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A Plain English Guide to Real Time Bidding

Media Planning
April 10, 2021/by
A Plain English Guide to Real Time Bidding Since its inception in 2009, real-time bidding (RTB) has become one of the most popular ways to purchase ad inventory online. But even for experienced marketers, this type of programmatic advertising can be a very confusing concept. I, for one, get intimidated just by reading the word "programmatic." So let's break down what RTB is, how it works, and the pros and cons of using it – all while keeping it jargon-free. Before we dive into RTB, let's cover a few basics. An impression, which is when an ad is displayed on a user's screen, is the currency used in RTB. Publishers – i.e., the owners of the webpages and mobile apps on which ads are displayed – typically charge for every 1,000 impressions the ad gets. Advertisers know this as the cost per mille (CPM) and place their bids based on the value of each impression. How do you determine that value? By evaluating the user against your targeting parameters (more on that later). Are there real-time bidding platforms? There are no RTB platforms because real-time bidding is a method of purchasing impressions, not a channel. Still confused? Let's picture a real auction. Imagine you want to bid on a car. You hire someone to go to the auction for you – that's your demand-side platform (DSP). The person putting the car up for auction is the publisher and the venue is the marketplace. Raising your hand to indicate...
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How to A/B Test Your Pricing (And Why It Might Be a Bad Idea)

A/B Testing
April 10, 2021/by
How to A/B Test Your Pricing (And Why It Might Be a Bad Idea) Choosing the right pricing for your product is a little bit like Goldilocks. Too high, and you risk alienating a large majority of your potential customers. Too low, and you likely won't have enough revenue to run a sustainable business. Plus, consumers might not value your product or brand as highly if they see a much lower cost than competitors'. But how can you get it just right? That's what we're going to explore in this post. Let's dive into the pros and cons of A/B testing your pricing — and how to do it. Plus, some alternatives to A/B testing your pricing if you've determined the weaknesses outweigh the strengths.  Product pricing is undeniably one of the most important decisions for your company. Your price can determine how consumers see you in the marketplace — for instance, Ray Bans' expensive sunglasses suggests they're higher-quality than the ones I can find at CVS. Sure, the price might limit the amount of total consumers Ray Ban attracts, but the price also attracts high-intent prospects based on perceived value. This premise is known as value-based pricing: a strategy that chooses pricing based on how much a consumer believes a product is worth. I believe Ray Ban sunglasses are high-quality, and more importantly, I have a good perception of the brand, which makes me feel the sunglasses are worth the hefty price. Value-based pricing is most impactful...
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How To Design An Annual Report [+ Template & Examples]

Design Templates
April 9, 2021/by
How To Design An Annual Report An annual report offers a comprehensive overview of your business’s yearly operations. As the content in these reports is heavy-hitting, it’s essential to present it in a way that helps your audience understand and visualize your successes. These reports also incorporate various design elements that support your metrics and create a unique, creative, and visually appealing story of your business activities. In this post, we’ll outline annual report design best-practices, provide a template you can use to create your own, and go over examples of annual reports from other businesses that you can use for inspiration. What is an annual report? As a refresher, an annual report is a document created by businesses that display yearly performance, including successes and challenges. It gives a big-picture view of operations and strategies while also going in-depth on key performance metrics. Annual reports differ from weekly reports in that they address anything and everything that has happened over the past year, including content you’ve already mentioned in weekly, monthly, or any other style of report you’ve made.   Designing an annual report is a careful process, as it is crucial to find a balance between powerful graphics and clarity and understanding. Most reports contain data visualizations, like charts and graphs, to enhance the experience and really call attention to heavy-hitting metrics. Below we'll provide a template that you can use to design an annual report for your business and outline the sections that should be...
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How To Make a YouTube End Screen [+ Templates & Examples]

Youtube Marketing
April 9, 2021/by
How To Make a YouTube End Screen While certainly a source of entertainment, YouTube is also an incredible platform for marketers to use, especially since it is the second-largest search engine in the world. Its users take action based on the videos they see, as 70% of them report buying from a brand after seeing their content on YouTube. Aside from product purchases, how do you keep viewers interested in your channel and watching more videos? End screens. In this post, we'll explain what an end screen is, outline how to create one, share high-quality examples from existing channels, and recommend template options that you can use to create your own. These elements are shown over the top of the last few seconds of your videos' playtime. They are different from YouTube's automatically generated annotations because you can choose the content yourself. How to Make a YouTube End Screen You can create YouTube end screens directly in your YouTube account, and below we'll go over how to add end screen elements to your videos. 1. Sign in to your YouTube account. 2. In the top right corner, select your account icon, then YouTube Studio. 3. On the left-hand menu, select Content. 4. If you want to add an end screen to an existing video, select the video, click the pencil icon (shown below), and skip the next step. 5. If you want to add an end screen to a new video, select the Create button on...
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The HubSpot Blog’s 2021 Reader Experience Survey

