Hulu Certified Advertiser

Hulu Certified Advertiser

Traffic Oxygen is proud to announce that we are now a certified advertiser on Hulu which is a leading streaming service that offers instant access to live and on-demand channels, original films, and a premium library of TV and movies to subscribers.

 

BENEFITS

Traffic Oxygen is now Hulu Certified, which enables our customers to use cross-channel video advertising capabilities through programmatic ad buys that reach 72 million viewers watching on streaming devices.  Local targeting is available for small to mid-sized businesses.

 

TRANSACT

There are two ways to transact:

  1. In the Private Marketplace (PMP).  This is typically for Ad Spends of under $100k/mo.
  2. Make direct arrangements with Hulu on an Invite-Only Auction (IOA) or Unreserved Fixed-Rate (UFR).  This is for larger projects with ad spends over $100k/mo.
  3. Minimum ad spends per month starting at only $5,000/mo.

PARTNERS

Our partners who perform the ad serving and measurement include:

  • DoubleVerify
  • Celtra
  • Flashtalking
  • Integral Ad Science
  • Sizmek
  • Pixalate
  • MOAT
  • GoogleCampaign Manager

CREATIVE DETAILS

Here are the creative guidelines for advertising on Hulu:

  • HQ, compatible format with res 1920×1080 for 16:9 or 1400×1080 for 4:3
  • Third-party VAST must include Inline VAST (no wrapper), no VPAID files and at least one file is MP4 with res of 1920×1080 / 1440×1080, bitrate > 15,000kbps

 

Interested in doing some advertising on Hulu?  Give us a call today and learn more about how you can get in front of a focused viewing audience.  1-888-755-4409 Ext 101

Customer Lifetime Value – Why It’s So Important For Good Marketing And How To Calculate It

Customer Lifetime Value – Why It’s So Important For Good Marketing And How To Calculate It

Oh, customer lifetime value. The metric all businesses should know, but when the question is asked, you get a response similar to an answer on Family Feud, stumbling, guessing, and probably not even close to the real answer.

But why is this metric so hard for companies to come up with? We all know the sale price of our products. Are we not tracking repeat customers? Not tracking averages order sizes? maybe there’s nothing being tracked!

And that’s the root to a major marketing problem. How can we run good advertising if we have no idea how much a customer is worth to you?

This usually results in an outcome of a business blaming a marketing company that they are getting no ROI when in fact, it’s that business just deflecting the fact they actually have no idea what the ROI is they need.

WHY LIFETIME VALUE IS SO IMPORTANT

See, most companies base their marketing efforts off the sale of one product, one time.

What you’re telling me is your product is one of two things, so good nobody ever needs to buy it again, in which case, you better be charging an arm and a leg, or two, your product is so bad you don’t have repeat customers.

My guess is neither is true. So let’s figure out a real customer lifetime value.

We are going to use a restaurant as an example.

Basic numbers:

Average one person order: $20

Average party size: 4

Making your average order: $80

This is all information a restaurant would know in two seconds.

Now, let’s assume you have great food, great service, pretty reasonably priced restaurant.

Humans eat out a lot. A typically family or party of 4, may come back twice a month.

Perfect, so now we are at $160 of revenue each month per party of 4.

But that’s just for the month. People don’t stop eating after a month. After a year, that party of 4 is now worth $1,920 ($160*12).

Doesn’t stop there. The average family lives in a house 4 years. Assuming you continue to be amazing, that ONE family of 4 makes you $7,680 ($1,920*4 years).

Wow, that escalated pretty fast. What I’m trying to say is, in all reality, you should be willing to spend $7,679 on marketing to get one new customer.

Now, I understand that’s not realistic. You can’t come out of pocket that much in hopes to finally turn an ROI in 4 years.

Let’s get realistic and say 3 months to turn an ROI.

That still puts us at $480 in revenue per 1 new customer/family acquisition. Any marketer, even a really bad one, can get you a CPA (cost per acquisition) of a restaurant under $480.

LET’S BREAK THIS DOWN

Month 1:

Marketing spend – $480

New customer – $160

Net loss – $320

Month 2:

Marketing spend – $480

New customer – $160

1st customer – $160

Net loss – $160

Month 3:

Marketing Spend – $480

New customer – $160

1st customer – $160

2nd customer – $160

Net loss – $0

Month 4:

Marketing Spend – $480

New customer – $160

1st customer – $160

2nd customer – $160

3rd customer – $160

Net gain – $160

In 3 months, nearly worst-case scenario CPA, you’re generating a break even, soon to be positive ROI marketing campaign.

THAT’S NOT EVEN COUNTING REFERRALS!

If you have a referral incentive program or you truly are great, you can bet each one of those customers is telling their friend. Now you have a break even campaign the 2nd month!

And the best part about marketing (good marketing), the longer marketing goes on, the better campaigns can be optimized, drastically dropping CPA.

