AdReady

When it comes to online marketing, are you a do-it-yourselfer? Do you do search marketing directly through Yahoo! or Google, or do you have an SEM provider?

The accessibility for display advertising is starting to change, with several publishers and platforms now offering self-service portals that enable marketers to create, run and optimize display campaigns, all without speaking to a salesperson. These systems allow anyone, including those who are completely new to interactive media, to target the right users with an engaging display advertisement that can be optimized to improve ROI.

When choosing a self-service provider here are a couple of things to consider:

• Is your self-service publishing provider able to assist with your creative development needs? Do they offer customizable creative options as well as the ability to upload your own ads? Can you use your logo and color palette to maintain your brand image?
• How easy is it to make minor changes to test your call to action or message? How easy is it to make major revisions to completely overhaul your campaign? Truly effective self-service vendors link your campaign management interface directly to their ad server, so that you can test multiple campaign parameters quickly, and when it is convenient for you.
• Are you able to manage multiple publishers in one interface? Having access to several publishing channels in one place saves you the time of having to login and maintain multiple accounts across multiple websites. Reviewing your performance data is also much easier when it is all within the same reporting structure and all on one page. Access to all of this in one location enables you to quickly gauge publisher performance and find the most successful outlet for your message.
• Look for “bidded” inventory options available from self-service vendors. The best self-service options sell media in an environment that lets you optimize your pricing and delivery based on market parameters.

With the rise of display media exchanges, all of the best practices and advantages that you learned from using the self-service marketing tools from Google and Yahoo! apply to the new world of performance display advertising.