Join us every Wednesday at 2pm EST in the Furlough Community Discord for our Mastermind session hosted by Joe Casanova & Ophir Gadot. Our guests change every week and range from experts, entrepreneurs and creatives to influencers, brands, nomads, investors and more!

 

In this session, Joe Casanova, Ophir Gadot and Roslyn Fawns talk about an overview on all the paid advertising channels.

 

You can also watch the replay of the mastermind here:

 

 

Joe Casanova 

In today’s session, we’re gonna be talking about an overview of all the different types of paid advertising channels.

 

Ophir Gadot 

This is the best quote I can find: “Advertising is a practice where an entity pays to place its messaging or branding and a particular placement.” The placement is that point of communication, which is rented to you as an advertiser, to communicate your brand with your audience.

 

Joe Casanova 

Beautiful. Now, this is the part where we get a little advanced. I want to show you how intricate and advanced this advertising can be. In the scheme of these, okay, DSPs are demand side platforms and SSPs are supply side platforms. So we have an advertiser, and we have a publisher, okay. An advertiser wants traffic, a publisher has traffic, alright. Now sometimes an advertiser doesn’t know where to get traffic, and neither does a publisher who might have an abundance of placements, but they can’t sell it to these advertisers. And that’s where these SSPs and DSPS come into play, and actually help people get placements and get on the right websites. And ultimately, all this happens in the ad exchange.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Google AdSense, for example, is like, Okay, put your widget, I’m gonna serve ads from my network of power of advertisers, based on your audience. So the DSP is basically the entire communication between that demand side, like I have a lot of advertisers, they’re all beating on different types of customers, and I’m gonna integrate if your website to know which customer Okay, now you have this, these are the advertise, I’m going to get you this traffic. This is why when you go to a blog, you can go to the same blog, and you will see a different, I will say different ad and so on.

 

Joe Casanova 

So I just had to add a little bit there just to show you guys that even though we cover basics, it can get so advanced, it really can. And there’s always more things to learn. And hopefully those abbreviations, you guys can go ahead and follow your own rabbit holes, and go deep into that. So advertisers, people that have products or services that they want traffic publishers are the ones that have the traffic and the ad exchanges are the ones that bring them together.

 

Ophir Gadot 

I think again, this is the standard way to kind of communicate between the advertiser and the publisher, influencer marketing and affiliate marketing changes that. It creates in person relationships between the publisher and the advertiser, outside of the Ad Exchange Network.

 

Advertising Channels Types | Search Ads

Joe Casanova 

Beautiful. So let’s just jump right into it. We’re gonna break down all the relevant advertising channels, starting with probably one of the most popular, and it’s search ads. And search ads, as you guys know, it’s definitely the big players, Google’s, Bing’s, anyone that involves a search engine. The common question that we had earlier today is: Top of funnel, middle funnel, bottom funnel, do those exist in search ads?

 

Ophir Gadot 

Of course, of course, just think about it this way, there is no top of the funnel search ads for the reason that you serve ads on keywords that are relevant to your brand. It’s always going to start from the middle of the funnel. Bottom of the funnel is basically the keywords because if someone looks for your brand, is the definition of bottom of the funnel.

 

Joe Casanova 

Exactly. And it looks a little bit like that. You guys have seen it before. And let’s keep it going. 

 

Advertising Channels Types | Shopping Ads

 

So next up, we got shopping ads.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Shopping ads are basically geared around products. They show products, they sell the show reviews, they show prices. Everything is centered around products, and you just type in the generic keyword you want to search for, and you’ll see competing brands showcasing their products.

 

Advertising Channels Types | Video Ads

Joe Casanova 

And next up, we got ourselves some video ads, which is also referred to as social ads. And as you guys know, you guys will see this probably every day when you’re consuming social media.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Think about how video communicates with people and coming back to the funnel. Video Ads are the best way to communicate TOF ads. It’s a video there’s a lot more places for storytelling, and a lot more places to engage with customers. Facebook, IG, Tik Tok, YouTube, these are the platforms for TOF period. Other channels that we forgot to mention here influencers, video ads are not who I’m paying for. But what exactly am I getting? And how am I communicating with customers?

 

Joe Casanova 

The strongest point to emphasize is really top of funnel ads, video ads make the best for it, because it’s the introduction of this potential prospect of potential customer to your brand. So explaining the storytelling, there is a great way to introduce them. 

