Advertising Vendor Performance Review

Christine Iyer

February 28, 2019

Web Traffic Overview

Hover over each box for KPIs.

Facebook

The size of the box is proportional to the number of unique pageviews brought by display ads and the color represents the CTR. The goal is big yellow boxes, i.e. higher web traffic and higher CTR.

Working Adults bring in the most traffic, we target them with 3 different products. Their CTR average almost 0.6%. (National benchmark is 0.9%)
In-State HS students and Current Undergraduates have the lowest CTR
The Individual Courses product has the highest CTR, 1%, but this was a short campaign.

Facebook Undegraduate Degree Display Ads

Out-of-state HS students appear to respond better to these display ads than the in-state students.
While web traffic from out-of state students declines, it is likely in response to fewer ads being served.

Facebook Transfer Degree Display Ads

Transfer candidates are most interested is at the end of the first semester when we do not appear to be serving as many ads.
When we serve ads in the late summer and early fall, we see web traffic spike. This is the best response we see from the current undergraduate audience across all the products we target to them through Facebook.

Facebook Graduate Degree Display Ads

Working adults have a much more robust CTR than current undergraduates when targeted with a Graduate degree via FB ads.
The working adult CTR remains strong through mid November

Facebook Degree Completion Display Ads

The CTR among the working adult audience really picks up late fall as ads served taper.
This is a strong audience…is it because it’s broad?

Facebook Individual Courses Display Ads

This short campaign performed well overall.
The CTR is the strongest among the FB display ad campaigns. Tee web traffic, heavier in the first month, consistently delivers roughly 100 unique pageviews weekly.

Facebook Video Ads

We don’t have benchmarks so I’ve pulled some from the IAB website available here. They report was from 2016.
To approximate the 75% of video viewed benchmark, but I did look at the percentage of our videos that are watched to 75%.

Facebook Undergraduate Degree Video Ads

The run of video ads targeting out-of-state students shows a healthy, yet down trending, CTR. Early in the run, the CTR is above the benchmark.
The Completion Rate for neither in-state nor out-of state HS students approaches the benchmark.

Facebook Transfer Degree Video Ads

Though the CTR does not hit 1%, there are periods of .75%.
Looking at the Completion Rate, was there a problem early on that the videos were not displaying properly?

Facebook Graduate Degree Video Ads

Working adults have a CTR commensurate with the national benchmark, performing much better than the current undergrads.
Both working adults and current undergraduates have suboptimal Completion Rate.
Working adults bring more traffic to the website.

Facebook Degree Completion Video Ads

Again, the working adult audience shows a healthy CTR and some of the highest completion rates.
They also bring a steady stream of web traffic to the website from these ads, particularly around the holidays. (New Year’s resolutions?)

Programmatic

Vendor	Product	Medium	Objective	Benchmark_CTR	MediaPlan_CTR	Benchmark_VTR
DBM	Undergrad Degree	Display	Inquiry Generation	0.53%	0.06%	~
DBM	University	Display	Branding	0.53%	0.06%	~
DBM	University	Video	Branding	~	0.06%	70%
DBM	University	Audio	Branding	~	~	~

Actual Performance

Vendor	Product	Medium	Objective	CTR	VTR	UPV	BR	AvgToP	AvgSessDur
DBM	Undergrad Degree	Display	Inquiry Generation	0.13%	~	1,261	93%	00:02:19	00:00:17
DBM	University	Display	Branding	0.06%	~	2,832	89%	00:01:11	00:00:12
DBM	University	Video	Branding	0.37%	58.38%	628	82%	00:01:33	00:00:28
DBM	University	Audio	Branding	~	35.6%	13	83%	00:00:16	00:00:03

Hulu

The goal is to exceed 96% Completion Rate for non-clickable videos (blue) and a 0.20% CTR for clickable completions (yellow).
The table below illustrates that we exceeded the benchmarks.

Instagram

The CTR benchmark for Instagram ads is 0.16%. Is this just display ads, or does it include video and carousel?
Is there any other KPI we should look at? Such as the trend of web traffic, engagement, or video completions?
The next 2 slides summarise our Instagram performance.
First we will see that the CTR is consistently above the national benchmark for most ad sets.
Then we will see a how Instagram stacks up against Facebook in terms of unique pageviews.

Instagram vs Facebook Web Traffic

Local Digital

Performance for both display and video shows strong and consistent CTR aligned with Rinck’s expectations.
Portland Press Herald and Bangor Daily News display ads show an upward trend in both CTR and Unique Pageviews over the course of FY19.
The Sun Journal KPIs show a flat trend, yet the CTR is robust.
The Bangor Daily News ads perform well, though we don’t have a benchmark Completion Rate.

Local Digital Display

YouTube

-YouTube performance is indicated by 3 key metrics: impressions, video views and view rate. We benchmark against 20% for view rate. -The goal of the campaign is really to drive awareness and engage users through video. That being said, we would also look at clicks (knowing its not the main goal of the campaign) and benchmark against 0.04%

We can also look at video completion rate (views to 100%) as a metric to optimize against. This can be skewed depending on how long the video units (the longer it is, the lower a completion rate) we are utilizing are. For 15s, anything over 30%-40% is acceptable and for 30s we would look to be at 20% or more.

Other Vendors

We are doing well for the in the next 5 platforms.

Gmail Ads

We targeted 2 different audiences, working adults and current undergraduates.
Both had CTR within the benchmark range.
The working adult audience had a much higher CTOR that fell within the education industry benchmark.
The working adult audience therefore brought in about 4 times more traffic.