What makes a Top Ad?

Impact Engine, developers of an ad platform that allows a typical production person to build a premium ad in minutes, now has hundreds of premium ads running at any given time. 

This month the company posts an award of $250 for June's Top Ad wnner, plus a special bonus of $750 to the best campaign that uses premium ad formats - sliders, push-downs, take-overs, and other premium ads.

(If you have a great local marketing campaign click here for details and to enter.)

So after seeing the good, the bad and the ugly in local ads created by media companies, what does the team at Impact Engine think makes a top ad?

Bryan Depew, VP Product Development/Co-Founder at Impact Engine  us some answers:

"You need to start with the client's goals, obviously, and what gets attention and interest," he said.

"However, the fact that digital ads have always told you exactly how many clicks you get, advertisers can get overly focused on CTR as the only measure of a digital ad's success.

"We spend a lot of time with our media clients teaching them to move away from click-throughs as the primary metric.

"A top ad is one that garners eyeballs, interactions with the ad unit and clicks through to the site."

So what is it about clicks that is misleading?

"A click is like the cherry on top of the sundae... but don't ignore the sundae underneath," he said.

"Our analytics tell you, first off, did the ad show up? Then how many people hovered over the ad with their mouse, then how many interacted inside the ad unit.

"In my opinion, the criteria for a Top Ad is how much engagement and overall impact the ad has overall, including click-throughs to the web site, but also interactions within the ad unit itself."

So is the use of video and audio for premium ad units on the increase?

"Where we see the media moving is very much in a television-style direction. With large format premium ad units, we are getting closer and closer to the methodology of television, in which you are taking a break by viewing an ad... then going back to consuming content."

"Video lends itself to this. It is super-compelling. People are used to seeing it, and it draws the eye and keeps it there.

"Audio is typically heard conjunction with video. Due to IAB standards, it is turned off unless turned on, so it is secondary to the video content itself. However, knowing how many viewers manually turned on the audio portion of an ad is great data for the advertiser."

Many thanks again to Impact Engine for sponsoring June's Top Ad Awards. Don't forget to enter here by May 30.

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.