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Sept 1, 2023 Let’s be real for a second: Agency life can go from calm and peaceful one week to absolute chaos the next. When the time comes to scale up, one of the first solutions that agencies look toward is vendors. If you’re running an agency that outsources aspects of your operations to one or more freelancers or subcontractors, you’re working with multiple vendors. The intended goal is to leverage their expertise and fill skill gaps that might exist in-house. This raises a question though: Is managing a network of siloed vendors the most effective way to drive results for your clients and scale your agency? While this may initially seem like a proactive strategy, it can inadvertently hinder your agency's ability to scale efficiently and achieve long-term success. Today, we're going to talk about how managing multiple vendors can prevent you from achieving the goals you've set for your agency, and what you can do about it. Vendor Management: A Double-Edged Sword On the surface, having multiple vendors seems to offer several advantages, including specialization, competitive pricing, and reduced risk. You can tap into the best of each vendor’s capabilities, and rely on their deliverables to enhance your service offerings. However, managing multiple vendors can quickly become a resource-draining endeavor and can actually pose a risk to the quality of work that you provide for your clients. Here are some reasons why: Complexity in Coordination As you bring more vendors on board, you introduce additional layers of complexity to your operation. Your team finds themselves managing various pricing models, process structures, contracts, and invoicing systems. Each vendor may also demand their own set of meetings, status updates, and review sessions. This consumes valuable time and mental resources that could otherwise be devoted to strategic planning and core in-house priorities. Eroding Profit Margins While it may appear that you are receiving the most favorable terms from each vendor, this fragmented approach can gradually diminish your profit margins. Why is this? When you're paying for multiple vendors, you're also paying varying rates that may change at any given time, preventing your financial situation from becoming predictable. A vendor could increase their prices over time, which then means you also either have to raise your own rates to compensate or take less revenue for your agency. While vendors do not require the overhead of in-house hires like benefits and PTO, they may not always prove the best use of resources, especially if they start to nickel-and-dime each aspect of their relationship with your agency. Again, this further removes financial predictability from the picture. Administrative Burden When you have multiple vendors, the administrative overhead can become overwhelming. Contract negotiation, payment processing, and quality assurance are all necessary parts of vendor management. These tasks multiply with each additional vendor, becoming a significant drain on resources. Don't underestimate the time and labor costs associated with vendor-related administration; they can add up, affecting your bottom line. Your team should be using vendors to save time (and ultimately money) for your agency, but if they are bogged down with quality assurance from their vended deliverables, efficiency diminishes. Inconsistent Branding and Quality One of the hallmarks of a successful digital marketing campaign is a coherent and impactful brand message. Managing multiple vendors makes it challenging to ensure consistency across all deliverables. Different vendors have different styles, interpretations, and quality standards. The resulting mismatch can dilute the brand message, ultimately impacting campaign effectiveness and client satisfaction. Because most vendors will operate on a fee-for-service model, they are not beholden to fulfilling any aspect of their role with your agency that is not explicitly detailed in their contracts. If they decide to start phoning in their work, but their i's are dotted and their t's are crossed, there's very little your agency can do to resolve dissatisfaction with quality. Lack of Unified Strategy Clients hire advertising agencies for their expertise in providing a unified and strategic approach to marketing. When an agency relies on multiple vendors, it risks diluting this unified strategy. The more vendors involved, the harder it is to control and implement a cohesive plan. Clients may begin to question your agency's ability to manage their brand effectively, which could lead to lost contracts and a tarnished reputation. Slower Turnaround Times Let's face it, time is money. Clients often work on tight deadlines, expecting their agencies to deliver high-quality work quickly. Juggling multiple vendors can result in slower project turnaround times, as it's not just your internal team that you have to coordinate but an entire ecosystem of external suppliers. Delays can erode client trust and make your agency less competitive in a fast-paced market. Is There a Better Alternative to Working with Multiple Vendors? Instead of building and managing networks of siloed vendors, there are other alternatives you can consider. Chief among them is joining forces with a white label digital marketing partner. What does a white label partner provide for your agency that a vendor can't? Here are a few advantages that you can gain through partnership that are not available in most vendor arrangements. Unified Strategy: A white label partner provides a holistic approach to marketing strategies, ensuring brand consistency across all channels. This is often harder to achieve when dealing with multiple vendors. Faster Turnaround: White label partners have comprehensive in-house teams that can efficiently execute campaigns across various digital platforms, reducing the time spent coordinating with multiple vendors. Quality Control: With a white label partner, quality control becomes much more manageable, as they are responsible for delivering on all fronts, minimizing the risk of dilution in quality. Cost-Effective: Partnering with a white label service can be more cost-effective than hiring multiple vendors, as it eliminates the need to negotiate and manage numerous contracts. Scalability: White label partners can easily scale their services according to business needs, providing the flexibility that might not be feasible with multiple vendors. Expertise: White label partners specialize in providing comprehensive marketing solutions, offering expertise and insights across all aspects of digital marketing that multiple vendors may lack. Holistic Service Offering: A white label partner offers a full suite of digital marketing services, ranging from SEO, content marketing, and social media management, to more specialized services like PPC advertising and programmatic advertising. This prevents the fragmentation that may occur when working with different vendors for each service, ensuring a streamlined, cohesive digital strategy. Single Point of Contact Communication: Working with a white label partner simplifies communication as it provides a single point of contact for all your digital marketing requirements. This eliminates the confusion and time spent juggling between multiple vendors, ensuring more effective and efficient communication. Is your agency ready for a partnership with a white label ad operations team? Check out our post on 5 Signs Your Agency is Ready for Partnership. Work with North America's Elite White Label Partner At Conduit Digital, we strive to redefine what it means to be a white label solution for North American advertising, creative, digital, and public relations agencies. Offering 17 channels through a single partnership, fully fulfilled in the U.S., we give your agency the communication and performance infrastructure that you need to say "yes" to the opportunities you actually want to pursue. If you're ready to learn more about what it's like to partner with Conduit, let's talk !

