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Advertising costs: What every business should know



Businesses in Africa (and elsewhere) now spend most of their marketing budget with American media giants.
The potential is incredible, but challenges are often overlooked. It is often felt that this comes at a dear cost to traditional local publishers, with the exception of those who partner with giant US firms. Perhaps this is one area where the Russian and Chinese governments managed to protect local firms. However, that is another contentious geopolitical discussion we will not venture into today.
Many years ago, we were concerned with audit statistics for newspapers – as businesses used to buy up a lot of newspaper inventory. Well – not surprising, if someone got paid to hand out 50 000 of our leaflets, we also made sure they did not dump 40 000 in the bin after delivering the first 10 000. One might think that the loss of a few thousand leaflets was only a few dollars – but today, invalid and accidental clicks, leaves a multi-billion dollar black hole for companies around the world – African being no exception!
Remember spying on the leaf litter to see if he delivered leaflets correctly? Fortunately, today, we have analytic systems in place that can help chief marketing officers track the validity of the advertising they bought. The leaflets are Mark Zukerberg, Satya Nadella, and Sundar Pichai – they are in charge of the CEOs in charge of the largest media companies in the world.
After consulting with various companies and ad networks, I’d like to share some insight on the things to watch when auditing your advertising and the steps to take to make necessary adjustments:

Auditing starts with knowing the right metrics:

Quite simply, anyone versed in the use of business analytics and digital advertising will have the tools at their fingertips to measure metrics such as “bounce rate” and “time per page” – as well as to segment these metrics by device category (mobile, desktop, tablet). Further segmentation then by traffic type (organic VS paid traffic) will reveal any “funny” behavior. By “funny be a behavior– we mean, for example, that if you notice paid mobile visitors all to bounce off your site, but organic mobile visitors act remain on the site, we’ve established cause for concern. On the other hand, if both types behave the same, you should likely focus on improving your site.
Bear in mind that the standard line used by engineers to dismiss a complaint is to tell the advertiser to fix the user experience on their site. It is, therefore, useful to provide analytic reports contrasting paid with organic visitors and pointing out the facts.

Steps to take in fixing inventory issues:

If you ascertained that the traffic quality is problematic since behavior from paid traffic behaves differently than other segments, these are generally the steps a business should take:
  1. Report the issue to the quality assurance team of the advertising platform. State clearly that user experience was already analyzed – and as per the attached reports, highlight where PPC traffic was invalid or possibly accidental.
  2. At this point, you’d like to request a refund for the proportion of traffic that was invalid, and you’re providing the ad network with a chance to act fairly.
  3. Should you find that your case with all its merit is dismissed, the next step is to notify your card provider or Paypal of inappropriate charges to your account and escalate this to a formal claim. You’d also notify local regulators so that they can investigate the matter just as they would do in the case of newspapers and publishing businesses.
In many cases, you will find that ad networks, in particular, Google, behave in a very reasonable way, owning up to the challenge presented by digital advertising. But you will also find other networks, which I will not mention by name, who might say: “…well clients pay us for a service, which is to use our platform, regardless of the results…” or “…our engineers checked and could not identify any problems, despite your analytics report…”

Conclusion:

  • Digital advertising is exciting as it can help us to quickly move beyond national borders or focus on only our most valuable clients. The challenge for every business is making sure that these foreign giants who net substantial revenues in your country treat your business fairly.
  • If your site has a good user experience: Never let an ad network pass the responsibility for problem-solving onto you as the advertiser – let them make use of their QA teams and carry out your audits.
  • Businesses are encouraged to seek impartial advice and reading material pertaining to this subject – this will help you break away from “group thinking,” to get unique results and returns on investment.
This is an exciting and fast-moving industry. Stay tuned for more updates or help us by contributing your story!
Ghostwriter of the article. Published in thesouthafrican.com. [Text altered]. 

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