Thane Tennison

Banner Ad Retargeting —  it’s the hottest buzz word for online marketers and a growing trend amongst many players in the online space, but what exactly is it and how does it work?

Imagine spending your marketing dollars by only getting in front of people who have some knowledge of your brand. Banner Ad Retargeting does just that. Simply put, it allows you to concentrate and maximize all of your efforts on your current pool of consumers. This process is quick and painless, involving only one short line of code on your website. When a user visits your site, that single line of code drops a cookie onto the user’s computer which triggers an alert for the Retargeting campaign to activate. Once they begin visiting other websites, your banner ads will follow them across the internet, serving as constant reinforcement for your brand and a means for them to return to your site. For the building industry,  BDX has created the builder BeBack program solely meant to retarget YOUR traffic in order to increase lead conversion for your home-properties.

“Just how many websites will our Retargeting campaign run on?”

This is the single most common question I receive from our clients regarding BeBack. My answer to this question is remarkably simple: “How big is the Internet?” Without fail, the follow up question is, “and just how can I be sure that my banners will hit our users on relevant sites?” The answer to this question is just as simple. We will only retarget users on sites that they themselves visit, so in a way, users are ONLY shown banners on sites that are relevant to their interests and lifestyle. What’s fascinating is that by filtering through the thousands of domains where our ads have run I’ve noticed that the interest of one user is typically very similar to all of the others. By doing this it’s easy to paint a very robust picture of the online foot-print a typical home-shopper leaves across cyberspace.

For our own marketing efforts, NewHome Source.com runs several hundreds of thousands of impressions each month across a little more than 26,000 unique domains. Many of these impressions appear on major, nationally recognized websites like careerbuilder.com, toysrus.com, homes.com, facebook.com, eonline.com, petfinder.com, Zillow.com, and webMD.com. By looking at just these domain names I can almost see this person in my head. I can tell that our he/she is more than likely female, late 20’s to mid 30’s, has young children, and is very career driven. For our builders, can you imagine a more qualified home-shopper that you’d like to reach?

Filtering through these domains has given us additional insight into not only who the shopper is, but where they’re shopping and how often. For the last two months, roughly 25% of all of our view thru conversions have come as a result of banners located on other real-estate sites. This tells me two things. First, consumers in this phase of the purchasing process are shopping multiple websites; gathering data and considering all of their options. For advertisers, having a broad reach across these sites is essential to stay top of mind and drive awareness. This is one of the main reasons we launched the Builder Vertical Ad Network – to help builders maximize reach though a single point of contact with guaranteed results.

Second, advertisers should consider looking beyond just real estate websites when reaching their customers. If they didn’t, advertisers run the risk of ignoring potentially all conversion traffic from other sites (75% in our case). That’s the benefit of Be Back; it allows marketers to target the audience and not the website. This allows for a more efficient media spend while reaching your most valuable prospects especially as their online search takes them through sites ranging in scope from small builder websites to massive real estate search engines.

Below are a few interesting websites where you probably wouldn’t do a direct media buy, but have resulted in a click to lead conversion with BeBack. What’s even more interesting is that many times the ad will redirect to an area that has nothing to do with the market from which they shopped. For example the conversion off of OhioRunner.com came from a Philadelphia banner, meaning that consumer was likely looking for a home in Pennsylvania while still living in Ohio.

           

 

 

 

 

For more information about this blog post or BDX BeBack retargeting, contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager or contact your local  Representative.

If you’ve done any type of online display advertising you’ve probably heard quite a bit about view thru and attribution beyond the click. TV, Radio, and billboards have all based their success on some level of view thru. Meaning, because a consumer was exposed to your ad, your message is top-of mind and they are more likely to take action. And it’s true, advertising does work. I’ve seen it over and over again.

However, when dealing with the online space simply being ‘top-of mind’ is not enough.  It’s easy to see that exposure and visibility have value but this can be difficult to quantify with real metrics. The real value comes in the breadth of analytics and measurement that are available to you, including tracking click activity and justifying ROI.   These forms of measurement allow you to track consumer engagement and optimize accordingly.

With more sophisticated ad tracking software, advertisers now have the ability to monitor View Thru and attribute value. A View Thru measure is made when a cookie is dropped on a consumer’s computer after being exposed to an ad. The cookie correlates with a corresponding cookie on the advertiser’s website and typically a ‘thank you’ page after conversion. By comparing the interaction between the two cookies, advertisers can now attribute exposure and measure activity beyond the click.