Many agencies turn to white label providers to expand their service offerings, streamline operations, and foster growth without the immediate need for in-house expertise. A white label digital marketing partner works behind the scenes, providing services that agencies can then offer under their brand. While this collaboration can be the spark needed to ignite scalability, it's vital to ensure that your white label provider aligns with your agency's goals, quality standards, and ethos. However, not all white label partnerships are created equal. Sometimes, despite best intentions, an agency might find that their chosen white label provider isn't quite the right fit. Recognizing the signs early can help agencies recalibrate and find a partner that truly complements their operations. In this guide, we will explore the key signs that might indicate your white label digital marketing partner may not be the ideal match for your agency. Signs Your White Label Provider Isn’t the Right Fit 1: You’re Unhappy with Their Performance Your satisfaction with the performance of a white label provider is a direct reflection of their ability to meet the agreed-upon standards and deliverables. If you find that the quality of work is inconsistent or they often miss deadlines, it's a clear indication that they may not be the right fit for your agency. A reliable provider should consistently deliver high-quality work on time and meet the expectations set at the outset of the partnership. If it feels like they are trying to coast by just checking boxes on a to-do list, you could be making a wise decision by pivoting and seeking another solution. 2: There’s a Lack of Communication Communication is the foundation of any successful partnership. If your white label provider is hard to reach, doesn't respond in a timely manner, or often leaves you without updates about the progress of projects, it may be time to reassess the relationship. Regular and open communication is essential to ensure that both parties are aligned, that projects are on track, and that any potential issues are addressed promptly. When you’re evaluating their communication practices, ask yourself these questions: Am I always the one initiating conversations, or are they proactive? Do I always know who I can reach at the agency, or does it seem to be a revolving door of contacts? Does it take a long time to respond to my emails, calls, or messages? Do they regularly schedule check-in meetings with me, or does it feel like they want to be left alone? How do they react to feedback, especially if it may be perceived as negative? 3: They Have Limited Service Offerings In an industry where trends shift and new strategies emerge rapidly, having a wide array of services is essential. If your white label provider is constrained to a limited selection of offerings, this can significantly hinder your agency's capacity to address the multifaceted requirements of your clients. To remain at the forefront and ensure competitiveness, agencies must not only keep up with these changes but also have the capability to offer services that align with them. A white label provider that can't adapt or expand its offerings in line with industry advancements can become a bottleneck for your agency's potential growth and innovation. Given these factors, if you find your current provider lagging in diversifying their services or not being agile enough to accommodate new digital marketing avenues, it might be a clear indication that you need to look for a partner with broader expertise and a more adaptable approach. 4: Lack of Transparency Transparency in a white label partnership means clear reporting, easy access to analytics, and an open line of communication about campaign outcomes. If your provider doesn't offer clear insights into their work or fails to share essential data, it can be challenging for your agency to measure the effectiveness of campaigns and justify costs to your clients. A trustworthy partner will ensure you're fully informed about all aspects of the projects they handle for you. From reports to sharing account access and not trying to distort the data, you can trust that they are working with your clients’ best interests in mind as a true partner. 5: Negative Impact on Client Retention One of the most telling signs of a misaligned white label partnership is its impact on your client retention rates. If your clients are frequently expressing dissatisfaction with the results or raising concerns about the services being delivered by the white label provider, it directly affects your agency's reputation, scalability, and bottom line. Your agency's partnership with a white label provider should enhance client satisfaction, not hinder it. Your white label team should give you the confidence that they will treat your client as if it was their own. 6: Limited Scalability Scalability is about more than just handling larger workloads. It’s about building a repeatable, predictable, and profitable business model that is not constrained by the typical growing pains of startup agency life. If your white label provider struggles to handle increased demands, or isn't flexible in adapting to new requirements, it can impede your agency's growth trajectory. As your agency expands, you need partners who can seamlessly scale their offerings to support your growth. 7: Ethical Concerns Integrity and ethics should be at the forefront of any business relationship. If you have reservations about your white label provider's practices or if they employ tactics that don't adhere to industry standards, it's a serious concern. Ensuring that your provider operates within ethical boundaries not only protects your agency's reputation but also ensures the longevity and sustainability of your client relationships. For example, look for a white label SEO agency that does not use outdated black-hat tactics. Another example could be a piece of content for a healthcare client making medical claims or giving advice without citing credible sources. Another Key Indicator - Offshoring and Outsourcing Your Work You trust a white label provider as your go-to outsource solution with the goal of achieving scalability in mind. However, what if that same white label provider then flipped your client’s work to another outsource service provider? These types of chains are strongest when they only have two links. Links three onward start to weaken the chain more and more. Is your white label provider possibly outsourcing and offshoring your work? If you’re not able to tell right away, there are some signs to look for such, as: Time Zone Discrepancies: Are certain client deliverables being completed at odd hours, or are you always receiving messages outside of business hours? Fluctuating Quality: Inconsistent quality could mean that your white label provider is sending your client’s work around to different teams or single-channel vendors on a frequent basis. Avoiding Direct Communication: If the provider is hesitant about setting up direct meetings, video calls, or avoids showing their working environment, they might be trying to hide the fact that the work is being done elsewhere. Generic or Ambiguous Reporting: Reports that lack specific details or seem generic might be an indication that the provider is not closely involved with the day-to-day handling of tasks. Lack of Direct Control or Access: An inability to directly access or communicate with the team members working on your projects can be a red flag. Vocabulary: An outsource used by your white label provider may use a different vocabulary or grammar convention. For example, if your white label provider is based in the U.S. but a blog post they delivered for your client uses spellings like “colour” instead of “color,” “recognise” instead of “recognize,” or “theatre” instead of “theater,” this could indicate that the provider is having the work completed elsewhere. Before we continue, we should acknowledge that there is nothing wrong with working alongside a team of skilled marketers from outside of the United States. That is not the issue. When you should be concerned about a white label provider’s potential outsourcing or offshoring is when performance quality fluctuates, your access to your client’s work is limited, and the white label partner was not transparent with you about how your client’s work would be fulfilled. Stop Singing the White Label Blues at Your Agency At Conduit Digital, we strive to challenge what white label digital marketing means for agencies. Too often, the term “white label” is perceived as cheap, low quality, and with varying results. Our goal is to change that for your agency. With a Conduit Partnership, your agency receives instant access to expert-managed digital channels along with a single point of contact, all in one partnership. All campaigns that we oversee for your client are 100% white-labeled to your agency and directly managed by hands on keyboards at our office in New Jersey. And the best part? All of the performance is 100% transparent. We even built a proprietary reporting system designed specifically for agencies that leverage us as their white label partner. To start redefining what white label partnership means for your agency, schedule a call with us today.

