Adotas

Where media buyers start online

Featured Author

Zephrin Lasker is the co-founder and CEO of Pontiflex. He has been involved with online marketing since its inception more than a decade ago. Zephrin is also a serial entrepreneur, having successfully launched two start-ups prior to Pontiflex.

In the course of his career, Zephrin has played a key role in shaping campaign successes for a variety of clients such as Sprint, Cendant, Earthlink, and eFax, helping them acquire over 8 million new customers.
Prior to co-founding Pontiflex, Zephrin founded The North Road Group, an interactive agency. He has also worked as Vice President of Business Development at i33 Communications, where he managed sales and technical teams to help deliver new customers, launch state-of-the-art websites and deploy cutting edge marketing initiatives.

Prior to i33, Zephrin worked at Commerce One Global Services managing Sprint's new web initiatives. He has also co-founded the e-commerce company Beautility, where he served as Chief Operating Officer.

Zephrin has a background in corporate finance. He has worked for Dresdner Kleinwort Benson in the areas of corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions. Zephrin began his career as an Equity Analyst at Creditanstalt in Prague. He is an avid fly fisherman and is currently learning how to spey cast. He has a BA degree from Reed College.

More articles by Zephrin Lasker





Features

Amplify performance with CPL

Written on
Nov 23, 2009 
Author
Zephrin Lasker  |
Share
Amplify performance with CPL

amp_small.jpgADOTAS – As advertising professionals, we’ve all seen our fair share of tchotchkies, booth babes and swag at industry trade shows. While these often-expensive marketing materials certainly raise eyebrows, what value do they actually provide?

At Pontiflex, we think the answer to that question is very little. So last week at ad:tech, instead of hosting a typical display booth and giving away T-shirts, we chose to instead donate what money we would traditionally spend on marketing collateral to the ASPCA in the form of a cost-per-lead (CPL) advertising campaign.

The campaign, which was launched at the Pontiflex booth at ad:tech, will provide the ASPCA with 5,000-10,000 new, transparent marketing leads — consumers who have opted-in to being contacted specifically by the organization — that the ASPCA can engage through various marketing strategies. This particular campaign is pro bono, but if the ASPCA were buying these leads, they would be paying only for information from consumers who have actively opted-in, not for clicks or impressions.

For ad:tech, CPL not only took the waste out of our marketing budget, but it is also providing increased value to the ASPCA –- instead of a one-time monetary donation, the leads the organization will acquire could potentially turn into donors and activists for years to come.

Several large brands have recently launched CPL campaigns like this one to support various online advertising efforts. Here’s a look into how CPL increases performance for brand marketers and helps eliminate the waste in their advertising spend.

CPL Campaigns on the Rise

The last two years have seen rapid growth in performance advertising as both brand and direct-response marketers attempt to prove higher ROI in online campaigns.

CPL advertising is a growing tactic for building a robust, relevant email or direct mail list, because with CPL, marketers pay only for brand-specific marketing leads instead of clicks that might never convert. The Pontiflex CPL Report estimates that the average cost of a lead is 60 cents a lead. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email generates an ROI of $43.58.

In recent years, there has been a growth in engagement marketing as brand advertisers try to leverage Facebook, Twitter and other vehicles. Marketers like Disney, Graco and Kimberly-Clark are using CPL to connect with the right user in a timely way. Once they acquire the contact information of people interested in their products (leads), they engage them through a variety of vehicles such as newsletters, community sites, social networking groups, etc.

Research from the IAB shows that approximately 58% of 2009 second quarter revenues were priced on a performance basis -– up from the 54% reported in the second quarter of 2008. As advertisers continue to reach for higher ROI, these numbers are expected to rise.

How CPL Works

CPL advertising is similar to running banner or search campaigns. Just as they would for a display banner campaign, advertisers select publishers for CPL campaigns based on factors such as demographic composition, ability of the site to deliver leads (directly correlated to impressions) or contextual relevance. Then they run ads on these sites. Consumers sign up for the ads, and the advertiser gets a lead. It’s that simple.

For the ASPCA campaign, ads ran on sites in which audiences were more likely to convert to ASPCA donors. For the campaign launch, the following sites were selected: Planningfamily.com, North American Media Group and PetPlace.com (plans are in place to go live on PetPlace). As with any online campaign, publishers will be added and removed to the campaign as it is optimized.