 

Advertising Channels Types | Native Ads

 

So next up, and this and this is where it gets a little fun. And some of you may have heard this before, I’ve never actually experienced it. And exactly his native ads, native advertising type of ads actually blend into a website. And you can use this through platforms like Outbrain like Taboola. I think this is a great way to promote blogs and work very well with PR placements, right press releases and public relations.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Native ads, by definition, are being targeted to people based on what they’re reading right now. So this is for me a great top of the funnel channel when I’m showcasing the content in context with something else. This is why it is called native ads. It’s very natural for this consumer because he’s already in that mindset. still relevant in Facebook and Google as well. It’s just a great way again to engage with them and get the content going. And just warm up that audience for my next phase of advertising and engagement with that audience.

 

Advertising Channels Types | Social Ads

Joe Casanova 

So next up, we have social ads, which you know, in video ads, and that we kind of mentioned the touch base on the social ads, but in itself, they deserve its own, like category. And this is advertising on social media. 

 

Advertising Channels Types | Influencers Placements/Ads

Absolutely. And then influencer placements. Of course, this does deserve its own category, this can actually be direct with the influencer. So when we talked about the Ad Exchange, actually managing the relationship between advertisers and publishers, in this case, the advertiser can go directly through to the publisher and work a deal, ultimately cutting out the middleman. And these are great. This is, besides having social proof, besides middle of funnel campaigns, and especially with the partnerships that they’ve had on social media platforms, now Instagram has a feature, which allows you both you and a brand to post the same picture on the feed, which I’ve actually spoke to a couple influencer, friends of mine that are running these campaigns. And they said that the performance is actually doing very well, as well as whitelisting. So that you can run ads through someone’s page as a brand partnership. So these influencer placements are doing really great right now, especially in the eCommerce world, definitely something you want to consider.

 

Ophir Gadot 

For example, video ads, it is still a social ad. It’s just a platform that you’re serving up.

 

Joe Casanova 

100%, then again. Influencers it’s just the new way of doing brand ambassadorship. It works. It helps scale, and it’s way more relatable and trustworthy than serving ads directly. 

 

Advertising Channels Types | PR Placements

 

All right. Next up, we got PR placements. And I mean, when it comes down to credibility, public relations are still powerful to this day, we haven’t gone into the traditional channels of advertising, there is power beyond just the digital realm. And PR placements make, you know, somewhat pricey. But we’ve had plenty of campaigns that I’ve actually converted and yield high ROI.

 

Ophir Gadot 

It just gives you that credibility and trust. It’s not necessarily going to drive immediate revenues. But this placement sticks. So you want to have at least few placements, it kind of reinforces the brand’s trustworthiness online. And like any placement, you need to pay to play. Even if you’re getting a free PR placement, you need to reach out and you need to manage these communications. You need to go over the content, you need to make sure it’s getting published at all this shit cost.

 

Joe Casanova  

What you guys see or hear in this article on VentureBeat. This was actually a sponsored post that we did a PR placement. And the main value that we got here was the SEO credibility from VentureBeat with a high DA, I think, upwards of the 90s vouching for us. But it turns out that the coupon itself that was at the bottom of this article, ended up paying itself back with sales for the actual placement, which was about 5000 dollars to get onto this website. 

 

Advertising Channels Types | Affiliate Placements/Ads

So another way to get great easy exposure, a little hack and affiliate placement is by far, especially as a start up if you can get affiliates to promote your brand. That’s free backlinks, free exposure, they’re gonna promote you, what are your thoughts about this? I mean, out of all the paid channels, I gotta say this is it can be very cost effective, right?

 

Ophir Gadot 

Affiliate marketing is everything, because it is just partnering up with… Influencers could be affiliates, bloggers, could be affiliates, everyone could be affiliates. The only difference between affiliates and all the other placements is the pay performance. And I’m gonna pay only based on certain actions the audience does with that placement. But there is a tracking link and that placement to the brand’s website to track all the action items that are going through the website, the publishers website or the publisher placement, then pay back. So for me as an advertiser, it’s allows me to scale up without breaking the bank, because I’m defining in advance, what is the compensation are going to pay in its performance based solely regardless of how much revenue they’re going to bring in or how much customers, I’m going to pay something that keeps me profitable throughout the way and think how valuable it is because I can scale on Facebook and not be profitable.