When you hear the term “white whale client,” you can probably picture one that your agency has wanted to land for some time now, has had the opportunity to pitch, or you’ve recently won their business, and now they’re investing in your digital marketing services. Each agency will have its own definition of a white whale client, but there’s one universal truth: they require elite performance to retain them. What does a white whale client look like at your agency? It could be one or any combination of the following: A notable business in your local market A business that spends over a certain (high) dollar amount in marketing A major regional, national, or global corporate entity A specific, notable brand in an industry that you serve A company that you’ve admired for some time that you’ve always wanted to work with A nonprofit or government organization that shares values you’re strongly aligned with There are also many other parameters that you could use to define what a white whale client is. For many agency leaders, when you have the opportunity to pitch the whale, you remain laser-focused on landing the account and may have to “figure out the rest later” once the work agreements are signed. This is a common reason why agencies like yours talk to us at Conduit Digital on a regular basis. They’ve landed one of, if not the biggest client in their agency’s history, and now they need to deliver on what they pitched. If you’re in that situation and you’re looking for what to do next, this guide is for you. Today, we’ll be going over everything that you need to know about what to do once you’ve landed the white whale client. Start By Considering How the Whale Impacts Other Clients The first step when you’ve landed the whale is to consider how it impacts other clients. If you’re a mid-sized agency with 10-20 clients, having one big white whale client can be great from a revenue perspective, but something that needs to be considered is the workflow and resources this account requires. Consider whether or not you have the capacity to devote the same amount of attention to your other clients as you do with the white whale. If not, you may want to consider outsourcing some tasks or hiring new employees in order to make sure all of your clients’ needs are taken care of properly. Next, Consider Your Team's Skillset and Expertise Another important step is to consider your team’s skill set and expertise when it comes to the white whale client. If you don’t have the right people in place, then this can be a major roadblock to success. Take some time to think about who on your team has the right background and skillset to handle the work that will come with having a white whale client. Do you need to hire additional employees with specific skill sets? Do you need to join forces with an external partner to fulfill any aspects of your ad operations needs for the campaign? Leverage Technology For Efficiency and Scalability Leveraging technology is also key when it comes to managing a white whale client. Technology can help streamline processes, increase efficiency, and ensure scalability as the scope and needs of the account increases. Look for software or platforms that can automate various tasks associated with managing the white whale client, such as optimizing campaigns, tracking performance metrics, setting alerts, etc. These types of solutions will not only save you time and money but also help you be more efficient when it comes to managing and servicing the white whale client’s needs. Get Help From a White Label Partner Finally, don’t be afraid to reach out for help if you find that managing a white whale client is becoming too much of a challenge. There are plenty of digital marketing agencies and white label partners who specialize in taking on the responsibility of managing complex campaigns with high-profile clients. They may also offer expert-managed services that you do not currently offer in-house, saving you the headache of crash-coursing new digital disciplines that you may not realistically have time to learn. By partnering up with an experienced agency or white label partner, you’ll be able to free up more time and resources for other important tasks related to servicing the white whale client. Plus, you can rest assured knowing that the client is in good hands. When searching for the right white label partner, look for one that not only claims to offer elite performance but also has the means to back up these claims. Also, consider how they communicate with your agency, how their processes integrate (or don’t) with your own, and whether or not they can truly scale with you. If you’ve recently landed a white whale account, let’s talk. At Conduit Digital, we partner with established and successful North American advertising and marketing agencies to deliver elite performance, backed by proactive communication and comprehensive reporting, for your clients. To learn more about how you can unlock the power of 17 digital channels through one single partnership, connect with Conduit today.

