Digital Marketing era

Digital Marketing is fairly new to the advertising world, only in existence since the 1990s, and is changing and growing every day. This type of marketing not only meets consumers where they are, but follows them where they go— making it a strategic tool in any campaign. One of the unique components about digital campaigns is how easy they are to track and how insightful the report results they generate can be post campaign. Digital reporting is a large part of our online strategy at GDC. Our in-house Media Department, led by Media Director Lisa Gomez, uses its expertise to analyze these reports to drill down to best practices. These insights are then called upon when creating and tailoring digital campaigns for our clients. In this blog post, our media experts give our readers an insider’s view into digital reporting and its breakdowns to provide a greater understanding of the strategy that goes into planning a digital campaign.

• The overall summary: this report category provides a snapshot into what worked and what didn’t in a digital campaign. We are able to show our clients quick, key pieces of information that gives a high-level overview of the campaign and its results.
• The creative report: this tool shows us how our target audience consumed our message, whether it was on mobile, tablet, or desktop. We compare the different ad sizes with the percentage of click-through rates and use this information in planning our next flight. This information also lets us determine if changing our creative message would help hit our target audience better, or if we need to incorporate the use of a second message. The creative report also helps in AB testing to see which digital ad performed best.
• With the top performing profiles report, we are given a summary of what our target demographic is looking at and searching for online. Ranked from 1 to 6, we are able to see what types of industries they are most interested in. From these summaries, we are then able to change up our creative imagery and messaging based on the type of sites they visit. We can also use this information to target different websites. However, this information can be skewed at times, based on topical or world events. For example, when Robin Williams died, reporting for various clients had Celebrity News as a top performing profile. This was not typical for most of our campaigns and with further reporting we were able to see that his death causes an irregular spike in our target’s search.
• Platform performance shows us which platform performed best overall when evaluating mobile, tablet, or desktop. This information provides us with a look into the breakdown of impressions, clicks, and markets. Utilizing this insight, we can then make key adjustments. For example, we may strategize that San Antonio is where our ads should be served, but in practice, Austin is where the clicks are coming from. This information helps us refocus our target and change messaging, as needed.
• Contextual targeting is where we serve our target ads based on the content our desired audiences are reading. With our digital efforts, we are able to gear our creative around content with similar messaging. For example, if we are running a campaign about bariatrics, our ads will be placed on sites with content on heart disease, women’s health, weight loss, exercise, etc. The reporting for this category gives us the comparison of clicks and impressions. If the clicks are higher than the impressions then we have fully, and successfully, engaged our target audience. The ad resonated with them and they visually experienced the services our client had to offer.
• Keywords are very important. This reporting tool provides insight into what our client’s target audience is looking for, how many impressions were served, and how many clicks we received. From this list, we can add or delete search words, which can broaden or narrow our focus.
• When we have campaigns in multiple markets, the market performance report shows us which ones outperformed the others. This output shows the number of impressions and clicks per market. If impressions are higher in a market than we originally planned, we strategically evaluate shifting market selection, and their associated budgets, accordingly.

As clients’ objectives and needs vary greatly, so to do our accompanying digital strategies. No two digital campaigns are ever the same. Nor should they be.  Our media team enjoys the challenge of using historical knowledge and data to develop digital campaigns that are creative, striking and attention-grabbing.