3 Ways brands can win Black Friday with digital ads

Black Friday is one of the biggest days in the retail calendar, and for good reason. Every year, the post-thanksgiving sale brings in more and more attention, and with that, revenue. However, with an ever-growing reliance on the digital world, we are seeing a significant shift towards online sales.

In 2018, while footfall in shops dropped by 5.4% on November 28 compared to 2017, online sales skyrocketed by 46%. This isn’t so great for the high street, but it offers a huge opportunity for retailers and their digital advertising efforts. There are, however, a few specific tactics that brands should leverage to optimize ROI.

 

Target the Right Users

Black Friday is one of the most competitive events of the year, and brands can’t afford to serve irrelevant ads if they want to maximize conversions.

With Adcash’s User Interest Targeting tool, advertisers can target web browsers through location, time zone and interests. The technology uses consented data collection that clusters users rather than targeting individual fingerprints and cookies. User interest targeting offers flexibility to advertisers, allowing them to create the campaigns that they know will work best. For massive events such as Black Friday, advertisers should be looking to take advantage of this tool in order to hone in on the most relevant audiences during such a competitive few days.

Take sports as an example. If a sports retailer is keen to offload tennis equipment at a discounted price during Black Friday, it can use Adcash’s User Interest Targeting to find tennis fans and target them with the retailer’s great offers on rackets. Since the user is already interested in the sport, they are more likely to click on the advert, improving click-through-rates (CTR) and ultimately, ROI.

Adcash User Interest Targeting also has a great impact on our publishers, too. When coupled with our hyper-granular targeting options, site visitors will see highly relevant ads, meaning better click-rates, and, ultimately, better earnings.

 

Find the Formats That Fit

Black Friday only comes around once a year. As a result, competition is fierce between brands looking to attract consumer interest with the ‘hottest deals’ on the market. To cut through the noise on Black Friday, target users with the most appropriate offers and maximize interaction and conversions, it’s important to use the most effective ad formats. Here at Adcash, we’ve found two specific formats that stand out from the crowd in these scenarios: 

Push Notifications. Away from where audiences are expecting to see ads, Push Notifications put a brand in plain sight without disrupting the user experience. This ad format would work particularly well on Black Friday, by alerting users of deals instantly to offer them huge savings on products that are too good to ignore.

Interstitial ads. Appearing between web pages, banner blindness is near impossible with Interstitials, with users needing to physically close the window to remove it. An Interstitial ad, combined with a good creative on Black Friday will enable users to better engage with offers and increase the likelihood of a sale.

 

Hitting the UX Sweet Spot

There is a fine line between ‘not enough’ and ‘too much’ in advertising – something which can shift towards the latter on Black Friday. Advertisers need to find a balance. If ads are well-targeted with high performing formats, the user experience is maximized. However, if these ads are shown too frequently or with little relevance to the receiver, this experience can quickly turn on its head. By working with trusted industry partners, who have the expertise to help brands to strike this balance and optimize ad spend around Black Friday, brands can build highly successful campaigns which attract both eyes and sales.

For publishers, the amount of ads on show needs to be monitored closely during peak days in the retail calendar and Black Friday is, of course, one of them. Too many will have a big impact on user experience, which drives traffic away. Conversely, publishers still need to show enough ads to drive CTRs – growing revenue for both the publisher and advertiser.

Digital ads in retail are sure to ramp up as Black Friday approaches. It’s integral for advertisers to make the most of this opportunity as more consumers look to take advantage of any deals they can. Making a few tweaks to your campaigns can make a big difference.

 

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