With an analysis of 2,913 trade media campaigns placed with 180 media outlets across Asia, Europe and North America, Publitek’s latest independent research report demonstrates exactly what works and what doesn’t when it comes to digital advertising in B2B electronics media.

When you’re trying to reach engineering audiences, the results could enable you to drive better deals with publishers. They could also boost your ROI dramatically by ensuring you select the best advertising formats. They could help you time your advertising for maximum effect too.

B2B publishers now offer many different forms of digital advertising. For example, you can run online banners, those deeply irritating ‘boom boxes’ that briefly block the content you’re trying to find, ‘towers’ up the side of the page, or ‘native’ advertisements – what we’d call ‘advertorial’ when it’s in a print medium. You might sponsor a publisher’s e-newsletters, or have the publisher create a custom e-newsletter, which we call electronic direct mail, or eDM. But unless your media budget is substantial, it will take a considerable time before you’re able to draw meaningful conclusions from the data that your campaigns generate.

Perhaps not surprisingly, publishers have been reluctant to publish aggregate data that points you towards the most effective formats and timing for your advertising. If they did, only a few formats would be adopted, and every advertiser would be chasing the same few slots. You’d then be able to compare like-for-like data between publishers and negotiate harder to optimize your ROI.

Our analysis involved 943 online banners, 1,291 publisher e-newsletters, and 679 eDMs (client-dedicated email promotions sent via lists rented from publishers). These campaigns generated over half a million clicks through to client websites. The report focuses on the relative performance you can expect from each of these channels, depending on your advertising objectives. It then takes a deeper dive into each channel, comparing results across media outlets, countries and regions, advertising formats, and more.

The most comprehensive research ever published about B2B electronics trade press advertising

Here are 12 highlights of the report’s findings:

Channel comparisons

  1. For raising brand awareness, measured in terms of advertising impressions, the best channel is over 10 times as cost-effective as the worst.
  2. On a cost-per-click measure, the best channel for traffic generation is 6.6 times as cost-effective as the worst.
  3. In terms of engagement, the click-through rate for the best channel is 27 times that of the worst.

Online banners

  1. With the optimum size of online banner, you’ll generate seven times the click through rate of the average across all banner sizes.
  2. In terms of cost-per-click, choosing the right size for your banner advertisement will deliver 63% better ROI than the average across all banner sizes.
  3. It costs nearly three  times as much to reach online audiences in APAC as it does in Europe; the US is in between. The research report includes the precise figures.

e-Newsletters

  1. The report reveals the best day of the week for sending these. By getting it right, you’ll achieve 35% higher click-through-rates than sending them on the next best day.
  2. Banner size has a huge impact on cost-per-click (CPC); and the format that garners the highest response rate, with an average CPC of just 45 cents (US) is revealed.
  3. Click through rates in one particular month, are double the average rate through the whole year. The research shows how to time your campaign to take advantage of this.

eDMs

  1. Choosing the best weekday for eDMs delivers over eight times the click-through-rate of the worst weekday. And there’s a surprise about click-through rate (CTR) at weekends.
  2. The average cost-per-click (CPC) is similar in APAC, Europe and the US, but variances between individual counties can be as much as 37:1.
  3. Sending eDMs in the best month gives a 2.5 times CTR advantage over the average figure, and it’s not the same month that is most effective for e-newsletters.

You can spend a long time trying to win relatively minor discounts from publishers. But armed with the insights from this report, you’ll be able to negotiate better, plan more effectively and boost ROI by multiplying your campaign effectiveness.

Download the report here.