Tag: pay-per-call

Tracking Publication Performance Results

MediaBids publications’ results come from several sources of raw data sets.  On a monthly basis, we collect the reports from the various places, align the data, reformat it, clean it up, and tally the results before uploading the final monthly results to our site for publishers.

What kinds of results are there?

We have three types of campaigns, but they can be a mixture as well. 

              Per Call – paid on the phone calls

              Per Sale- paid on verified sales

              Per Lead- paid on collected customer contact information

Per call campaigns, our most popular type, base the payable result on call criteria.  Typical call criteria are: call length, calls during business hours, calls within a region or zip code, and or calls that press a number to reach an operator.  Most advertisers want a caller to be on the line for one to two minutes before they consider the caller legitimate.  The Invoca platform allows us to disqualify calls which fall outside of the advertiser’s call center hours, but not all require that feature if they are collecting the callers’ numbers and calling them back.  Calls can also be qualified by a key pressed zip code or simply by the caller’s the area code, and or their exchange.   Phone numbers consist of 4 parts:  the 1-digit country code, a 3-digit area code and 3-digit central office or exchange code and a 4-digit subscriber or extension number.

Per Sale campaigns are actual sales.  Sales are determined by the advertiser and we receive monthly reports of sales for our publications.  Some of these will be set on a percentage of the sale and others are a flat rate.

Per lead campaigns are those where a customer’s details are collected during a call or via a landing page.  These are Web Leads and Post Backs.  Some advertisers use URLs/QR codes in their ads which send readers to an online lead form which collects their information on behalf of an advertiser, and then that lead information is automatically sent to the advertiser as raw data.  Those lead forms are part of the backend of the Mediabids.com system. We built and house many of the lead forms in the ads, while other leads are gathered and stored on the advertiser’s site, which then sends us as a post -back notification of a lead conversion.

Some campaigns use some deeper tech and robots listen to calls for key words that trigger a “sale”.  These are called Signals.  We use these on Omaha Steaks and on Physicians Mutual Dental.  HIPPA laws prevent recording calls for some campaigns, like the dental campaign, which is why robot ears are a fitting option for counting calls where a person took the step to sign up for the insurance.

When are final reports ready/available?

Monthly reports are available on about the 3rd business day of the month. Sometimes we run into obstacles like a big advertiser running late with their reporting to us.  Rather than report incomplete results, then report stragglers as they come in, we wait to send one complete report.  When they are complete, an automatic email is sent to all publications with active ads. 

What’s in the monthly report?

The emailed report will show you top performers and the total due to you, but if you want more information, you can hit the link in the email to the full report or log on to your account to see how much each of your active ads generated.  The reports are downloadable to excel as well.  Full reports show the monthly total, each active ad, how many qualifying responses it had and the total amount generated for each ad.

Why are my weekly totals not matching this monthly report?

Publications are emailed weekly automated traffic reports for their ads.  The automated reports give call counts and result counts for basic pay per call campaigns.  The weekly reports do not however take into account the per sale results or web-based results.  They also do not take into account the hiccups that come from phone numbers being hit with the latest SPAM.  Your monthly reports contain final payable total results. 

How do you know what calls are for my publication?

Your ads contain unique identifiers, mostly phone numbers and in some cases URLs and they are procured just for your publication.  We rent each phone number for the publications and the URLs are given unique codes from our advertisers.  These are both tracked back to your publication.  We rent phone numbers in bulk from the Invoca platform, which was somewhat recently bought by Salesforce.  The Invoca platform is integrated via API with our own custom platform which is a continually evolving system established more than 20 years ago by our inhouse developers lead by our forever CTO John Carril. Much like Invoca, our technology grows and reacts to the ever-changing requirements of the industry as a whole. . 

What is done about junk calls or SPAM, does it affect my results?

