Every action hero has an origin story — a time when they were faced with a monumental challenge that seemed impossible to overcome but ultimately drove them to achieve great success.
For advertisers, that time is now. They’re faced with mounting pressure to prove ROI and maximize efficiency. But they’re struggling to make that happen in such a competitive and disjointed ad landscape.
That’s where performance advertising comes in. Instead of focusing on metrics like viewability and impressions, advertisers have the crucial opportunity to launch performance-focused campaigns that drive meaningful engagement and tangible results.
Here’s a closer look at why performance-based advertising is so important right now and how to harness its power for your campaigns.
Your Origin Story: Struggling to Drive Performance Results
This is your inciting incident. You’re under growing pressure to drive revenue and optimize spend. But it’s tough to know just how to allocate your budget. After all, you have too many ad channels and formats to choose from — and each comes with its own analytics and performance metrics. On top of that, you’re trying to shield your business from ad fraud among platforms that lack transparency.
So, where do you turn to in a time like this?
Your Kryptonite: CPM Advertising
For many years, CPM advertising has seemed like the solution to advertisers’ challenges. With CPM advertising, campaign budgets are optimized by viewability and advertisers are charged based on the number of views or impressions their ads receive. While CPM campaigns can effectively build brand awareness, they often fall short for advertisers looking to drive meaningful action.
After all, a user might scroll past an ad and technically see it, but not really register or engage with it. Despite this, advertisers still pay for each impression, regardless of whether the ad made any impact.
Advertisers’ payments don’t always yield the expected support from distribution platforms. With CPM advertising, they get paid to deliver impressions, so they don’t necessarily have to consider improving ad relevance or user experience. This, in its worst form, can lead to high ad load, where pages are filled with ads that not only fail to engage users but actually end up frustrating them. And, again, advertisers are still left to foot the bill.
So, what’s the solution here?
Your Super Power: Performance Advertising
Performance-based campaigns provide a more practical alternative for advertisers looking to maximize their budgets and drive results. Instead of prioritizing impressions with CPM advertising, CPC advertising optimizes campaign budgets based on lower funnel metrics. So, for example, advertisers are only charged when users actively click on their ads — meaning, they only pay for genuine engagement.
Publishers win here, too. That’s because this model encourages ad distributors to create placements that actually engage users, making the experience more meaningful and profitable across the board.
The Path Forward for Performance
No action hero acts alone, and the same goes for advertisers. To truly succeed, they need reliable, trustworthy collaborators and advanced technologies to guide them.
To successfully launch action-based campaigns, that is, advertisers need to work with ad partners who give them the tools to optimize placements for maximum engagement. Powered by advanced technology like machine learning and AI-driven analytics, these partners can fine-tune campaigns in real time and help improve efficiency.
Going further, the right ad partner will offer access to premium inventory across reputable sites, so advertisers know they’re reaching audiences in trusted, high-quality environments, which only enhances user engagement.
Ultimately, success in performance advertising requires all of these pieces to work together. Campaigns are more likely to meet their goals if they’re backed by robust data, advanced technology, premium inventory, transparency, and strong management support. With the right combination of these elements, advertisers can truly unlock their super powers and deliver ad experiences that achieve impactful results.