July 17, 2024 The cannabis industry has emerged as one of the fastest-growing American consumer product verticals in recent years.   States are continuing to permit legal medicinal and recreational cannabis use at an increasing rate. In 2022, our home state of New Jersey officially allowed recreational cannabis on April 21, 2022.   As more dispensaries open to the public, we can predict more opportunities for agencies to secure these businesses as clients. Statistics show that the North American advertising spend for the cannabis industry will grow to 3.39 billion dollars by 2028.   However, these products are still heavily regulated and classified as illegal at the federal level. This can create some complications for your agency as your team develops a holistic digital strategy for cannabis retail marketing clients.   That’s why we wrote this guide to help your agency master the ins and outs of compliant cannabis marketing  and advertising. We’re going to cover:   Important considerations for cannabis marketing and advertising campaigns  The best channels to compliantly invest your client’s budget   A channel-by-channel breakdown of cannabis-related restrictions  Important Considerations for Cannabis Marketing and Advertising Campaigns  Federal Legal Status   Cannabis is currently not legalized at the federal level. Instead, its medicinal and/or recreational use is permitted by individual states. Keeping this in mind, regional and local campaigns are currently the most effective for paid media and organic channels that permit cannabis content when targeting by geography.   Platform Rules and Guidelines  Similar to the state-by-state legal status, each digital platform has its own advertising and organic content standards for promoting cannabis products. If these guidelines are not closely followed, your client’s campaign could fail to launch at the start or swiftly be removed from the platform.   Content Liability   Due to the industry’s heavy regulations, misleading or misinforming content could potentially create liability issues for your client. For example, making certain claims about the medical properties of cannabis could create legal complications  Before you begin posting content for your client, you may want to consider consulting with an expert on cannabis marketing beforehand. For example, a cannabis-informed attorney or an experienced digital marketing partner can provide you with the necessary guidance to help avoid these pitfalls.   What Are the Best Channels for Promoting Cannabis Clients?  Cannabis-Specific Channels   As the industry continues to expand its footprint, many cannabis-specific channels are emerging that agencies can capitalize on. These platforms are designed to specifically target the same audience your client is trying to reach.   For example, there are digital map services that show users dispensaries near them, such as WeedMaps. Advertising on a channel like this one will not pose the same restrictive guidelines like Facebook or Instagram.   Some industry publications like High Times also maintain a cannabis-focused news website. Here, a client that wants to reach more cannabis consumers can also advertise more freely than on a general-use platform.  Paid and Organic Channels   Paid digital media channels like Google Search and most social platforms place heavy regulations on paid cannabis content due to it being labeled as an “illicit” subject.   To compensate for this, focusing on organic content can help drive engagement and quality traffic to your client’s website. Services like SEO and email marketing maximize the performance potential of the content that you can control on your client’s site to reach their ideal customers.   For blogs, product pages, service pages, and informational pages on your client’s website, you can freely write content that objectively educates customers and builds authority. In most cases, it is recommended that you place an age gate on these pages so that the visitor can confirm they are over the age of 21 before proceeding.   Because the client’s website is their wholly owned digital property, you have more creative freedom to market their cannabis products. However, this still requires a deliberate SEO strategy to draw the right traffic. Using high-opportunity keywords in your content, minimizing technical errors on the backend, and building a strong backlink portfolio are three vital tactics for generating the results that your client is expecting.   Now, this is not to say that there are no paid media options available to agencies that offer cannabis advertising services. For example, some programmatic channels like pre-roll, OTT, and display may allow these campaigns, albeit with restrictions.   A Channel-by-Channel Breakdown of Cannabis Restrictions  Advertising Cannabis on Social Media   Most social platforms do not permit any cannabis advertising. Though this may seem like a frustrating obstacle for your agency, this does not mean that all social media doors are closed.   Cannabis companies can still promote their business on social media through organic content. However, they cannot create posts that deliberately entice people to buy their products.   Examples of what not to post on your client’s profiles include:   Product prices and price-lists  Solicitations to buy a product or order one online  Information on growing or selling cannabis   Medical claims about cannabis   Invitations to contact the client’s business about purchasing cannabis   Instead, leverage your client’s accounts to build authority and credibility in their industry and link to pages on their website. Keep the content as educational as possible, advocate for the industry at large using reliable sources, and use visual content that showcases a product rather than solicits it to the audience.   Keep in mind that most platforms do have some methodology for flagging certain organic content that could be considered non-compliant with their content guidelines. For example, posts that use certain hashtags could be identified as unsuitable for sharing. Posts can also display on users’ feeds in states where cannabis is still fully illegal, thus further emphasizing the need for more general informational content.   In addition to organic content, the best way to reach users on social media with ads is to maintain an educational attitude. Be a leader in the space and educate users instead of selling to them to avoid being flagged. For the ads specifically, if you want a broad stroke across most social media platforms, begin by promoting topical hemp products, which are allowed by all platforms. These ads should have landing pages specific to those products that have no mention of cannabis, THC, or CBD.  Avoiding using these words in the copy or having them displayed on the image of the ad is also important.  Once these users are interested in your brand and product, they will discover your other products that may contain THC and CBD.  Although most platforms do not allow advertising for cannabis, below is in order the least to most restrictive platforms with a quick overview of what is permitted and what is restricted or prohibited. For a full list of the advertising policies for each platform, feel free to utilize the links in their respective sections.   Snapchat – Restricted but allowed (hemp-derived CBD)  Snapchat is one of the least restrictive platforms regarding cannabis, but unfortunately still has restrictions around it. Despite Snap’s Drugs & Tobacco Policy stating they “allow some limited ads for cannabis”, the advertising of cannabis on the platform is still prohibited.  CBD is where Snap opens up its policies, allowing products to be promoted as long as they’re derived from hemp and contain less than 0.3% THC.  If you have a Snapchat rep, you can reach out for specifics on a case-by-case basis to see if this is a feasible option for your client. Keep in mind that the platform “[does] not allow the depiction of smoking or vaping, except in the context of public health messaging or smoking cessation”, and whether or not an ad gets rejected or not can vary from reviewer to reviewer.  X – Permitted Where Legal  In February 2023, X (formerly known as Twitter) announced it will be relaxing its policies for cannabis advertising, including both THC and other cannabinoids. This marks the first major social platform to permit paid advertising to directly promote these products.   