The leads are the easiest place to spot spammers.  It’s unclear what they get out of it, but you can always count on some bot or person submitting a bunch of leads with details like:rcvbe7632rwihngdvm.  Our technology inspects incoming leads requests for a variety of indicators and filters most SPAM/BOT generated leads before they even enter our system. However, the few that manage to slip by our defenses are then hand removed.  The calls that are spam are blocked by a few methods.  Some have an IVR which requires callers to press a random number to reach an operator, another asks for a zip code, and many spam calls only last 21 seconds so they never reach the qualifying call length.  There are from time to time, publications that attempt to rack up results illegitimately too.  We don’t want to give anyone ideas, but we’ve seen and delt with some sketchy people.  They are quickly delt with and removed from our system.  For all the legitimate calls, the tech built into Invoca automatically tags a call as payable if it meets the criteria as a result.  Criteria like: call length, did they press1, are they calling within the region, did they call during business hours, have they called in the past 30 days and already qualified as payable.  When the automatic spam blockers are breached, we look closer and may listen to the recorded calls. 

What details about a call are collected by the call platform?

Call Start TimeTime stamp for the time of call EST
Call Record IDUnique call id
SourceThe phone number in the ad
Promo Number DescriptionYour Ad number in our system
Original PublisherYour publication
Original Publisher ID (From Network)Your publication’s ID in our system
Call Segment PathAdvertiser
Final CampaignAdvertiser’s preferred end point for your call, can be by region or by type of ad (classified vs display
Total KeyPressesWhat numbers did the person press during the IVR process
Destination Phone NumberWhere the call is connecting to
Total DurationHow long the person was on the line total
Total Connected DurationHow long the person was on the line and connected to the system
Total IVR DurationHow long a person waits in an IVR to get to an operator
PaidAmount you get paid for the call
Payout ConditionsThis tells us which qualifiers were not hit to make a call payable
CityCity
RegionState/Provence
Repeat CallerThis is how we know if the caller has called in the past
Caller IDThe caller’s number
Phone TypeCell or landline
Signal NamesThis is where custom signal can be added to automatically tag a call based on what robots hear on the call
End of Call ReasonSometimes a caller hangs up, sometimes the call center does
RecordingA recording of the call, if applicable.

What kind of information can MediaBids derive from the data?

We have a great deal of information at our fingertips.  Advertisers have access to all their call data.  Publications can see how many calls they have had and how many converted to a payable result.  But if you look at that long list of attributes we have for phone calls, and then add to that the list of attributes we have about publications, there really is quite a bit of data we work with.  Publication attributes include things like: circulation, location, distribution, format and frequency.  But there are also attributes for the individual ads you request like: size, color, start date, ad type (classified, display).  On the advertiser side, attributes are things like: category or audience and industry.

Most publications have multiple versions of an ad and run what works for their space.  Because we do not stipulate when or how often a publication should run an ad, some statistics can become best guesses.  For instance we can guess that a publication ran an ad on a day where their phone number had call activity.  But depending on the ad and the publication, running an ad doesn’t necessarily mean calls are generated.  We also do not know which size/color ad a publication ended up running. 

We all depend on publications having a strong presence in their communities.  We depend on readers being compelled to take action by calling an ad they are interested in.  MediaBids constantly works to ensure that advertisers are doing their part to hook readers and pay top rates for the business brought their way.

Not already registered with MediaBids? We’d love to work with you! Reach us at Mediabids.com, info@mediabids.com or call 860-379-9602.

Featured

Are Your Ads Not Generating the Response You Want? Some Solutions

So, you are running ads from Mediabids in your publication but your response is not what you had hoped? This is a frustrating problem, but there are some steps we can take to try to correct things.

First, ask yourself if the product or service being advertised is really a good fit for your readership. Sometimes publications choose ads from Mediabids because they like the payout, or like how the ad looks but are not paying attention to the single most important thing, which is do your readers want what is being advertised? There are several things to consider – is the price something that they can afford? Is the product or service being advertised relevant to your area and your readership’s needs? Generac Home Generators is a great campaign, but if your publication is in an area where the power never goes out, it probably won’t do very well.

Second, are there other parts of your publication where you can use the ad? Different people seek different types of content and it might be worthwhile to try the ad in a place where a different group of people, who are more likely to respond, might be looking. Classified sections, a TMC product, or on your website are all examples of sections within your publication that attract distinct audiences.