 

Advertising Channels Types | In Website / In Apps Ads

Joe Casanova 

Last, but definitely not least, we got that in-website/ in-app ads. And this can be done with Google Display, network, Facebook, and all these other types of ad networks. And if you want to purchase these DSPS and SSPs. And there are some great websites that you could actually buy traffic.

 

Ophir Gadot 

App advertising is mostly used for top of the funnel or bottom of the funnel because of the targeting options. So you want to retarget people within apps because I’m just chasing them wherever they go. Also get that brand recognition on top of the funnel. When we kind of judge performance, we always need to be mindful of where on the funnel we are because top of the funnel more than likely will not be profitable, bottom of the funnel will be profitable. Just being mindful of that and understanding where to put the money for what purpose.

 

Worthwhile Mentions

 

Joe Casanova 

Beautiful. And then of course we need our worthwhile mentions. It seems quite obvious to a few at least those that have been involved in this space. And you know, those don’t realize that you could actually buy placements in newsletters. And you know, my personal favorite newsletter Stacked Marketer has a great audience and high level marketers. And if my audience is focusing on marketers, it might make sense to get a sponsor block on their newsletter to promote it. This is also great for eCommerce brands and these newsletters that have great audiences and their respective industry or niche, will sell their placements. And also accompanying that with blog posts and PR placements. I mean, the list goes on, especially these affiliates, there are plenty of affiliates out there that are just driving sales or revenue from newsletters, and you just got to go out there and find them. Are there any other experiences or things you’d like to share about the email placements?

 

Ophir Gadot 

And email placements is one of my favorites.

 

Joe Casanova 

It really is.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Because you get a new audience, you get them in the place that makes the most impact. Again these placements are not cheap, it’s way better than buying an email list.

 

Joe Casanova 

Yeah, don’t buy it.

 

Ophir Gadot 

By an email list here, you’re starting to build that trust from your sender profile, and you’re sending from a trustworthy account and just being presented there. This is a different way to get that engagement. And this is why it’s a placement rather than data.

 

Joe Casanova 

I mean, I’ve had experience with buying an email list. And I’ll tell you, you don’t, they don’t convert as much as you think. Okay, especially because you don’t have that trust with them versus someone who’s been sending them. They’ve been opening it, they gain trust, and now they’re vouching for you. And then we got, of course, the traditional channels, which I’ll just go ahead and show. The next three, we got the TV’s, the prints, the billboards. And at least my two cents on these, it’s great to get in front of a lineup with a lot of eyeballs. But at least when it comes down to the digital space, it’s hard to tell if they’re the right eyeballs themselves, it’s hard to track this. And as well, as you know, direct mail campaigns, I think we should mention that, especially in the United States, the USPS has a service where if you’re a local based business, you can do a direct mail campaign to an entire zip code that is surrounding your business. And you can send them offers and things like that.

 

Ophir Gadot 

And there’s the taxi placements, there is the shirts that people will do. It’s never ending. Everyone you can pay for exposure is bad placement on that sense for me, they’ll be difference, the same practices are being applied.

 

Joe Casanova 

Beautiful. So why return on ad spend is not everything?

 

Roslyn Fawns 

If you’re doing top of funnel ads, you’re not going to convert, you have to get them to the bottom of the funnel to convert.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Lifetime value is another strong point because a lot of brands work in a business model where they lose money and conversion, especially in the financials. I remember people paying $3,000 for a first time investor to deposit that $300 Because they know their average is like $15,000 in investment capital.

 

Joe Casanova 

Law firms say they’ll pay $100, that lead thing about. 10 leads, they might not convert, they convert one, they just made their entire ad spend back.

 

Key Advertising Metrics

Ophir Gadot 

The average client will always come to you and tell you I want a positive ROAS, I want… Everybody wants a positive ROAS. I want that too. One big point that a lot of time is not being addressed is the fact that our data is not accurate. And a lot of sales are not being tracked and being attributed to the right channel. A lot of times I’m pushing a top of the funnel campaign and I see a rise in email subscribers, which are not directly connected, but still connected. A lot of times I’m doing a top of the funnel social and I see my accounts growing and then my remarketing audiences grow, you look at the whole picture to be able to actually evaluate. It is not as trivial as looking at the platform and saying, Okay, we have this or that return on investment. It’s not.

 

Joe Casanova 

Absolutely I love how you mentioned the attribution window. Sometimes it might be too short, you can’t really track it, see what’s converting what’s not. So it’s not everything. But these are definitely the metrics that you want to consider keeping an eye on when you’re evaluating your advertising channels.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Just CPA is cost per action, not acquisition. And this is whatever I’m going to define.