However, this does not come without restrictions. X still enforces restrictions on cannabis advertising. These include:   Advertisers must be credibly licensed and preapproved by X to run Cannabis campaigns  Advertisers can only target geographical locations where cannabis products can be legally bought and sold online   Ads cannot promote or offer cannabis for sale (this includes CBD)  Exception: Ads for topical (non-ingestible) hemp-derived CBD topical products containing equal to or less than the 0.3% THC government-set threshold.     All applicable laws, rules, regulations, and X advertising guidelines must be followed   Ads cannot be targeted at users under 21 years of age   In terms of ad content, a few additional guidelines exist. X prohibits any ad creatives that are not age-gated. Additionally, ads featuring public figures endorsing products, pregnant women, or minors cannot be used either.   The rest of the content limitations pertain mostly to messaging, such as:   Ads cannot promote claims about cannabis’s efficacy or health benefits  Messaging cannot include any false or misleading statements   Cannabis use cannot depicted in the ads   Ads cannot encourage transporting products across state lines   So, can your client qualify for X ads? To distill the above, as long as the ads are compliant with X policies and local government regulations, and the advertiser is approved by X to run cannabis ads, you can launch a campaign.   One of the major points that should be emphasized, yet could be easily overlooked, is that advertisers cannot promote the direct sale of cannabis through their ads.  Avoid placing pricing information in the creative assets as well as using any CTAs like “shop now.”   Instead, a safe bet would be to simply promote that your client’s business exists as well as where it’s located. For example, “Dispensary X, Located in Newark, NJ” will likely be deemed acceptable whereas “Cannabis Flower for $24.99 at Dispensary X” would not be.   TikTok – Restricted (topical CBD allowed)  Although one might initially consider TikTok to be more lenient here given their demographic, cannabis targeting is currently prohibited on the platform.  However, according to their Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals policy , “the promotion of products derived from hemp oil and topical CBD products for cosmetics may be allowed in some markets and is subject to additional restrictions.” According to TikTok’s Drugs and Drug Paraphernalia Policy, ad creatives and landing pages must refrain from displaying or promoting:   Illegal drugs  Controlled drugs  Prescription drug abuse  Recreational drug use  Drug paraphernalia and accessories and their use  Supplies and their use   However, the company’s Hemp & CBD policy does go on to say that “…promoting hemp products and topical CBD products may be allowed subject to additional restrictions.” It is the advertisers’ responsibility to comply with local regulations of the regions they are targeting. Additionally, hemp products may not be advertised via the self-serve format.   Meta – Restricted (topical hemp allowed)  Meta (advertising on Facebook and Instagram) prohibits THC products, cannabis products containing psychoactive components, and ingestible CBD. However, non-ingestible CBD ads are allowed on Meta provided advertisers follow Meta’s CBD and Related Products Policy . In short this means: You must comply with local laws (must be legal in that region) No false claims can be made Must have LegitScript It’s important to note that non-ingestible and ingestible hemp products can also be promoted and do not require LegitScript. Pinterest – Restricted (topical hemp)  Pinterest is quite restrictive in the CBD and hemp space, only permitting ads for topical hemp as of now. According to the platform’s Drugs and Paraphernalia Policy  they will allow these topical hemp ads as long as they contain negligible amounts of THC and no CBD and make no therapeutic or medicinal claims.” It is safe to assume the negligible amount is the 0.3% agreed upon by the FDA. Like other social platforms, educational content is usually the way to go. Per the same policy, “we will allow informational or brand content on CBD and hemp. Advertisers are responsible for complying with all laws and regulations.” LinkedIn – Prohibited   LinkedIn’s Illicit or Recreational Drugs Policy  states that ”ads that promote the sale or use of illicit or recreational drugs are prohibited.” While this seems black and white, this does open the door for interpretation for advertisers to promote educational content on LinkedIn, much like other social platforms.  Advertising Cannabis on Google   Google adopts a strict “just say no” policy when it comes to advertising or marketing topics referencing cannabis, marijuana, weed, etc. There are no explicitly stated restrictions against targeting keywords related to these terms, but any ad copy or landing page that features this subject matter will be heavily scrutinized and regulated.   Because Google has more ambiguous standards for advertising cannabis, you may occasionally see ads that are related to the topic. For example, you may see paid ads for a local marijuana dispensary if you enter the term “weed dispensary near me”. However, many of these listings will use vague references and innuendo to avoid a platform penalty.   Trying to game the Google Ads system is not advised. In general, this can lead to a poor user experience and can fall under Google’s Circumventing Systems policy.Depending on the nature of the offense, this can potentially lead to your Ads account being suspended or terminated, which we believe is not worth the risk.   To view other cannabis policies for paid search ads, also check out the guidelines from Microsoft and Baidu for their search engines.  Advertising Cannabis on Programmatic Channels  Programmatic advertising for cannabis clients used to encompass direct-to-publisher display ad buys and ad networks that leveraged cannabis-friendly websites which were sold to advertisers trying to reach consumers of the product.   While both of these methods are still used, some DSPs are starting to loosen their restrictions on cannabis advertising to keep up with the evolving climate. This results in more robust and creative ways to reach cannabis consumers.  Contextual Targeting   DSPs that are embracing the new wave all offer a variation of contextual targeting – serving ads on websites that are categorically relevant or contain keywords or phrases related to cannabis. This can range from consumption in general to information as granular as insight into different strains.  First-Party Data  A desire to leverage first-party data has also increased for a variety of reasons ranging from having the highest likelihood of purchase intent to cookies being sunsetted in the near future. First-party data allows cannabis advertisers to leverage their list of existing customers, such as dispensary item purchasers, and reach them while they’re surfing the web, using their favorite apps, or streaming their binge-worthy shows at home on their CTV devices.   In addition, first-party data allows for lookalike audience expansion. Lookalike audiences mirror the online behaviors of a client’s CRM list, for instance, and find users who aren’t already on that list that could be potential consumers. This provides a campaign with more scale and reach while maintaining its niche audience targeting.  Third-Party Audience Targeting  Additionally, advertisers can utilize the power 3rd-party audience targeting. Via trusted data providers,  your client can reach people identified as cannabis users based on their demographic, interests, intent, etc. as a result of their online behavior.  Dabble with competitive conquesting or hone in on physical stores/locations that a cannabis audience frequently visits with radius targeting or 3rd-party location data. This strategy is exclusive to a handful of DSPs right now, but it could expand in the future.   Radius targeting also lets your client reach dispensaries down to the mile and serve them an ad on their mobile device once the user is within the radius. 3rd-party location data allows your client to capture historical data, via lookback windows, of users who visited specific dispensary locations across the US and Canada and deliver their ads to these highly relevant consumers.  