Uncategorized
April 8, 2021/by
The HubSpot Blog's 2021 Reader Experience Survey At the HubSpot Blog, we love to hear feedback from our valued readers. Whether you read the Marketing, Sales, Service, or Website Blog, we invite you. to tell us about your reader experience and what you'd like to see more of from our team. All of your answers will remain anonymous. Thank you in advance for your feedback. We're excited to review your submissions and work towards making our content even better for our readers! Having trouble seeing this form? Fill it our here instead.  Loading… Did you just give us a good review? You might want to subscribe to one of our Blogs if you haven't already! Click here or on the banner below to visit our HubSpot Blog Subscription...
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What Is a Breakout Session? [+ How To Plan Your Own]

Event Marketing
April 8, 2021/by
What Is a Breakout Session? Having gone to many meetings, I can definitely say that I sometimes get overwhelmed. While I enjoy the content being discussed, I can feel tired and wish for a break to decompress before throwing my mind back into absorbing the information. I’m sure I’m not alone in these feelings, that many of us want to absorb all we can while still having the opportunity to temporarily disconnect and let our minds wander. What we’re looking for is a breakout session, where meeting hosts understand and accommodate for the need to take a break and specifically carve out time for them. This post will explain what a breakout session is, explain how to plan for a successful one, and present ideas that you can incorporate into your next meeting. These sessions are less structured than general meeting sessions, and typically allow attendees to participate instead of simply sitting in the audience and listening. While these sessions can be related to the overall meeting content, they can also focus on unrelated topics. Breakout sessions can happen during both in-person and virtual meetings. The former typically send attendees to different areas of a conference venue, and the latter use breakout room functions native to virtual conferencing tools. These sessions are especially important during virtual meetings, where there is already an element of built-in disconnection as attendees are in their own respective locations. Below we’ll go over some ideas that you can use to incorporate engaging...
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A Marketer’s Quick Guide to Dynamic Ads

Advertising
April 7, 2021/by
A Marketer's Quick Guide to Dynamic Ads Remember when you'd go to the mall, see something you liked, but then leave without it? Then you’d leave the mall and think about it the whole drive home, wondering if you made the right decision until you forgot about it. That was until you saw someone else with the exact item we wanted. Ah, the good ol’ days. Today, you can’t leave an item in your cart without it following you everywhere online. Who do we have to thank for that? Technically, a lot of people – marketers, retargeting tools, Al Gore’s internet – but for the purpose of this article, we’ll focus on one: dynamic ads. Dynamic ads allow brands to change the ads shown to users based on their behavior. Let’s dive into what exactly dynamic ads are, their benefits, and how to use them on social media platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook. Dynamic ads are often used in remarketing campaigns to reach users who have already interacted with a brand. More on that here. Static ads, on the other hand, do not adapt based on external data, so they tend to target broader audience groups for brand awareness or product launches. A banner ad can look like this: Or like this: They range in size and placement depending on the platform on which they’re displayed. The Benefits of Dynamic Ads Ad personalization is one of the biggest advantages of using dynamic banner ads. In a 2020...
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Five Lessons I Learned About Scaling a Business With Reid Hoffman

Entrepreneurship
April 7, 2021/by
Five Lessons I Learned About Scaling a Business With Reid Hoffman How great would it be if you had a panel of successful entrepreneurs and business leaders you could turn to whenever you needed help getting unstuck, or needed a daily dose of inspiration? Fortunately, that's exactly what the new Masters of Scale Courses App offers — expert advice from some of the world's best and brightest minds, guided by Reid Hoffman. The first course is all about The Mindset of Scale. Here's what I learned from the first two lessons. 1. Ask "Why not?" and "What if?" Start by asking two important questions — "Why not?" and "What if?" — whenever you encounter something that makes you feel a strong emotion. For instance, think about the last time you experienced sticker shock or frustration over waiting in a long line. Those simple questions have sparked countless successful products and businesses — including Virgin Airlines. In his own words, here's Richard Branson: "35 years ago, when we started , the big carriers were dreadful. And on one of those flights coming to the Virgin Islands, I got bumped, which is a sort of typical thing that airlines did in those days." Of course, being Richard Branson, he didn't pass the time by staring woefully at the departures board. Instead, he asked one of those powerful questions: What if? What if he didn't have to wait for the next flight? What if he created a flight of his own? "So...
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