 

Joe Casanova 

Is it for them to sign up to a newsletter or is it for them to fill out a form, this is big in the affiliate space. Great deals come from a fixed rate, right? Even if they purchase if they take an action, right. That’s why it’s in the same ones as a CPS and the CPL. If they do make a sale, instead of giving them a commission, you might give them a CPA of $20.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Although to have relationships, serious publishers and advertisers, you need to be able to communicate that. You can’t close deals and Joe, you remember that, you need to be able to communicate with advertisers, publishers and just understand what they’re sharing like a media kit will share these numbers and metrics like that.

 

Joe Casanova 

I will never forget that the first time we were together in the office, I took care of the duties, got ready and you’re like sit down and he just started writing a bunch of letters on the wall. He’s like if you’re gonna be in this world, you got to learn how to speak the language. First thing he taught me. So ROAS is important. However, it depends on your overall performance. And we should always be mindful of where in the funnel the advertising effort really is.

Few More Things to Consider

 

Few more things to continue. Many times you need advertising to get your content out there. It is a great way to support your brand’s efforts. Sometimes If you know you’re having trouble with your organic, a good way to push that up is through paid channels. And even validation. If you have a blog post or something like that, you could always experiment with testing out with search ads, and just kind of figuring out the placements of things. And it’s so many different ways and strategies that you can use advertising. But ultimately, it can help with your existing client base, user base, customer base, as well as you know, getting discovered.

 

Roslyn Fawns 

Advertising enables you to engage with your target audience. One of the worst things you can do in marketing in general is make a decision without thought behind it and without reason behind it. But if you’re just going to try and put your content and your ads out everywhere without honing in on who your customers actually are, you’re not going to get a good return on investment. Even if you think you know who your customers are. That might not actually be the case when it comes down to it. That’s actually what happened to me at my previous business, I thought I was going to attract all of these young vegans to my cafe. And although I did get some young vegans, the majority of my customer base were actually in their like 50s and upwards. So that was a surprise. So always look out for that.

 

Joe Casanova 

Ophir, close this one out.

 

Ophir Gadot 

I just want to say one thing. Whoever thinks they’re going to open their eComm, or brand or whatever it is or app and they think oh, I’ve got to do SEO and I’ve got to get organic traffic. There’s no organic traffic. It’s a fiction of 2010 to 2013 it no longer exists. And also just understand what you’re saying by having organic traffic. I get organic social traffic right you’re starting your Instagram account, you’re starting your Facebook account, you need to create content, you need to post it, you need to engage, you need to answer. This sh*t costs money. Try what I’m telling you and work on your social profiles. Work for three months and tell me how many clicks you’re getting you’re gonna get more traffic by advertising channels. 100%, the platforms are built like that right now.

 

Joe Casanova 

Absolutely. And the opportunity and advertising of course I mean you’re basically touching base on this right there you go.

 

Ophir Gadot 

And you got a pay to play period. It’s just you can’t add more than that if you’re not established like any traffic is branded traffic on have branded traffic before got to your audience and your audience kind of learned who you are and good to get to establish it. To establish it you need to pay.

 

Remarketing

 

Joe Casanova 

Then we got remarketing, which of course is a key part of any advertising effort. And this is when they’re familiar with your brand and you’re advertising it to them. It has to be mentioned that instead we had to close out with this one because remarketing can be done on several platforms but this by far is one of the highest converting advertising strategies. So with that being said guys, beautiful stuff, happy we went through that there was a lot more to go to digest that was just a surface level of all the different types of the advertising channels. Now how you use these channels and how you use each channels in parallel or unison with each other that is unique to your brand, your eCommerce or your service based business for example for a product like Alcohol Wet Wipes, it wouldn’t necessarily make sense to be advertising on social media the sanitary wipe versus someone who’s typing wet wipes sanitary on Google, right. So depending on what your venture is, one channel may stand out better than the other regardless of the experiment test because you never know which channel can make your business go to the next level.

 

Ophir Gadot 

100 percent, there’s just something to add about it. I just want people to be mindful that a lot of time that paying for ads means saving money, and I’ve seen it so many times. Don’t be stuck on I want organic. I want organic because the fact is when you start a new business and most people who are starting a new business, like organic traffic takes time to build and count on organic traffic on a new brand are just gonna wait. And if you’re like waiting, then Sababa you can do that.