If you feel confident that the ad is right for your audience and it still is not getting results, then we have a different type of problem and the answer might be trying a different campaign. It is ok to switch campaigns and not every ad works in every publication, sometimes for reasons that are very hard to identify. By changing the ads you are running and observing the results that they generate, you can better identify what resonates with your audience. So to do this effectively – watch the weekly reports of your results that Mediabids sends and then at the end of the month, review your results carefully. If you are running an ad and it isn’t working, let’s try something different. The goal of Mediabids’ program is to make your publication money.

If you would like suggestions or to review the ads you are currently running, please contact us at www.MediaBids.com or 860-379-9602.

How Are Phone Numbers Used to Track Results of Ads in Newspapers and Magazines?

Featured

by Vicki MacDonald, MediaBids

You might be wondering how a phone number can be used to determine how many people respond to a print ad. This brief article explains how unique phone numbers in ads can be used to track response.

First, it is important to understand that any advertised phone number can be routed to any other destination number. For example, a phone number for a local business can be routed to ring at a call center across the country, or a cell phone, or a land line hanging on the wall of that business. Think of an advertised phone number as a transparent entry point into a phone system, the number that a customer dials does not necessarily have any geographic relationship to where it rings.

The most common way to use phone numbers in print ads is to advertise using a unique phone number to determine how many people have called from each individual ad. This is possible because when a call is made and then transferred, the initial number called is able to gather and retain data on the call and caller. What this means is that by placing a phone number in a print ad and then routing it to a customer, the data associated with that call is available to the owner of the phone number in the ad, even though it rings somewhere else. Using this technique, it is easy to see how many people called an ad, how long they spent on the phone, the geographic location where the call originated and which party hung up the phone first.

Here are some things to watch when using numbers to track results:

  1. Is the transfer of the call from the advertised number to the destination occurring seamlessly?
    1. In most cases this is not an issue, but occasionally the transfer from the advertised number to the destination number can result in problems. Any glitch, static or pause can dramatically impact the results generated from an ad because callers are likely to abandon a call with poor quality or that doesn’t sound right.
      1. Our suggestion (and this is what we do at MediaBids): test the number before it is in use. Try it from a cell phone and a land line. Get someone from a different geographical area, using a different phone carrier, to try it too. If you aren’t getting a clean and instantaneous transfer, don’t use the number and contact your number provider for a solution. 
  2. Is the phone number that is being used “clean?”
    1. One big mistake that is often made when a phone number is being used to track results is assuming that just because the number is no longer in use by anyone else, no one else is calling it. For example, the number placed in an ad may have been in use for a long period of time by another business. For all you know, a plumbing business may have handed out thousands of refrigerator magnets with your tracking number on it. Just because the plumbers no longer use the number does not stop anyone with a clogged sink from calling it. This creates problems when tracking results generated by an ad because obviously, unless you want to unclog sinks, the callers are not going to be interested in what is being advertised.
      1. Our suggestion (and this is what we do at MediaBids): It is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to secure a never-before-used number. Anytime you get a number, ask for the phone records of all calls that have come into that number for 30 or 60 days prior to your intended start date. If you see that the number is getting calls from prior use, you should not use it. Those calls are unlikely to stop. Most phone number providers will disclose how long they rest a number before recirculating it but regardless of how long the number has been out of circulation, we recommend checking how many calls it is still receiving before you start using it.
  3. How do I acquire a phone number to use in an ad?
    1. There are many providers of phone numbers and what differentiates providers is often the way in which they display the data that is generated by a phone call. You can get a trackable phone number from a local phone company but it is unlikely to come with any access to a dashboard that allows you to see the results in real time.
      1. Here are a few telephone number providers we can recommend:
        1. Invoca ( www.invoca.com ) This is the company we use at Mediabids for all of our phone numbers. They have an excellent dashboard available for viewing results.
        1. Others worth considering are: Ringba ( www.ringba.com ); Retreaver (www.retreaver.com); and Call Source (www.callsource.com)

If you would like more information, or have any questions we can assist with, please email vmacdonald@mediabids.com

Players in the Perfomance Advertising Space

focus on results

Who pays a CPM for ad space anymore? A decreasing number of advertisers.