For a marketer the results can be fascinating, but I’d caution that they can also be misleading.  Over the past several years we’ve worked with several ad networks who espouse the overwhelming benefits of view thru and it’s easy to see why.  On average I’d say you could attribute a 5-10X lift in lead conversion from view thru compared to a traditional click.  Who wouldn’t be excited about going from $100/lead to $10?

However, it’s important to consider other factors when gauging success. For example, is simply seeing the ad what drove the user back, or would they probably have returned anyway?  Measuring lift in repeat traffic would be a better indicator of View Thru than just ‘exposure’.

We’ve also seen about 40% of the View Thru attribution occur the same day as the last impression served. That’s a strong argument for View Thru especially when the consumer had the ability to click the ad just moments before. To me, this is one of the most compelling cases for view thru but when I look deeper and consider the frequency of actual banner impressions served I become more skeptical. I find my reporting will attribute View Thru conversion to users that were exposed to 1-2 ads. I would never gauge success from one TV spot, so why would I do it with a banner?  In order to truly be top of mind with a consumer, the frequency of an ad needs to be much higher to truly leave a lasting ‘impression’.

We continue to test the value of View Thru but I haven’t found a formula that will satisfy my skepticism. We’re currently conducting an A-B test in select markets to gauge incremental lift and are adjusting flight terms to measure effects on View Thru and other attributions. More details on those findings to come.

If you’ve struggled to attribute value to View Thru I’d love to hear more about your findings and methodologies. I’m also curious to see what value you place on those conversions attributed to ‘View Thru’.

For more information about this blog post or display advertising with BDX, contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager or contact your local Sales Representative.

Click to download the BDX Advertising Flip Book.

Recently I was in Phoenix participating in training on Realtor.com. While most of the meeting focused on listing data, reporting and managing accounts I was really impressed with the Featured Home solution. I’m often asked, “What’s the value of a featured home? And what type of traffic should I expect?”   Those are understandable questions but can be difficult to answer with all of the different market conditions that can affect traffic to a listing. As a result, I wanted to share some of the highlights and why I’m such a fan of this product.

OVERVIEW
First, Featured Homes are ad positions prominently displayed at the top of the Search Result pages on Realtor.com.  These placements display ‘Featured’ listings and provide significantly more exposure than the standard listings.  There are 8 available placements for each zip code and an advertiser can select to have all homes or a single home displayed. In addition to the listing, Featured Homes also allow the inclusion of a headline like “New Home” and for builders with Realtor.com Enhanced Listings they also receive builder branding with a prominent logo.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN
During our training I learned that the Featured Homes dynamically determines an advertisers’ most relevant listing and matches that to the consumer’s search. I think this has huge benefits for builders with multiple listings and range of community prices.  If you have 50 listings on the MLS but maybe only 5 match the consumer’s query of price, location, bed, bath, wouldn’t you want to display those 5 homes first?

REACH & VISIBILITY
Advertisers also have the ability to purchase neighboring zip codes where their listings may not naturally display. For example, if your community feeds into a popular high school that’s in a neighboring zip code Featured Homes is the only way to provide that visibility for your listings.

In markets with a large populations of relo, it makes sense to purchase city center zip codes since it’s fair to assume those consumer may not be as familiar with the suburbs and surrounding neighborhoods.

TRAFFIC
Featured Homes is a great traffic driver to the builder’s listings and a great way to capture home shoppers who may not have considered new construction.   I’ve run reports for builders across the country and on average Featured Homes represent a 30% incremental lift in traffic to their listings.  The chart below is an example of some of the different reports we’ve seen for homebuilders.  For the builder in Minnesota you can see visits to their LDP (Listing Detail Pages) were 1,426 this month 334 (23%) of those visits came from click originating from Featured Homes.  And with Featured Home placements as low as $11/mo. a 30% lift in prospective homebuyers is a tremendous value.

AFFORDABILITY
Rates are based on a tiered pricing and for many zips is as low as $11/mo.  BDX offers reporting that identifies all zips and rates for where a builder has listings. In many instance we’ve found a builder can cover a majority of their listings by targeting just the most affordable markets. Ask us for a complete report on your MLS listings to determine which zip codes will drive the most value for your budget.  Many builder use the report to target zip codes with the greatest reach or for hyper targeted advertising to move spec inventory.

FEATURED HOMES AND ENHANCED LISTINGS
As much as I’ve become and advocate for Featured Homes I wouldn’t recommend this product for non- enhanced listings.  Advertisers simply won’t receive the same value since you’re effectively driving incremental consumers to your listings and they’re not able to fully engage with your brand or submit a lead.  Contact me or your local sales representative to see if your MLS Listings are enhanced on Realtor.com.

