043. The Case Against Audience Networks on Ad Platforms

Foreign this is Emilio Garcia from Boundify. Welcome to another episode of Demand Gen Studio. With me is Gavi Garcia. How are you, Gavi?

Hi, Emilio. We're fine. How are you?

Good, good. Having a good Friday. I'm happy to be with our audience today, as always, almost every other week. And today we have a very interesting topic. We're going to talk about the audience networks across different app platforms. And we're calling it kind of like the case against them. But in true matter, what we are going to do is to talk about what they are and the pros and cons and just, you know, help markers to be aware of when they do make sense and not just blindly follow add platform recommendations and using them. So that's kind of like the idea today. I don't know. Gabby, you want to start with, you know, part of the topic on what they are, I guess.

Sure. Like you said, we're going to talk about the case, right. Because it is a controversial type of thing because of the advantage and disadvantages that audience networks has or have. And I would like to start telling people about what are audience networks and they actually are places that features apps or advertisers for placing their obviously ads. And this will enable advertisers to partner with other websites so they can have more reach, they have more exposure for their ads or for their needs. So basically that's what in you know, like tiny words? Yeah, like audience networks work. I mean there's, there's a lot of behind them, but this is like the, like a really resonant type of, of thing.

Yeah. And I think before diving into the pros and cons, it will be helpful to answer the question why do they exist to begin with? And you know, put in just an example. So sometimes markers will pick a platform for whatever reason, mostly should be because your audience spends time there, Right. So you, you can pick something like Facebook ads or Google display ads or even search and you will have also LinkedIn. And usually what happens is that you will ask the question, well, if I am already investing all this time and building the assets, right. The text, the copy, the images, the videos, and I have the audience itself and the platform provider has information about my audience in other places, then it is possible in theory to take the same assets and show them to the audience that I have selected in places outside of that network. Right. Meaning if Google is showing my ads on search, maybe that information or that ad can be shown on other search engines that Google might partner with or in the case of display and social media, maybe LinkedIn has a special relationship or partnerships with other websites or exchanges where the same assets and the same audience can be targeted outside of LinkedIn. That's the lure, right? Or at least the reason why they do exist. And before going into the pros and cons, I want to highlight that usually advertising networks will default to adding that audience network plus the audience expansion, which I think is a whole thing that we also need to talk about in a later episode. So they are selected by default. And that's the reason I think it's important to talk about it. Because if you don't pay attention to it, probably you are showing up outside of the platform that you intended for. And that's, for me, the biggest point. The point is that be aware that you think you are advertising only on LinkedIn or you think that you are advertising only on Facebook. Probably you are not. Because if you have turn on audience expansion or not artist expansion, audience networks, probably you are advertising in other places that maybe you don't have an idea of what places are those. Right. So that's probably the, the biggest reason why have a conversation about it.

Yeah. And, and they might not be like you said, covering those factors that we are going to talk about like the, the principal ones that advertisers should be focused on, which is what audience is showing. Right. Or what, what type of audience is now reaching to through audience networks. And that, that is the main point about this. Like the most controversial, um, topic that we're going to talk about is, is going to be like the audience, like where is your ad or your ads showing on other platforms?

Yeah. So if, because that's how we structure for today, we will cover the positives and the negatives and obviously some recommendations. So Gabby, do you want to cover the positives? Sure.

Well, for the positive aspects about audience networks, we have like wider reach.

Right.

Like the main point about audience networks is you have these other platforms that you can actually reach people. They might not be the, the best audience at the beginning because this is something that we're going to talk about too, which is you, you will start structuring that audience throughout the time. A recommendation for using audience networks when, when you're, when you're trying to reach more people, it's that at least on, I'm going to talk about an example of Facebook, right. When you're trying to use audience networks, you have to first be aware that your campaigns are actually working like the ones that you're showing on your feed and stuff like that, because that's the way that your, when you use audience networks, your reach is going to be more specific and it's not gonna be showing to like you said, places or other platforms that are not actually aligned with, with your audience. And how wider reach works in audience networks is, is that like audience networks will help you to reach a wider audience and other, on, on other websites or other apps that actually has partnered with that, with this app like I don't know, like LinkedIn or Facebook or either social media that has enabled audience that works for you. And the main reason is because they have a larger number of access to a larger number of third party websites that actually are on online. That's the main point about wider reach. I don't know if you have a comment on that, on this, something that you want to say about it because.

