Performance Advertising That Creates Memorable Experiences

Written by: Chloe Rowan

Digital advertising is a very competitive market, and both brands and advertisers face many challenges when developing their marketing strategies. Creative thinking and grand ideas are not enough to succeed in the digital advertising industry, but Whichit may just be the solution advertisers need to overcome the barriers they face each day.

1. Desensitisation

Display ads have been around for years, but they still follow the same formats and haven’t advanced alongside technology to keep users interested. As a result, internet users have become desensitised and the ads fade into background noise that they’re able to simply ignore.

Whichit’s ads are image-rich, fun and engaging. They gamify the display ad experience, adding interaction where the user least expects it. They appear as addictive and entertaining content in the form of quizzes, surveys and polls. Users find the style of these ads so appealing that they see a click-through rate 40 times higher than that of traditional banner ads.

See an example of Whichit ads on a publisher website

2. Ad blockers

In 2017, 615 million devices were using ad blockers, and this is a figure that’s constantly on the rise. In 2015, the high ad block download rates caused a staggering £22 billion worth of damage to advertisers, and publisher revenues also suffered.

Whichit’s interactive ad units can be shared or posted anywhere on the web, and they are not targeted by ad blockers. This means that brands and advertisers can reach a huge audience they would otherwise miss when using traditional display ads.
 

3. Data Overload

Brands and publishers are sometimes left drowning in meta-data and it can be an exhausting task to flesh out the relevant data from the irrelevant. As a result, they are unable to target their users effectively.

Whichit’s interactive ad units gain actionable insights and provide a unique way of targeting users by their preferences. The system can be easily integrated into any 3rd party CRM or Data Management Platform, streaming all data points to improve clients’ performance and targeting capabilities, and is completely GDPR compliant.

Whichit for Advertisers includes an integrated dashboard for each live campaign that allows you to monitor and analyse your campaign’s results

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More About Whichit
 

Whichit combines the brightest minds and most sophisticated technologies to create ad and marketing solutions that recapture the users' attention in an unobtrusive manner, making them WANT to engage with YOU. Founded by three professional Israeli entrepreneurs, Whichit relocated to London after winning the UKTI's Sirius Programme in 2014. In 2015, Whichit then went on to win 'Start-up of the Year EMEA' by Facebook, the Innovate UK R&D funding award, and the People's Choice Award at Pitch@Palace by the Duke of York.

Galit (Creative Director); Yarden (CTO); Jonathan (CEO)

Whichit has seen great success in its ad campaigns, and the figures really speak for themselves:

Birchbox is the UK's number 1 beauty subscription service. They launched a Whichit campaign on their website in 2016 to increase brand awareness and drive sales. Their Whichit quiz saw over 24,000 unique views, 113 social shares, and an 89% engagement rate, with 97% completing the quiz and a 31% Call-to-Action rate. Birchbox's audience loved the interaction and it was so successful that Birchbox have created 8 Whichit campaigns to date.

Birchbox achieved 97% Completion rate and 89% Engagement rate in just 10 days thanks to Whichit. Click to read full case study.

Earlier this year, 2018, Leumi Bank teamed up with McCann to increase awareness of their new app for teenagers. With an 11-day Whichit campaign, they obtained over 14,000 unique impressions with an impressive 98% engagement rate.

Discover how 'Leumi' delivered within 11 days over 98% Engagement Rate, 91,500 Total Interactions, and 95% Completion Rate, using Whichit for their campaign. Click to read full case study.

Infirst Healthcare used an 8-question Whichit quiz to promote a new pharmaceutical product, Flarin, to relieve rheumatic or muscular pain and mild arthritic conditions. The quiz was advertised on Facebook and shared on the ‘Joint Flare-up Network’, a community forum page on Facebook. The campaign ran for 28 days and saw 15,335 unique views with a 73% engagement rate, 28.5% Call-to-Action rate, and they collected over 2,300 email addresses. Considering the mature age of their target audience, these figures are very impressive.
 

Flarin's Whichit Quiz delivered a phenomenal engagement rate on Facebook, X40 higher than the average benchmark of Health and Beauty Industry engagement. Click to read full case study.

Whichit has seen success across all different verticals, including automotive, travel, entertainment, insurance, gambling, retail and fashion.

Don’t just leave the success to them. Take your marketing strategy up a notch by implementing a Whichit creative for your next campaign.

Creative Team reveals 6 easy ways to make an ad stand out from the crowd

Galit Gan
Creative Director
& Co-Founder

Juliana Soto von Arnim
Junior Digital
Creative

You may have noticed that the impact of online ads is dropping because of how intrusive they have become. While ad blocker downloads increase as people prefer not to see advertising while browsing, brands have started to look for less intrusive and more engaging ways to attract their audience with digital advertising.

Finding the perfect strategy to achieve great results in your marketing campaigns can be a long and difficult process, but it is feasible and very much lies in the creatives.

