Bidding Strategy Key to Original Miami Beach Antique Show Online Ad Campaign

Encore client, The Original Miami Beach Antique Show (OMBAS), which featured nearly 1,000 exhibitors from around the world last month, ran millions of online display ad impressions to drive attendance.

More ads were purchased through online auction marketplaces than ever before.  These types of real-time bidding (RTB) ad buys are much different than traditional publisher-direct (site-specific) ad buys, especially when it comes to pricing.

Differential pricing/bidding strategies is one of the ways this organizer maximizes results from its growing RTB ad spend.  Here is a look at three of them…

– OMBAS adjusted its bids across the campaign flight window.  RTB provides a faster feedback loop than traditional online ad buys so you can quickly apply what you learn.  The organizer boosted its bids multiple times during the campaign for well performing segments and in order to achieve delivery objectives against priority target audiences.  To give you a perspective on the potential variances, OMBAS tripled its bid over the flight window for one segment.

– OMBAS bid higher than its ceiling prices.  The organizer used richer bids than it was willing to pay for impressions/clicks because the RTB ads are sold through second price auctions, where the winner pays just one cent more than the second highest bid.  Due to the mechanics of this auction model, the clear prices that OMBAS actually paid were much lower than its ceiling prices, and this strategy enabled OMBAS to win more ad auctions than those who bid too conservatively for the same audiences.

– OMBAS bid more for ads served to audiences with higher intent.  The audiences which show the most purchase intent (i.e. most likely to buy a ticket) as defined by activity on the show web site are considered to be potentially the most valuable to OMBAS.  As a result, the organizer bid more for ads against this group than it did for other demo, interest and behaviorally targeted audiences.

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Posted on March 2, 2015