Site Retargeting  Site Retargeting is another strategy that is offered universally and is key for all cannabis advertisers, but especially for eCommerce campaigns. Being able to drive awareness and bring users to a client’s site is great, but retargeting them after the visit keeps them in the funnel and increases the likelihood of conversions by about 70%.   While programmatic advertising sits very high at the top-of-the-funnel and conversions shouldn’t be the primary way to measure campaign effectiveness, there’s no doubt that they’re still points of extreme interest. With that said, conversion tracking for cannabis campaigns is borderline universal for all DSPs that allow this type of advertising.   However, the granularity of the conversion journey varies greatly. Most DSPs can report on a conversion just like any other platform, but others have the capability to show the consumer journey from ad click to last-click attribution and everything in between!  Cannabis SEO Campaigns  Because SEO is an organic channel that primarily leverages your client’s website, there are not the same restrictions compared to paid media. As your client owns their domain, they are largely free to publish whatever content best suits their business’s best interests.   However, any organic content published on a client’s website should maintain compliance with state and industry regulations. All necessary consumer warnings, disclaimers, and other advisory information should be displayed where appropriate to help avoid any potential liability for the content on the site.   Because SEO is one of the more permissible channels for marijuana topics, you can expect a large amount of competition for high-opportunity keywords. Working a team of SEO experts, you can prevent many of the common obstacles and challenges that can come with a cutthroat digital environment.   Start Delivering Elite Performance for Your Cannabis Marketing Agency   Navigating the often unclear waters of cannabis advertising is enough to make anyone’s hands shaky before pressing “live” on a campaign. We understand that, and that’s why we’ve invested the time and effort to provide your agency with the necessary tools, expertise, and performance to deliver high-performing campaigns for your clients.  At Conduit Digital, we have delivered elite campaign performance across 125 verticals for successful agencies in North America leveraging our holistic digital product suite. Our team of U.S.-based, platform-certified expert analysts can build your own cannabis client’s campaigns to drive the ideal key performance actions that align with their business goals.   To help keep your partnership confidential and profitable, we also offer a margin-friendly rate card along, custom-brandable deliverables, and full NDA compliance.   Start saying “yes” to better opportunities to serve your clients in the cannabis industry today. Schedule a call with us to learn how we can help you scale profitably.

Aug 11, 2023 When voice-enabled search features were first introduced, many thought this new way of using search engines would become the next digital frontier for search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search (PPC). However, that didn’t come to pass. With voice search, one glaring limitation would prevent it from meaningfully competing against text-based searches: privacy. Speaking into your phone requires you to audibly enter your query into the search engine. If you want to ask Google or Bing something confidentially, you are not always able to with voice features. Sure, voice searches are fine for asking where to find a nearby restaurant. However, they could easily prove the less-preferred option for questions of a more sensitive nature like seeking medical, financial, or legal information. This year, Microsoft’s Bing transformed the search engine landscape by introducing Bing AI. Instead of entering a query and letting an algorithm compile its best guess, a sophisticated artificial intelligence model actively searches the internet for the most up-to-date information that answers your questions, all while compressing the information into a concise response with links to websites for the users to read further. The craziest part? Microsoft released Bing AI for free to anyone with a Microsoft account and the latest Edge browser. All you need to do is create an account to start using it in your searches. While Bing AI is fully rolled out and available to everyone, Google is not far behind. The undisputed search engine leader has worked diligently behind the digital curtain to introduce new AI-based features to enhance the user experience. Some new Google AI features on the horizon include: Immerse View for Google Maps where the app allows you to see the actual streets you’ll be driving on rather than a 2D graphic of the roadways. Magic Editor for Google Photos where AI will automatically enhance your favorite photos that you want modified to enhance visual elements, remove visual elements, and many other features without you needing to know tools like Adobe Photoshop. PaLM 2: An advanced model based on logical reasoning that could be used for complex tasks like debugging code and providing advanced medical insights in over 100 different languages. Bard: Google’s generative AI model intended to compete with tools like ChatGPT, will only grow more intelligent and capable with the vast amounts of first-party data the platform has at its disposal. The one that stands out the most in regards to SEO, however, is the new Search Generative Experience (SGE). Google’s SGE will operate almost exactly like Bing AI, with its ability to provide conversational search results that synthesize information from more than one source online, all presented in a tidy format at the top of the page that is easy to read. So, where does SEO go from here? Is SEO another profession that will be eaten alive by the machine overlords? No, and today we’re going to cover why AI-based search is not only the future of SEO, but why SEO matters more than ever. First, let’s explore why AI-based search really is the wave of the future, compared to voice search. For purposes of convenience, any screenshots we share here are done using Bing AI, as it is already a fully developed and widely available tool. We’ll be updating this later once Google SGE becomes a universally accessible asset for more users. Why Will AI-Based Search Do What Voice Couldn’t? AI-based searches not only provide the convenience of voice search, but they can also maintain users’ much-valued privacy. You can type in a phrase or question as you would with a standard text-based search and receive a more tailored response. The results also contain resources from other sites that are pre-selected by an AI model that has done the heavy lifting and scoured billions of web pages for you in seconds to find the most credible information possible. Obviously, for any agency incorporating paid and/or organic search into their service offerings, this presents a seismic shift in the industry. Instead of relying solely on established best practices to rank highly for traditional text-based searches, strategies now need to incorporate positioning a client’s website to be viewed as highly credible and trustworthy by an AI model that is more selective and places a heavier emphasis on the quality of information. How AI-Based Search Results Differ from Traditional SERPs Answers Are Specific and Personalized Because most of these AI-assisted search engines are using a more conversational approach to curating results for you, users can expect a more tailored experience. Beyond initial results, you can also continue the conversation to dive deeper into certain topics or refine your results over multiple iterations. Along with this change, it can be reasonably expected that a more personalized organic search experience will be expected by users in the future. AI chatbots are designed in a way to act as if they are conversing with you like they’re your own personal assistant. You Will Only See a Few Results at a Time When tools like Bing AI’s Chat feature or Google SGE compile search results, they condense the information into a single body of concise text along with links to sources