Where Are Your Ad Dollars Really Going?

As a business owner, you are keenly interested in the return-on-investment achieved by your advertising. At Ad House Advertising, so are we. As an ROI-focused ad agency, we get the greatest satisfaction from providing our clients with tangible, measurable results that move them closer to their business goals. Not only are the campaigns we create measurable, but we can tell you exactly what your digital advertising dollars are doing to move you forward. Unfortunately, sometimes we hear from clients that are dissatisfied with their previous agency. Very often, the client had spent more money, with fewer results. This prompts the question, where were their ad dollars really going?

One thing that sets us apart from most other agencies is that we place and manage our own digital media. We use the best software in the industry to set up our client’s campaigns, and our in-house digital media specialists use research tools to determine the best targeting strategy. Our in-house team is personally keeping watch over your campaign and optimizing in real-time. Many other agencies outsource this entire process. Outsourcing digital advertising to a third-party vendor means at least twice the markup – typically 15% markup charged by the digital vendor, and 15% markup on top of that charged by the agency.

We recently had a client run a test. They spent about $1,500 on a one-month online video campaign with a third-party vendor recommended to them by their corporate office. During the same time period, they ran a smaller video campaign with us, just under $500. What happened? The $1,500 campaign yielded some results – about 9,000 impressions, 2,000 complete views, 105 clicks to their website all at a CPM of $89.57, and an average cost-per-click of $14.29. Those are decent metrics, but compare them to our results. For less than a third of the cost, we reached over 8,000 people, saw almost 4,500 complete views (compare to 2,000), and 137 clicks to the website (compare to 105). Our CPM was $47.61, and our average cost-per-click was $2.91! For less than a third of the cost, we provided our client with more prospects!

Very likely, this third-party vendor only dedicated about $500 to actual ad spend, thus the similar ad impressions. The rest of the money was probably kept as a profit. If your digital advertising isn’t providing you with measurable results, perhaps you should ask your agency how your digital media budget is being spent. Are most of your digital marketing budget going to markup? At Ad House Advertising, we are transparent about what we do. We tell you exactly where your ad dollars are really going.