Display media's diamonds in the rough

In today’s day and age, most digital ad campaigns are built around conversion and ROI metrics. Given the transparent nature of the digital realm, it is much easier to evaluate the return on investment on a ad campaigns.

While building online direct response display campaigns for Adobe Systems we were held to a very high standard. More importantly, it was imperative that we improved on our numbers from the previous quarter. This meant that we had to be frugal with our ad spends and vigilant with our optimization and reconfigurations.

However, this tight leash also led me to discover hidden value on the Internet. It is very easy to find and target big corporate sites, portals and work with ad networks. However, in my opinion, this is the easy way out. These well established properties are very expensive and, in many instances, especially on direct response campaigns, do not deliver bang for the buck.

When building campaigns for Adobe’s technical writing products, we decided to dig a little deeper, and this where we found our diamonds in the rough. There are several blogs and smaller platforms that cater specifically to very narrow, niche audiences. In our case, these were specialty blogs and communities dedicated to technical writers. Typically the curators/managers of these properties are evangelists within their respective communities (tech writers in this case). They are artisans and craftsmen so immersed in their industry that they have loyal followings and tend to become flourishing online hubs for their respective niche communities.

The flip side is that, while these evangelists are very well versed with their specific industry, they tend not to know much about the business of digital media. They are certainly not as savvy as a corporately run site or portal. They usually have no idea of the kind of value they are sitting on. As digital media planners, these properties are like hitting the jackpot. We can negotiate extremely favorable deals and our ads reach highly targeted audiences, much further down the purchase funnel, and with much higher purchase intention. The end result is fantastic conversion and ROI numbers.

Sites like millionshort.com can certainly help in finding these properties. But, at the end of the day the mantra is: if you want to find value on the internet, just dig a little deeper.