Here’s the problem we see a lot. Business’s don’t know their customer lifetime value or don’t know how to track it on their end, then blame the marketer for not being able to tell them how much money they are making from marketing.

The honest truth, it’s not a marketer’s responsibility to tell you how to determine your lifetime value. It’s our responsibility to track what’s generating a new customer. It’s our responsibility to tell you what’s generating positive responsive, creating and optimizing campaigns and creatives, and getting your message to your ideal audience.

In order to track what channels are generating sales and new customers, you’ll either need a 3rd party reporting tool or set up goals in Google Analytics. Setting up goals is something whoever helps you with marketing should be able to do. It may be something you’ll need to pay for as it can be a quite exhausting task depending on the scope of your business.

SUGGESTION

If you really want to have your marketing channels tracked with known revenue, set up Google Analytics properly (this obviously only applies to online only transactions). It will tell you everything you need to know when set up correctly. This includes setting up all the proper goals and dollar amount (use lifetime value) when that goal is completed.

If this sounds daunting, hire a professional. Many marketing companies can do this or use something like UpWork and hire a Google Analytics expert, probably cost around $500 for a really good setup.

SUMMARY

It takes a lot to run good marketing. If in the back of your mind you know you need more marketing or want to better utilize marketing, figure out your customer lifetime value first. This will allow you to have a much more realistic conversation with your internal marketing team or agency you hire.

 

Cannabis Digital Marketing – Should You Even Try?

Cannabis Digital Marketing – Should You Even Try?

CBD is legal in all 50 states, but Google and Facebook won’t let you advertise. THC is legal for adult use in many states and medicinal marijuana is approved in many, and yet you still can’t advertise on these major digital platforms. Wholesale products, auxiliary products… if you hint at cannabis even on the landing page or if your color scheme uses the same HEX codes as Leafly, your campaign goes up in smoke. (Pun intended).

You have the constant frustration of “I’m in California, my ads are in California, cannabis is legal in California, but I can’t advertise in California?”

But at the same token, Tobacco is legal, with tons of advertising restrictions. Fitness is very legal, tons of advertising restrictions. Cryptocurrency advertising – yeah, good luck. Guns… the list goes on.

Good marketing is about adapting. Adapting to your audiences. Adapting your offer. Adapting your targeting strategy. So in order to have a strong cannabis digital marketing effort, you need to adapt.

cannabis digital advertiting agency

Who Sets The Regulations?

Regulation of ads is done by the advertising platforms, Google, Facebook, Twitter, and 100s of other ad networks.

In general, they all follow suit. Something is illegal on Google, probably going to run into the same issues on Facebook.

As much as we all may want, they don’t operate on a state-by-state basis. They make global policies that apply to the entire network and because the drug is still illegal federally, they will play by federal law.

It’s important to keep in my these platforms operate to give the user (not the advertiser) the best experience possible. They need to limit the number of complaints from parents seeing cannabis ads pop up on their 18-year-olds iPad and then their child trying to explain to the parent why they are getting cannabis ads. Nobody is winning.

Along with this, even if you find an ad network willing to run your ad, the website that’s connected to that ad network would need to allow cannabis ads to show. And guess what, most websites don’t. Just like the ad networks, they care about the user experience on their website.

So, How should I advertise?

There are two types of advertising. Push and pull.

Push advertising

is just as it seems. Your pushing products, offers, and information out to the world. This is how most companies do advertising and this is mostly what does not work with cannabis advertising.

Pull advertising

This is when you are pulling consumers to your website and your social media channels, creating interest around what you do and the content you product.

This is where cannabis sites can win. Create educational content.

  • Safety Tips
  • What If I Take Too Much?
  • What’s The Average Cost?
  • Is It Illegal To Drive?

Once a user is on your site, you can control what type of offers they see, so your goal needs to be “how do I get users to my website” not, “how can I sell them through advertising.”

Final Do’s And Don’ts

Do…

Make an attempt to advertise your business, but keep it clean.

Create a version of your website that is educational only, only products.

Do make the ads very neutral. Your goal should simply be brand awareness, not sales, leads, or anything else. Simply letting people know within 5 miles of your business that you exist (if they can’t smell you).

Do create a great social media presence. You can post all day along about cannabis on Instagram.

Don’t

Use words like cannabis, pot, weed, or anything along those lines in your ads. They will never get approved.

Don’t use any cannabis-related imagery, mainly don’t use a leaf in any part of the ad.

Don’t direct people to a website that sells any sort of product, even CBD oil that’s legal everywhere. The ad networks WILL reject it. Believe it or not, they actually do go look at the websites ads are pointed to.

Summary

Running a cannabis digital marketing campaign for your store or business is not impossible, but it’s extremely difficult.

The best strategy is to create educational content, AD value to users, and go into the advertising campaign with no goal of sales.