With the advent of Google AdWords, which allows businesses to pay for online advertising only when a consumer clicks an ad, a new era was ushered in where businesses no longer were restricted to purchasing ad space on solely a CPM Basis. This new era is the age of performance-based advertising, where how the ad performs is tied very closely to the cost of the ad exposure itself.

From our print corner of the world, we’ve seen this change happen gradually over the last decade. When we started, CPM was the only way to buy and sell newspaper and magazine advertising. Now, an increasing number of options are available, both in print and digitally. MediaBids offers a unique Performance-Based Print Advertising program, where we place newspapers in print editions of newspapers and magazines on a pay-per call or CPA basis.

Pay-Per-Call – Pay-per-call is becoming the marketing model of choice for advertisers who have call centers that can convert and/or are good at lead nurturing. Networks are popping up everywhere that promise businesses phone traffic on a pay-per-call basis – mostly focusing on mobile calls. Some of the big networks are Ring Partner, Call Marketplace, and Click2Call Network.

CPA/RevShare – Affiliate networks abound such as Affiliate by Conversant, Rakuten Linkshare and Impact Radius.

Pay-Per-Click – Google, Yahoo, and Bing are the granddaddies of the pay-per-click ad space but Facebook, LinkedIn and other Social Networks are offering their own platforms that provide very granular audience targeting.

Performance Guarantee – In TV and Radio, a few performance-marketing agencies exist that work on a blended performance model – often packaging a results guarantee with an upfront cost. A few companies we work with often are Barrington Media Group, who is in the radio advertising space, as well as Mercury Media, who is in the TV space but but also handles other mediums.

For advertisers, it is an exciting time where more options are available than ever before to minimize the risk of ad buying. For publishers, if you’re not thinking of how to offer a performance-based advertising model for your properties, you should be.

Post by Jess Greiner.

 

Generating Ad Revenue in Print

AdobeStock_61056169.jpeg

A recent article in The Guardian points to the challenges newspapers face attracting advertisers and maintaining ad revenue.  And yet millions of people are still picking up print editions.  Though the article comments specifically on the UK market, the same could be said of the industry here in the US.  But contrary to the sentiment the author suggests that “publishers must find new ways to convince advertisers that they have audiences worth targeting,” we would argue that publishers are tasked with finding alternative ways to monetize their product.  Convincing advertisers of the value of their readership is not enough.

While many have looked to selling digital advertising as their saving grace, there is another option.  A new revenue stream within the print property.  Per-inquiry advertising.  Yes, this involves publications taking on risk and shifting from their traditional model.  But if they are boasting engaged readership, shouldn’t they have confidence in their ability to drive response?

Advertisers are paying per response in other mediums, so is it really that unrealistic that they expect to be able to do the same in print?  They demand performance, measurability, and tracking.  Advertisers need to justify spending, after all.

Here are MediaBids, we believe in the power and value of newspapers.  Our President, Jedd Gould, has said “we at MediaBids feel very strongly that newspapers and magazines are a critical component to democracy in the United States…we really feel that without newspapers and magazines and the original content that they’re producing, we all would be worse off”.  When is this truer than in an election year?  Yet, we know the model is being threatened by economic pressures and changes in the advertising landscape.

Hundreds of publications have already adapted and teamed with MediaBids to run per inquiry ads.  While response varies widely depending on many factors such as advertising campaign and publication size, its undeniable these campaigns are driving calls and sales, thus delivering revenue to publications.  If you’d like to increase your advertising revenue and feature national advertisers in your publication, give us a call today at 860-379-9602 or learn more at https://www.mediabids.com/publication/print-advertising.jsp.

Mobile Help Now & Inogen Portable Oxygen Ads

MediaBids is pleased to offer new pay-per-call and CPL ads from two new advertisers. These ads can be run in print editions of newspapers and magazines – custom sizing is available. Publications get paid every time a reader makes a qualifying response to the ad.

New clients include:

Mobile Help Now – MobileHelp is a medical alert system that travels with folks, alerting help wherever it is needed. Request an Ad Now

Inogen Portable Oxygen  – Inogen offers a handy, portable oxygen tank that might be covered by Medicare. Request an Ad Now