Granular Learnings
Most of what you do will become very granular, but here we are going to start with some of those basics that will help you from day one.
This is by no means all you will need to know, and even each point here will need some expansion through a combination of natural exposure, our team teaching you as we go, and your own research. Additionally, some of this will seem random right now. But try your best to internalize, and take your time to absorb as much as possible.
- Ads are served and tracked through things called "tags." Tags track impressions, clicks, and even lower-funnel activity.
- We serve our ads using our own, dedicated ad server. Clients will typically issue us GCM (Google Campaign Manager, also sometimes referred to as DCM as it used to be called DoubleClick) tags, which we then pass through our ad server.
- You will need to understand what a marketing funnel is. The concept is simple to learn, and you just need to understand which camapaigns exist for upper-funnel, mid-funnel, and low-funnel purposes.
- Different sizes of ads exist. These are called "unit sizes" or "asset sizes." What are called standard sizes, refer to IAB standard sizes. The most common is the 300x250. Here are the common ones, which you will need to know.
- Our highest-performing assets tend to be non-standard. These change all the time, but right now they are overlay units, which float on top of a page and can be clicked closed by the user.
- Overlays include implementations of standard sizes. This means that a 300x250 standard banner is a very different unit than a 300x250 overlay.
- Different units are priced differently, in what we call CPM. CPM stands for cost-per-mille, meaning cost per thousand impressions, NOT million.
- Any given campaign will likely deploy several asset types and sizes, depending on the budget and available assets and goals of the campaign.
- These days, implementations, sizes, and relative performance benchmarks are less and less standard across the industry, but everyone knows the IAB standard sizes at the very least.
- Industry average benchmarks are 0.06% CTR for display, and 0.13% CTR for video preroll.
- 30 seconds and under is considered "short-format" or short form video. Over 30 seconds, is long form.