if the user wants to dive further. For instance, if you want to learn about white label digital ad operations, you might receive a response like this with a familiar domain in the Learn More section: As you can see above, Bing AI condensed the information into a single paragraph with some additional bullet points for specificity. Then, it curated its top-four external resources to provide you with more information if you want to dive deeper into your search. If you are content with the information you are given, then you can count the AI-generated response as sufficient and continue with your day. Greater Potential for a Multimedia Experience AI-powered search engines like Bing AI can not only provide text-based answers, but they can also generate images you might request. As an example, we asked it to create pictures of a coffee cup containing fancy latte art. Below, you can see that it was able to do this within seconds and with minimal effort. With AI powering your searches, the results will have a greater potential for a more visual multimedia experience. To position your client’s ranking potential, optimizing images, including alt text, file names, and descriptions will be a necessity and not just an extra finishing touch. How AI Search will Transform Your SEO Strategy Domain Credibility and Authority Matters More Than Ever Compared to traditional SERPs, AI-based searches focus on curating the most authoritative and credible sources possible for their responses. As part of that, these programs heavily consider the domain authority and credibility of a website. Providing credible, authoritative information on your website that strays from self-promotion will be the dominant strategy here. Couple this with Google’s increased emphasis on content that is objectively helpful, and the brands that emphasize helpful information over promoting their exact brand and business model will dominate the SERPs. Many clients tend to want to produce content for their website that aligns exactly with their business model and product or service offerings while also promoting themselves somewhere within the content. This is not considered “helpful” by Google’s standards. Instead, information that could be applied to a topic or industry at large is considered preferable, regardless of whether or not it mirrors a business’s exact way of operating. Quality Backlinking Will Be Essential As AI-powered search engines compile their results for users, part of their methodology for assessing a domain’s authority will be its backlink portfolio. If you’re new to SEO, essentially a backlink is created on your client’s website whenever another domain links to its content. For example, a blogger in the same industry might link to a blog on your client’s site as a source for their own writing. A desirable backlink is one from a credible domain with relevance to your industry or the topic your content is centered on. Links from spammy, irrelevant, or oddly structured sites are considered “toxic” and can negatively impact your domain authority if not dealt with properly. In essence, if your client’s website is swarmed with toxic backlinks, search engines will likely also view your site as a low-authority domain. Keeping on top of toxic backlinks and acquiring ones from quality sources will continue to remain a priority for organic search. Great Content Will Matter More Than Ever Since the dawn of SEO, various thought leaders, reporters, and influencers in the profession have proposed new strategies to leverage content to dominate organic search. These tactics and best practices have evolved as search engine algorithms have grown more sophisticated, but one thing remains the same: Content is a competitive world. What is one of generative AI’s current most-useful tools? Content writing. With the power of tools like ChatGPT in SEO professionals’ digital toolkits, maximizing content production will turn into something of a virtual arms race to try to cover as many topics and keywords as possible. Beyond the production of content, though, its quality will matter more than ever. As AI models compile results for search users, they will rely on the well-written, authoritative, and helpful content that your clients provide on their websites. For example, if a local search user is looking for great camping spots in Upstate New York, and your client is a camping equipment store in the area, you have an immense opportunity to leverage their brand to provide credible information to that audience member! LEARN MORE: How to USE AI CONTENT GENERATION. Optimize Your Media Assets! As AI-based search engines are able to retrieve media files from the web that match a user’s prompts, having your images and videos properly optimized will be non-negotiable. This could include essentials like: Using keyword-optimized ALT text for your images Choosing descriptive file names for images and videos Making sure that your YouTube channel’s video information is optimized for organic search Local SEO Strategies Need to be Airtight Tools like BingAI are currently able to leverage your device’s location to provide you with a list of locations in your area that are relevant to your searches. Within the response, it can also supply the actual business listing with directions and phone numbers to call. With this in mind, managing directory listings for your clients and ensuring their business information is as accurate as possible will both be necessities for competitive performance. When people are able to interact with their business directly from an AI chatbot’s response, this level of convenience has immense potential to spur significantly more interaction. Long-Tail Keywords Take Center Stage AI-assisted search engines like BingAI distill the most essential part of your search into a long-tail keyword. Looking at the example below, you can see how it transformed a question into a highly specific keyword search: From an SEO perspective, this long-tail keyword would be a low-volume keyword (not many people are searching this on a regular basis), but also likely one where competition is not high. As new SEO strategies are built with AI in mind, dedicating equal time to focus keywords (high volume) and granular long-tail terms that are immensely relevant to your client’s business model will become the new norm when building keyword lists. Similarly, incorporating multiple variations of keywords and long-tail phrases will need to be kept in mind. Giving AI-based search engines the ability to align their long-tail surveys with your content will highly increase the chances of your pages being recommended in chat responses. Double Down on Mobile-First The earliest viral generative AI programs, like ChatGPT and Jasper, were first developed as browser applications meant to be viewed via a desktop or laptop. Now, most generative AI programs are starting to offer mobile apps to best align with the majority of users who conduct most of their online activity via smartphones and tablets. For example, these are just some of the notable generative AI apps that are available via iOS and/or Android: Bing AI Snapchat’s My AI ChatGPT Jasper Google Bard We can reasonably expect that AI-based search engines will also determine a page’s quality in a similar way to traditional algorithms based on various user experience features like quick site speed. With that in mind, continue to optimize toward the most seamless mobile experience possible for your client’s website. Be Ready for an AI-Based Search Engine Optimization Future So, with everything above, what can we take away? Here’s a few key points that stand out: AI will only become a more prominent search engine tool in the future Currently, AI tools have incredible features that enhance the user’s search experience Over time, SEO campaigns will have to factor in how AI tools use search engines to serve users as a key component of the strategy At Conduit Digital, we are the white label digital marketing partner for established and successful ad agencies in North America. We equip your agency with the ability to say “yes” to any new client opportunity by extending your in-house ad operations with 17 digital marketing channels operated by expert U.S.-based analysts. To learn more about how you can leverage us as your white label SEO partner for an AI-driven landscape, let’s talk.