No, I agree and I'm throwing you under the bus there. Without talking about it, you probably those of you listening, Gabby helped me a lot with research on these topics, but I'm challenging her to also contribute to the conversation. Right. So I'm throwing her under the bus because maybe I, I didn't ask her, you know, you're going to come for this part. But, but generally the, the positive is, is leverage is scaling because as I was saying at the beginning, you already invested all this time on those assets. So with just one click you can reuse or recycle all your effort and just show up in a different place. And I think that's the, the biggest advantage of the network itself. There's also some relative advantages, especially for networks that are quite expensive on their own. The native ones, the biggest example nowadays is not as expensive, but it still is a very expensive display network. LinkedIn is, is, you know, the cost per reach, the cost per impression, the cost per, you know, 1000 impressions is quite high compared to typical display networks. So if you, if you add audience networks, you will be able to reduce the cost of impression and therefore the cost per click. And potentially that's the theory, you will reduce the cost of conversion, right? You will acquire leads and hopefully clients at a lower cost because you are showing your ads on networks that are not as expensive. So for me those are the two positive is that if you are being measured or compensated or incentivized to some particular metrics that are related to cost. Right? Or if you are short of time and you only have budget to show in one network, audience network is helpful because allows you to extend the reach without investing a lot of time and resources in a second or a third Network, Network. If you start just with one, that's for me the biggest allure. But that I think land us very quickly into the negatives of it, right? Which is as we usually talked about, sometimes you are trying to optimize for something, when in reality we should be optimizing for something else. So, for example, there's a reason why the cost per click and the cost per impression in LinkedIn is higher. And it's because you have this implicit guarantee that the impression itself or the viewer is your intended buyer, right? It's very hard. Let me put you an example. It's very hard on LinkedIn to get a false impression, meaning I think I'm targeting the CEO of a Fortune 500 company on my impressions. But is not the case. It's very hard for that to happen on LinkedIn because the only way to see those ads is that you log in into your account and you have stated your job title and profession and all that. And only if you are making like a fake profile, you might be dismissed or misguided. But if that's the case, then probably it is the CEO, the one that is looking at the ad. The moment that they scroll in their feed, it's very, it's very hard not to be the case. However, the moment that you start saying, well, I have the cookie on this person and now I'm showing some ads on a website or even an app, especially an app, right? Like a phone app, the challenge is that it may be one of his kids using the phone or someone else, right? Browsing the website on the computer. So the probability that someone is, you know, someone is different from what you are targeting is higher. And also the impression itself is competing with way more real estate on website and apps, right? On websites, that ad probably is one of many, right? And they're reading some other piece of content. If it's like a news website or in the case of an app, probably that impression, even the click might be, you know, misclick, right? They said click because I was trying to get my, my gems and my points for Candy Crush. To put an example. I'm not saying that that impression is. Doesn't have some value, but definitely it's not the same value as the, the impression that you wanted on LinkedIn. And that's the cross. If, if you are dedicating budget to LinkedIn because you already have auto efforts on display or other means to reach audiences on websites and apps, why dilute your effort expanding into an audience that already have some way, right? And especially going back into the metrics. You will go back to your boss and say look at the amazing cost per impression and the amazing cost per click that I have on LinkedIn, right compared to maybe my competitors or what I have seen on benchmarks. When it's not true, when you turn that thing on and you can run a little bit experiment on that depending on the audience sometimes. And LinkedIn will show you that on the breakdown on the segments, sometimes half of your clicks or more will come from the audience network rather on LinkedIn, right. So you will get this misrepresentation that you are truly showing on feed when reality you are showing up a lot outside. And obviously the other challenge that we have some networks are more transparent about it than some others is that you don't truly know what are the websites you are showing up. Typically the native network doesn't show what websites you show up, what formats or sizes were more popular or are getting more impressions and clicks, where the ad is being placed. All the things For Facebook and LinkedIn you will know because they will have reports for desktop mobile, you know it was infeed, it was in messenger. So you have plenty of information on the native format. But on the audience network you have, you will have no idea beyond the breakdown between on and off network that's usually the most that they will tell you. And I know LinkedIn will share with you the list of the top domains that show up. But other networks are not as transparent. And so there's also the concern of brand safety, right. That might not be relevant for every company but some companies are wary of showing up in specific places. And Google directly will, if you are advertising directly on Google for display will have these safeguards on mature content, conflict content, you know, even gaming and gambling. And you can select what you want and to some extent control better that but, but if you do it on, on a native platform social media probably you will not have those controls at least not yet. So it will be a concern.

