
However, this only works well when it works in tandem with CPC ads. After you have a targeted audience in mind, you can convert them with targeted CPC ads.
Brand Awareness– The traditional reason Google mentioned that advertisers use CPM is for brand awareness. While brand awareness in the traditional sense is close to useless, it can help in one specific regard.
Going off the previous point of using CPM as a test for CPC is similar to using retargeted ads to bring in more business.
That is because trust in the brand is important when someone buys. That happens over time. Therefore, having an initial campaign where you use multiple CPM ads as a test to increase brand awareness and determine the highest CTR for ads could be an invaluable step in building long-term value.
One additional note here when running CPM ads. Make sure you cap the number of times a viewer can see your ad in a day. The idea is to spread awareness, not annoy and bully someone into buying your products. Optimising recency & frequency to the optimum levels is a critical component in conversion rate optimisation.
Plus, studies have shown that repeated views in one day by a user tend to get ignored. That is why you want to cap the number of words they see in order to ensure you get the highest click-through-ration (CTR) possible.
Otherwise, if you do not your ad budget could be wasted on indecisive people visiting a page more than once.
Final Thoughts
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