The Creative Team of Whichit is here to give some tips that can help you make the most of your advertising. Facing the constant challenge of coming up with ideas for creative and engaging ads for Whichit’s diverse client portfolio, they have accomplished extraordinary results with them in past campaigns. See some case studies here.   

Today, Whichit’s Creative Team shares with you 6 easy ways for making an ad stand out from the crowd:

1.   Appealing copywriting

People come across dozens of ads every day, therefore, you need to make sure that your advertisement captures your audience’s attention in seconds. You can get there by creating a headline your audience is interested in and is written in a way that will make them curious enough to continue reading. People pay attention to a header that is teaching them ‘how to do’ something, stating an interesting fact, asking them a question, or giving them a direct offer. When creating a powerful headline, also include the most important benefit of your product or service. Once you have it, test it and rewrite it when you see that it is not getting the expected results anymore.

For example, if your audience likes travelling, you could write an attention-grabbing headline such as ‘How to travel for free,’ or you could invite them to answer a question like ‘What’s your dream holiday destination?’. 

2.   Tell them something they don’t know

Be creative and choose to provide content that will lead your audience to engage with your ad. Start by mentioning a trending topic or a seasonal event coming up. Including numbers or statistics to support your idea is encouraged, since this will not only show credibility but also prove how helpful your product or service has been for your clients. 

Also, consider engaging your audience with a personality quiz in which the outcome is based on their preferences, for example, ‘Discover what type of traveller you are’. This type of content is always popular because the audience enjoys discovering and sharing the result they get in the end. A meaningful interaction like this will result in a loyal customer for years.

3.  Use striking images

90% of the information our brain processes is visual. People love visuals, and advertisers know it. Captivate your audience by including exciting graphics in your digital ads. Always consider the colours you’re going to use. Try not to choose a background that is too flashy, bright, or one in which your product is lost. Also, if you’re using text in the images, make sure it is readable and is not getting lost in the details of the image. Never neglect your branding and be consistent with what you include in your ads so that your audience can easily identify you.

Source: Graphix Artist

Source: Ikea by DDB Tribal

It is not about making the elements in your ad compete with each other, but highlighting the most important message. Read more tips on how to make your ad awesome.

4.   Make your ad interactive

Bringing the audience to interact with your ad will draw more meaning out of it and can result in a win-win situation for the brand-consumer relationship.

Interactive ads create a richer experience for your audience, and making them more involved will generate greater interest in the brand. But, ‘Interactive ad’ - What does that mean? Interactive ads are defined as involving mutual action between consumers and producers without having the consumer click through. Asking the user to play a little game or take part in a quiz will be a great way to increase the click-through rate of your ad, as interactive content generates 2x more conversions than passive content (source: Kapost).

Click the example to see a great idea for an interactive ad>>> 

5.   Personalisation makes the difference

McKinsey’s study found that companies using “data-driven personalisation as the core factor for marketing and sales decisions can improve marketing ROI by 15% to 20%”. Data is the key here. The clever use of data and real-time information will allow marketers to create online ads that are relevant and personalised, engaging the right people with the right information.

How can you actually do that? Walk the extra mile and split your target audience into smaller groups (by interests, ages, etc). Tailoring your message to individuals using different creative and copy will increase the chances that your ad can actually make an impact.

Retargeting is not only for advanced marketers! Ad targeting based on individual online behaviour can be easily achieved by placing a Facebook/Google pixel into your campaign. A retargeting campaign is not limited only to online advertising. A good tip is to place a Facebook pixel in emails and then retarget the receivers who open with a personalized paid ad (check how you can do that using MailChimp).

Whichit’s Creative team embraces personalisation whilst using a bespoke Call-to-Action. “While creating an interactive ad unit, we are tailoring different commercial offers, based on the users’ outcomes or interactions. This way we significantly increase the chances of the user to interact with a commercial offer that is relevant for him”, says Galit Gan, Co-founder & Creative Director of Whichit.

6.   Pick the right ad size

Effective digital ads are designed to increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website. The size of the elements you include in your ad, like logo, headline and copywriting, will determine which size is best for you. Also, a tip that will help you collect more clicks is using the most effective size ads recommended by Google.

If you’re including text over an image, use a size that will help your audience read it easily like ‘Medium Page’ (MPU) or ‘half page’ (Double MPU). If your headline and copywriting are both short, use the ‘Leaderboard’ size so they don’t have trouble reading your message, but take into consideration that in this case, your image will be minimal. Check below some ads from Ebay:

Source: eBay

That’s it for now.

Are you ready to start creating your ad?
Try Whichit and get the process started!

Whichit is an online platform that allows you to easily create your own interactive ads and run it on multiple channels. The ads are fun, innovative and undisruptive, enabling you to gain actionable insights about your audience while they interact with them, all in real time. Additionally, Whichit contains an interactive analytics dashboard that summarises the data collected from your campaign in a way that’s very easy to comprehend so you don’t have to spend hours on it.

References:
Seiter, C (2016, June 1) 8 Winning Headline Strategies and the Psychology Behind Them