Yeah, I get that point about abroad about brand safety actually was I was searching for this and LinkedIn has like a quality and brand safety with the audience network and now they, they have like a like rules and obviously upholding like link link brand safety standards. They have really up, up standards to places or sites and the people there actually is on the website, right. So they have like this, this document that they explain to you why they are committed to brand safety and they will tell you that the audience that you're going to aim obviously is going to be the most like closer to the ones that you are actually targeting in the first place and they are committed to it. And every single time once in a while they, they have like this even automated on Monique quality checks so they, they will search for those places or sites that are not aligned to, to your targeting audience and they will obviously will check if, if those places are safe. And they have like really up, up standards. And this is, this is obviously kind of new, right? So it's not, it's not that this has been happening all the time, but they are now, they have exposed this like in 2020 and, and now it's like a must do for them like this has to happen. So they are committed to it. And when you, when you, I guess when you expose this kind of information now you have like the responsibility to obviously deliver it. So I guess that this is now like an advantage which wasn't years ago and now it's more like you can have certainly that, that you're going to be now that you can care about things that you are, you're going to focus now and give that brand safety like a, like a place to, to be. It's not going to be a worry anymore, at least not as the same as years ago. And this is something that I, not only LinkedIn but obviously to other social has to be keep on the track. And Facebook does it too in a different way obviously. But they are committed to it. It's not that they're not aware, they are aware, but it's just that there's a lot of information, there's a lot of places that they have to check. Obviously it takes time and it's not that you're not going to be able to cover all of them, but they are trying to and they are committed to it. So I think that's a really, a really important thing and obviously because now with the help of automation it makes, makes it easier to reach that objective.

Yeah, but it's an arms race because ad platforms come up with different novel ways to prevent fraud and fraudsters will come up with new ways using the same tools. Right, Using automation to disguise, you know, deceive them, for example. I know that obviously it's very easy to create a bot that clicks on ads, right? Something that is harder to control outside of native platforms. You can also create fake profiles, but the process is a little more convoluted. But if you do it on website, it's easier to just put something that clicks on ad even without the user awareness or just reload it. So you might say Well, I will reward conversions. That way I will have true people that will fill forms. Well, you can also create a bot that fills forms, right. And provides reasonable or believable enough information that you think you are, you know, getting those, those conversions and those leads. So it is, it is challenging and that's why you want to. It will never, as you say, will never be perfect. But you want to reduce the chances that you are not showing up where you intended. So I think those are the potential challenges. But at the end of the day obviously there are some recommendations. So as probably the biggest goal of this conversation will be just be aware. Just being aware. I will say that if your resources are limited and you only have time and money to show up in one network, right, just LinkedIn, just Facebook or just display and you want to improve the reach of your campaign within the parameters that you have, right. Then using audio network makes sense. And if you want to go the extra mile, I will set up a campaign with just your native platform and another one with your the same parameters, native platform plus audience network and then you have control over the budget, right? That way you, you decide how much you dedicate to the native and how much you dedicate to the one that is blended which usually will happen is that the blended one will spend most of the money on the audience network on anyway. So you can consider that your investment on the audience network if that makes sense. So that will be the case where I will recommend testing and exploring and also right testing if the extended reach works for you and is bringing you value in the form of not only conversions but actual business. However, if you already have display effort of sorts even either from Google or from ABM tool that is showing a pro programmatic ads across the web and then you are investing extra on native platforms like LinkedIn or TikTok or Reddit because you want a specific that specific audience and that specific format. It makes no sense to turn on audience network because you already have the investment in other platforms, right? Stick to the reason why you started it and turn it off. That's generally the recommendation obviously will depend on what people is trying to accomplish. But again most important recommendation will be be aware. Check as much as possible where your ads are showing up and be mindful of the split between the investment that is going to your native network versus the investment that is going to the audience one. So I think, I don't know if you Gabby has any other comment.

Yeah, yeah, I think that like you said, it will always reduce to what are your objectives as A, as a marketer, as an entrepreneur, whoever that you're trying to, to make this effort for exposure. Because this is the main objective of, like I said, of audience that works is exposure and reach. And it will always depend on what are your, what your objectives are. And like you said, you have to be aware of the risks and challenges that it comes with it. And not only be aware, you have to be prepared. Like if you, you should know that these things can happen and you should have like a plan to it, not just know that it might or it might not happen. You have to, to be prepared for, like you said, whenever you have like a, I don't know, like reunion or telling someone that you know this is not working, you shouldn't, you should have like a plan to it and like you said, to leverage that, that effort, you should know where to place that investment. If you're using display, if you're using Facebook, if you're using LinkedIn, which one is going to work the best? If it's more friendly. On the, on the topics that we discussed about, about brand safety, about quality, about transparency and topics like that, then you should be, you should be considering those points before trying audience networks or trying advertising on those platforms. And I think that that's something that you should keep in mind.

All righty. Well, I think we are done for today. The only thing that is left for us is to remind you don't miss the next episode. Get notified, go to Boundify IO Demand gen studio and pick your favorite format. You can watch watch the episodes, you can listen to them and you can get notified by email. We will coming up with more content in the following days. We are actually working on some. I think I have shared these before. We are working on some more of on hands workshops and webinars which I think will be quite helpful. So thank you everyone for listening. Gabby, thank you for joining me as every other week and everybody have a great day.

Have a great day. Pleasure again. See you later.