Linked in cpm ads BLOWS ME HARD!

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thustlenyc

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The company I'm working for has had great success with facebook ads(as I see many people have) and asked to continue to look for similar opportunities for super targeted advertising. I suggested that we try linked in because of the ability to geo-target as well and focus on age and gender. We go ahead and agree to 30,000 impressions at $16 cpm and put an ad thats worked for us in the past on Google ad words.

30,000 impressions later and $500 bucks lighter I have a total of 10 clicks... :mad:

What a giant fucking waste of money.
 


thustlenyc said:
The company I'm working for has had great success with facebook ads(as I see many people have) and asked to continue to look for similar opportunities for super targeted advertising. I suggested that we try linked in because of the ability to geo-target as well and focus on age and gender. We go ahead and agree to 30,000 impressions at $16 cpm and put an ad thats worked for us in the past on Google ad words.

30,000 impressions later and $500 bucks lighter I have a total of 10 clicks... :mad:

What a giant fucking waste of money.
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Are those banner ads? If there's one thing I've learned, it's that no one clicks on banner ads. (feel free to point out counter examples)

If not, consider it from the CPM side. If you were on AdWords and looking to pay 50 cents a click, that's 32 clicks per thousand or a 3.2% click-through rate for a single content ad. I might be wrong, but that's a really freaking high CTR for a content ad, which is effectively what those CPM ads are.

In short, when playing the CPM game, one must have a pretty good idea of what the CTR is on that ad beforehand (a chicken/egg scenario in many cases).

Bit companies pay those rates for more than the CTR, they want to burn a brand into the viewers brain, which pays off in the long run. We are effectively direct marketers - we want action NOW, not in 5 years when the viewer has a warm fuzzy about a brand and buys it. That's why CPC works so well in AM.

Also Linked In is one of the most expensive places for CPM rates. Other sites are lucky to get $15 CPM for the whole page of ads, not just a single ad. LinkedIn just kills it with CPM because of the targeting and audience I guess, getting up to $75 per page from what I've heard.

I looked at CPM ads at another site and they only wanted $6 CPM for an ad -- still high, but targeted at real estate investors, which is what I was after. I still passed, mostly because I res arched how low CTR can be on banner ads.

Be glad, others have paid a lot more than you to learn that lesson.
 
coglethorpe said:
Big companies pay those rates for more than the CTR, they want to burn a brand into the viewers brain, which pays off in the long run.
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What you fail to realize is that big companies DON't pay those rates. They typically buy remnant space or do their media buy through big ad networks like advertising.com, casale, valueclick etc. A $16 CPM is pretty ridiculous in this day and age unless we are talking about some real quality traffic (like 1,000 people with their credit cards out ready to buy).
 
narsticle said:
A $16 CPM is pretty ridiculous in this day and age unless we are talking about some real quality traffic (like 1,000 people with their credit cards out ready to buy).
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Absolutely agree, that is an incredibly high cpm. There is only one winner there, and its never going to be the advertiser!! From memory ads on linkedin are served by doubleclick, which google owns.

Might be worth noting that you can place banners on linkedin via google content network 'placements' - and then you can geo target/bid per click not cpm. Just did it myself (among other sites) with some banners about 10 minutes ago.

Your 10 clicks now cost you typically about $5 ;)
 
You blew yourself hard agree with Narsticle - $16 is fucking ridiculous and Edward B makes a good point on G site placement with PPC.

On Linked In - anyone hitting this yet?

Im thinking home biz / office type offers, divorce dating (not sure why just got a hunch) and maybe exec type entertainments... dare I say Forex?
 
The only way any company should pay $16 CPM is as part of a highly-targeted branding campaign, with image ads. Text ad CPM? Maybe. $16 CPM? Hell no.
 
You got hosed. We pay around .75-1.35 for a comparable venue when it come to quality of site and targeting. If you're going to buy, buy remnant as reserve inventory is usually a joke.
 
$16 CPM is on the high side, but it sounds like you were getting equivalent to reminant inventory for that price. At that price, you shouldn't be getting reminant inventory. BTW, there are like a million definitions for reminant, depending on who you are. But basically at that price, you should be able to specify where you are at and be the first ad they see.

In any case, doing some quick analysis on your campaign. You got 10 clicks for 30 CPMs which means your CTR was .03% which is basically terrible for any campaign reminant or not. For non reminant, you would expect at least a .1% CTR and would be doing well with .5% CTR. So for your 30 CPMS, I would have expected 300 to 1500 clicks. My guess is that you weren't running decent ads. For future reference, you do not test banners at $16 CPM. You test as some low rate to get enough impressions for testing. Also, Flash is about double the CTR as non Flash. Hope that helps.

You can make $16 CPMs work for direct marketing. Sometimes you need to make it work to get the reach you need. But it doesn't sound like the proper steps were taken to buy expensive CPM's as this.
 
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