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Problems with click-bait advertising and how to avoid them (part 2)

Using click bait in ads is problematic because of misleading content and ad fatigue. Moreover, it may generate traffic in the short term but often damage the reputation and make it more difficult to reach the target audience. Publishers, advertisers and ad servers should avoid using and serving clickbait advertising if they want to build a sustainable and long-last business.

Reputation damage

When users are repeatedly exposed to clickbait advertising, they are more likely to associate all advertising with a negative experience. Click-bait advertising damages the reputation of all advertising vendors involved: advertisers, publishers and other ad serving companies wherever these ads are displayed. This leads to a loss of credibility and trust, which are very difficult to regain. Click-baiting ruins publishers’ reputation and makes advertisers lose focus of their real target audience.

To avoid this situation, carefully vet your clients, partners and ad vendors so that malicious actors cannot exploit you as a way to spam your viewers and destroy your reputation along the way. Take time to set up ads correctly by applying suitable restrictions and targeting settings in your ad server. Ads should be targeted to the right pages and match the interests of the target audience. This will help to ensure that viewers are more likely to engage with the site and with the associated ads. Landing pages must be relevant to the ads that lead to them. They should also be well-designed, engaging and provide useful information about the advertised products and services. By focusing on relevant, valuable content and being transparent and honest about your products or services, you can build trust with your audience and drive long-lasting results for your business.

Inaccurate ad metrics

Clickbait ads often have high click-through rates (CTRs) but low conversion rates because they mislead users into clicking on them with exaggerated or irrelevant promises. The click counter keeps increasing quickly but the number of leads and purchases do not follow that pattern. People will click, see a page about something else and simply abandon the site. This can waste a significant amount of advertisers’ money, especially for advertisers who are paying per clicks, CPC, because those clicks do not lead to conversions. Clickbait ads skew the data that advertisers use to measure the performance of their campaigns. This can make it very difficult for advertisers to assess what is really working and what is not. Therefore, it can lead to bad decisions about where and how much to allocate their resources.

To avoid this situation, monitor the performance of your advertising campaigns using your own ad server for advertisers or ad server for agencies and optimize them based on the results. Do not just rely on the numbers provided by a third-party vendor as it might not be accurate. Compare ad reports and investigate any major discrepancies so that you understand what the actual numbers are. Know your typical ad CTRs using historical campaign reports and use that data to compare across different publishers or partners. This can help you to identify any issues with your ads and make adjustments as needed to improve their effectiveness.

Posted in Ad Strategies by Watson F November 06, 2023

Problems with click-bait advertising and how to avoid them
"Click-bait advertising is a type of online advertising that uses sensational, misleading, or controversial headlines and images to lure users into clicking on an ad or visiting a website. The goal is to generate a large amount of traffic to a website or other online destinations without considering if the content is actually relevant or valuable to the viewer. " More
Click-bait advertising can damage your business as an advertiser
"If you have spent any time on the internet, you will almost certainly have seen an ad or a clickable headline that grabbed your attention. After clicking on the link, you are taken to a page that has very little to do with the headline you read, or which forces you to flip through countless ad-filled pages to hopefully get to the part of the story that you actually wanted to read. " More
Impact of ad skipping on advertisers and publishers
"Ad skipping refers to the practice of users skipping or avoiding ads when watching online video content. The video player will display a button “Skip Ad” when an ad becomes skippable, often after 5 seconds. " More

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