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Fortunately, executing an outcome to that question can be broken down into two simple outcomes: do you want to capture their hearts or their minds? Capturing both is beyond the scope of this article, but capturing either hearts or minds is easy.
The "voice of authority" in western culture is located in the upper left. A lot depends on what that voice is authorizing, but a good general rule is to place ads, images, videos that you want to make people think in the upper left.
Touching people's hearts is done in the middle right of the screen. Like the voice of authority, the "voice of compassion" depends on what that voice is compassionate about. A good general rule is to place ads, images or videos in the middle right of the screen if you want to touch people's hearts.
General demographic knowledge
Nothing beats the basics. This is true in determining where an ad -- dynamic or static -- needs to be in order to be placed in deep memory.
The questions:
- is the target male or female?
- what's the target's age?
- income level?
- education level?
- geographic location?
…are all good to know.
If "run of network" is the best you can do regarding geography, then so be it, but always remember that the more you can segment, the better your chances of success.
The success metric is going to be one of numbers. Do you want 30 percent of a 1,000,000 person market (300,000) or 65 percent of ten 100,000 person markets (650,000)?
I'll go with the latter, and doing so requires knowing more and more about how to design ads for the way people think in specific markets. I demonstrated this in "Getting Visitors in Focus" and "Know Your Audience, and Reach It."
Brand and product/service information
The next level of important information goes into the product or service and the brand that supports it. Are these new or known? What's the pricepoint? Is this campaign going out through several channels or only the web?
It's also good to know…
At this point, we start to delve into things that marketing psychologists, retail anthropologists and social theorists are curious about: questions about ethnicity, the purpose of the purchase (gift or personal), religious background, things like that.
Casale Media has been advising NextStage on the development of our Ad Placement tool that grew out of this research and suggests, "The more you can get answered the better it is."
Summary
Where to place an ad comes down to answering an increasing list of questions. You can get by with answering a few and, as in all things, greater accuracy comes from knowing more about what you want to do. Here's a simple list of Must Haves and Nice to Haves:
- Must Have: Do you want an emotional or logical response?
- Must Have: General demographics
- Must Have: Brand and product/service information
- Nice to Have: ethnicity
- Nice to Have: purpose of the purchase
There are actually quite a few questions involved, and the interdependency of them is a bit thick, hence the more you can answer the more accurate the result. This should be enough to get you started. You can also contact NextStage for more information about ad placement.
Additional resources:
iMedia Summits
The Meskauskas-Carrabis Effect
NextStage's Ad Placement Tool
NextStage Trainings
Reading Virtual Minds
Gender-Specific Marketing Discoveries Podcast
Usability Studies 101: Brand Loyalty
Joseph Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global, and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. He is also author of the Biz Media Science blog. Read full bio.
