Mobile Advertising Opens New Opportunities for Ad Testing
With its surge in popularity and revenue generation—thanks to the growth in social and mobile technologies—online advertising needs no introduction. Google is a classic example of an empire built on advertising revenues. Its ad revenue numbers are mindboggling. A whopping 96 percent of Google's overall revenue was generated through advertisements in 2011. This stream of ad-driven revenues is only continuing to rise industrywide.
Successful ad campaigns involve efforts from both sides of the coin—the advertiser and the platform that is hosting or publishing the ad. Imagine Facebook, Google, and Bing as the platforms on which your advertisement is published. In order to avoid unwanted distractions and to ensure the platform experience is rich for the end user, publishers are being very careful and selective about the kinds of ads they run, the positioning of ads, and how they are displayed.
For example, Google has recently taken a more strict position on ad placement on Android applications, a move expected to have a $150 million hit in ad revenue. Facebook is beefing up its video ads but is currently testing the waters on how and when these video ads will autoplay so they are relevant and not annoying to the company’s more than one billion users.
Advertisers are obviously going to target the right places to advertise based on careful analysis of ad words and keywords that the platform provides, and software testing can play a vital role in deciding where to place those ads. Tests based on regional relevance, message effectiveness, UI, audience appeal, and performance of your ads are a great place to start. One of the more popular tests suggested is the A/B, or multivariate, test to see how users react to different versions of your advertisements.
Publishers, advertisers, and testers are all learning new technologies when it comes to effective online advertising, and this growing trend is only going to continue with the right implementation and testing on the ground.