Once advertisers have access to the leads, they engage them in a variety of ways. The Barack Obama presidential campaign built an e-newsletter list. Kimberly-Clark engaged moms through an “Enjoy the Ride” loyalty program. Interactive advertising agency Leapfrog Interactive engaged acquired users through a community site.

Performance advertising enables advertisers to connect with the right kind of consumer -– consumers that are interested in their brand in a cost effective way. Then, they can engage consumers in a meaningful way and bridge the gap between ROI and branding campaigns.

CPL Extends the Reach of a Search Campaign

The price of the contact information of an interested person who has raised her/his hand and said “tell me more” is dependent on the information an advertiser wants to collect. The greater the amount of information, the higher is the cost of the lead.

The ASPCA decided to collect the basic contact information of a consumer -– first name, last name and email address –- which typically costs $0.75/lead. In comparison, according to a Google keyword tool, the average click for “animal cruelty” is $0.93-$1.25. That’s just for a click – not an actual sign-up.

Search advertising is great for capturing interested users. But CPL helps broaden the reach of an online advertising campaign. For example, the ASPCA can use this basic contact information to build a relationship with the consumer at multiple touch points – email, social networks, etc. If needed, they can collect more information by deploying relevant communications over a period of time. As in the offline world, online relationships are built on trust, and communicating with leads often and with relevant information helps build trust and can increase purchase intent.

CPL: Change Marketers Are Believing In

Many marketers are hesitant to use CPL campaigns because they think lead-gen lists are frequently resold to other advertisers. Before 2008, the CPL market suffered from a variety of problems largely having to do with the lack of transparency for both the advertiser and the consumer. However, over the last two years, transparency became a reality in the CPL market.

Over the last year, spurred on by increased transparency, cost-per-lead advertising has seen rapid adoption by marketers across a wide spectrum of industry sectors, such as: The 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign, Kimberly-Clark, Blockbuster, Coldwater Creek, UNICEF and agencies like Universal McCann and RUF.

These supporters show that CPL can be a valuable tool in a marketer’s chest for proving ROI, establishing an active user base and engaging with consumers who are interested in your brand.





Reader Comments.

I don’t think there’s a lack of advertisers out there wanting to do CPL type programs, but a lack of trust, transparency, quality and volume out in the marketplace. Having to be responsible for running media programs with the primary focus of building databases for most of my career, I found that there are very little options out there that deliver on all 4.

Publishers think that co-reg is the answer, however, I have yet to see a co-reg program that truly delivers on quality users. Acquiring names can be easy, but what publishers don’t want to acknowledge, is that a good majority of these names don’t equate to good quality names.

As far as banner display ads, I’ve worked with several networks (standard/top networks and CPA networks), and unfortunately have found very few partners that offer full transparency, deliver volume and is a company that I can trust that is ensuring that my client’s advertisements are not running in inappropriate content, isn’t being incentivised, and/or only running the assets that we only provide.

I believe that the industry needs to set some guidelines and standards to ensure that advertisers are protected against networks and are truly delivering quality experiences and playing by the rules. There is too much of a “black box” mentality, and advertisers are often stuck with paying for bad leads, and unable to pinpoint the causes.

This article mentioned that on average a lead costs $0.75. I would be more than happy to pay more (upwards of $3 or even more), if I was confident that every one of those leads were good quality names. And what I mean by good quality, are names that result in users reading the advertisers email newsletter, actively engage with the brand, etc. However, often times (especially with co-reg) less than 20% of “good leads”, is considered “good quality”. Most names acquired through CPL are just names in a database, and nothing more.

If publishers offered more transparency and truly worked with the advertiser to increase quality, then advertisers and publishers could figure out a way to deliver quality leads, generate volume, at an efficient price that can work for both parties, but unfortunately, often times advertisers have to guess and don’t have the ability to work with individual publishers one on one, because the publishers and networks have set it up so that there is little to no collaboration.

Posted by Angelina Eng | 10:07 am on November 30, 2009.

Leave a Comment

Add a comment

No Tags
Article Sponsor

More Features


  • Right now, at the beginning of 2012, what are you watching the most closely for its ad and marketing opportunities?

    View Results

    Loading ... Loading ...

Latest News

News Archive

Spotlight

Sponsormob Leads the Way Into RTB for MobileADOTAS – For more than half a decade, Berlin-based tech firm Sponsormob has remained relevant in an industry characterized by [...] more...


Adotas Partnership