For more information regarding Featured Homes or other Advertising Products contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager for BDX or contact your local Sales Representative.

Click to download the BDX Advertising Flip Book.

It’s a common question and I’m sure there are some people that would say, “All of them!”  Just like with print advertising, too few impressions won’t give you the impact you need. One business card ad in your local paper won’t give you the same bang as a full page spread.  Conversely too many impressions can be overkill. Do you really need a full spread, every month to be noticed and convey your message? Probably not.
At BDX we won’t sell a builder more than 30% Share of Voice (SOV) or 30% of total impressions per market. At that level a builder is guaranteed to appear on every page above and below the fold and from the data we’ve seen even at this volume campaigns still perform well. Meaning that performance at 15% is the same as at 30% but with just fewer clicks…

Shortening the Ad Window To Improve Performance

However, we have seen performance suffer on campaigns with too small a SOV if not properly managed. For the BDX that means shortening the window on our smaller buys. We’ve found that we can drive more clicks for our smaller buys by reducing the advertising window to  15-20 days instead of a full 30. It equates to more impressions per user and stronger performance overall.

The Impact of Good Creative

I’ve consistently seen that creative is the strongest driver of performance and even a small campaign can perform well. Once you’ve established the right site and the right message it’s easy to scale.

In Summary – Focus On Frequency

With the right site, high frequency appears to be the right move. We’ve seen a similar trend in our retargeting and the performance of our VAN advertisers (who advertise across a network of vetted real estate websites).  Our retargeting audience is self-qualified and we’ve seen high frequency against narrow windows have very positive results. Builder advertisers on the VAN are successful because in addition to a large SOV these ads reinforce the builder’s listings on those websites which also improves conversion.

For me when testing new sites I think you can learn a lot in a one month flight and a strong SOV. In the end you’ll know where you stand or if you need to tweak your message.  I recently heard of a builder who will cut the number of websites they advertise on by 70% in 2012 choosing to focus on those few that drive the greatest value.

If you have questions about marketing strategies or advertising with BDX contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager for the BDX Network.

Almost every day I receive a phone call from a potential home buyer looking for information on a new home they found while shopping on Realtor.com.

This morning it was a man looking for a home in Wesley Chapel, FL. Yesterday it was a woman interested in a home outside of Philadelphia. I find this surprising because the only way the consumer can find my phone number is by leaving the listing and selecting the Contact link for corporate information.  I know they’d prefer to call the broker but they can’t find the broker’s phone number, email address or website. These potential home buyers are forced to find another solution and I can hear the frustration in their voice when they finally end up talking to me.
Working in an industry that is always trying to maximize site conversion and improve lead performance, I find this surprising. How many customers do you know who will take the extra steps to find an office phone number?  Most will simply leave and move on to another home that’s more accessible.  Those who continue to search and ultimately call the wrong place are probably the very consumers that the builder/broker really wants to reach. Clearly, they’re motivated and looking for information.  It makes me think of all the homes that don’t get sold because we make it hard for the consumer to connect with us.

Realtor.com offers builders and brokers a product to remedy this. Their Company Showcase listing is the easiest way for a builder to enhance their listing and drive more meaningful activity to their onsite sales agents. It’s an essential and affordable solution for anyone listing a home on the MLS.

Listings that are “Showcased” have a number of benefits over standard listings. Most notable is Contact Information above the fold and prominently displayed. With a Showcase listed property, consumers can call, email, visit a builder’s website or complete the lead form.

Other features include the ability to display up to 25 photos per listing– 4X the number of photos displayed on a standard listing.  Showcase listings also allow builders to include links to their social media sites and include a Rider Sign on the Search Result Listing Pages.

The Rider Sign allows builders to brand their listings on Search Result pages by prominently featuring a logo and headline on each listing. Since Realtor.com is the largest real estate website in the world and endorsed by the National Association of Realtors this feature alone provides tremendous value. It means your listing and business will be seen by more home shoppers than anywhere else.

I know many builders are always launching new sales promotions and offering discounts to entice buyers.  Could the solution really be as simple as including your phone number and email and making it easy for the consumer to call you?  After all, they were already on the world’s largest real estate website shopping for homes in your market and price point.

If you have questions about marketing strategies or advertising with BDX contact Thane Tennison, Advertising Manager for the BDX Network.