It's been said that audio ads are difficult to track. But thanks to our new AudioGO Pixel, that's no longer the case anymore...
The Audio Attribution Challenge
Audio advertising is unlike any other digital channel in that it's mostly screenless. Listeners are either driving, or exercising, or in the middle of some activity when they hear your ad, so campaigns rarely generate a ton of clicks.
But we also know audio ads are extremely sticky as well. So what often happens is that a listener will hear your ad first and then later they’ll respond to it by visiting your website. Problem is, there was no way to attribute/link those visitors back to that original audio ad...until now.
Our Audio Attribution Solution
The AudioGO Pixel is our version of an attribution solution for conversions. It’s a snippet of code that tracks anyone who takes action on your audio ad by visiting your website - whether they clicked on your display banner during the listening experience or if they were to visit your site separately at any point afterwards - offering another layer of reporting to measure your campaign effectiveness by.
Key Benefits:
- Gain a comprehensive view of your campaign’s unique and total conversions in your reporting dashboard
- Determine the effectiveness of your ad’s call-to-action, that way you can make any mid-flight adjustments if necessary
- Unlock daily insights into your customer's journey, from awareness to engagement
The AudioGO Pixel is FREE to use for advertisers who’ve enabled display retargeting. Once the pixel is generated, it's only a matter of inserting it into the body element of your website's HTML code.
For step-by-step instructions on how to do so, please follow this link: https://www.audiogo.com/how-to/install-pixel. If your site is hosted on Wix, please refer to this article instead. And if you wish to know more about conversion tracking in general, we welcome you here to our help center.
Audio KPIs: the success metrics that matter
Again, audio advertising is unique among digital channels for being mostly screenless. And just like clicks, understanding your other campaign KPIs (key performance indicators) may require a slightly different approach than what you might be accustomed to with other ad formats.
Impressions. In the context of audio, an impression is a fully delivered ad play that lasts up to 30 seconds long. Now because audio is screenless, it makes these ads relatively hard to skip, so it's normal for most music, radio, and podcast campaigns to have listen-through-rates in the mid-to-high 90s. Meaning 95%+ of your ad's audience would have heard ALL 30 seconds of your entire message!
That's a whole 20 seconds longer than the average Facebook video ad, and considerably longer than the less than 2 seconds of attention we give to search and display ads.
Reach. This is a count of all the unique listeners who heard your ad. If you were to take your number of impressions and divide it by your reach, you get your ad frequency, the average amount of times a person will hear your audio ad.
What's important to note here is that your campaign's budget and targeting selections will ultimately determine all three: impressions, reach, and ad frequency. So be sure to consider your goals carefully, choose your audience wisely, and plan your media buys with our Audience Guide accordingly. The success of your awareness marketing depends on it.
Click-through-rates. While clicks aren't the most reliable way of measuring your performance, it's still worth monitoring all the same. Especially if you're using your audio ad as part of a larger multichannel campaign, because it's not uncommon to see a lot of clicks in those particular cases.
As a matter of fact, studies have even shown that an integrated mix of audio and display ads can increase engagements over 400%!
Conversions. It bears repeating again that a conversion is when anyone responds to your ad's call-to-action; and for us, that happens anytime a listener visits your website. Events that our AudioGO Pixel captures.
And of all the metrics we've discussed thus far, conversions is going to be the most telling in demonstrating the success of your audio advertising, since the AudioGO Pixel basically visualizes just how much interest your awareness campaigns are generating in real time. Giving you the chance to make any improvements to it if needed.
One giant leap for the audio adtech industry
Admittedly, it's easier to track data on other platforms than it is with audio. Still, the fact that nearly everyone listens to music, radio, or podcasts was always reason enough for marketers to buy audio ads. Albeit the smallest part of their budgets.
Because ever since the first online ad appeared back in 1994, every marketing decision after that was all of sudden driven by data. We totally get it too, any smart businessperson would want to quantify their performance and see what to attribute their successes to. For that reason, though, audio ads have been unfairly maligned by digital marketers for its opaqueness. Which is to say nothing about its incredible effectiveness, by the way.
But that was then, and this is now.
Audio advertising has fully arrived in the digital age, and the AudioGO Pixel represents a piece of technology that has the promise of closing that data gap between us and other ad formats. It effectively solves this age-old issue of audio attribution by showing you anyone who's ever acted on your ad, while also supporting the argument for why audio demands the same level of investments as your other digital channels.
Seeing is believing as they say, and conversion tracking is just the first step of proving audio advertising's true value. Depending on your business, you may very well find that audio ads are the most effective in your media mix. But the only way we can ever know for sure is by using our new AudioGO Pixel in that link below.
It's going to change the way you see your audio campaigns - and we can't wait to see ourselves what kind of success you're going to get from it!