Aug 18, 2023 Artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced a paradigm shift in the world of digital marketing. From automating mundane operations to synthesizing and summarizing complex information and writing content, we’re only at the beginning of what these tools are capable of. Understandably, though, agency leaders are each approaching these new innovations at their own pace. If you own an ad agency, how have you handled using AI? Have you become a heavy adopter of the technology, or are you watching and waiting to see how it will more fully impact your business model? Having concerns about AI is completely fair. It takes work out of human hands and entrusts them to a machine that has been trained by humans to repeat similar tasks. That requires confidence in the technology, and you may not have found that comfort zone yet. However, it can’t be understated that AI marketing tools are immensely beneficial once you start to use them in a responsible manner. They can offset much of the recurring tasks that once needed to be completed entirely by hand, such as writing copy for SEO blogs or meticulously setting up each aspect of a Google Ads campaign with tools like Performance Max. Simply put: Once you find the level of AI that you’re comfortable with, you’ll often find that it enables your team to be better marketers rather than take away from the value that your agency provides. Would you rather your copywriter spend more time crafting each piece of content by hand, or would you prefer them to have the ability to produce two or more blogs in the time it used to take them to write one? If you’re exploring the possibilities of using AI in any capacity at your digital marketing or advertising agency, this guide is for you. Today, we’re going to cover the essentials about using AI, where its limitations are, and how you can find other solutions when AI isn’t enough to drive elite performance for your clients. AI in Marketing: More Than Just Tools AI in marketing goes far beyond the mere use of AI marketing tools. It is a vast field that encompasses a wide range of algorithms and machine-learning techniques. These can process data, predict consumer trends, and automate various marketing tasks. Recently, we’re seeing a new wave of AI-based search engine tools designed to enhance the way Google and Bing provide answers to users. Understanding AI's broad scope is essential. It's not just about automating mundane recurring tasks but about providing insights into customer behavior, optimizing marketing campaigns, and enabling personalized customer experiences. The importance of creating a strategic approach that incorporates AI at various touchpoints can't be overstated. This broader understanding helps marketers tailor strategies to better meet the needs of their audience, aligning with brand goals and customer needs. Integrating AI: A Step-by-Step Guide 1. Define Your Goals and Objectives Understanding what you want to accomplish with AI is your first step. Whether enhancing personalization, automating ad campaigns, or anything in between, defining clear objectives is paramount. Before diving into AI, ensure that your objectives align with what AI can achieve. This involves understanding both the capabilities and limitations of various AI technologies and how they can serve your specific needs. To further identify the best marketing AI tool for your agency, decide what tasks you would want AI to perform for you and which ones you think are best left in the hands of a human operator. Each agency will have different preferences, so choose which areas you think your team will have the most impact and provide the most value for your client’s campaign. 2. Select the Right Tools and Platforms The market is indeed flooded with AI marketing tools designed for different purposes. Researching and finding those that align perfectly with your goals is essential, be it for SEO optimization, PPC campaigns, content generation, or predictive analytics. Identifying your agency's specific needs and selecting tools that meet those needs requires careful review. Factors like scalability, user-friendliness, and integration with existing systems should be taken into account. Don’t be afraid to test multiple solutions for the same task, either. Ask AI developers for product demos, watch tutorials on YouTube or elsewhere, and don’t be afraid to contact these companies for more information about their capabilities. If you’re investing in AI, you should select the best one to provide the greatest returns. 3. Train Your Team AI tools can be complex. Providing comprehensive training for your team is crucial in order to empower them to use the technology productively and responsibly. Training ensures that your team leverages the full potential of AI, helping them grasp the intricacies of the technologies they will be working with. Many AI tools are designed with the experience of the end user in mind, so they are often rather simple and can be utilized effectively after a little bit of practice. 4. Implement Incrementally, Measure, and Adjust Don't overhaul your strategy overnight. Implement AI gradually, starting with one aspect of your marketing plan. Monitoring results, learning from them, and then expanding is a wise approach. A phased approach ensures that the transition to AI is smooth. You can adjust your strategy based on real-world results, thus making incremental changes that align with your overall goals. Utilizing metrics and analytics to continually evaluate how AI is affecting your marketing strategy is vital. The landscape of AI marketing tools is constantly evolving, so adapting as necessary ensures you stay ahead of the curve. 5. Create an AI Code of Ethics AI provides immense potential for agencies, but it also comes with some risks. For example, tools like ChatGPT makes writing easy, but they can also not guarantee factual accuracy or freedom from plagiarism. Here, the responsible use of AI matters more than ever. Create a code of ethics around each use case that you implement AI at your agency. How do you plan to handle these tools, what quality assurance measures do you have in place, and what is your alternative when AI cannot solve a problem that you have? Consider these, write them down, and plan to communicate them to your team. Learn More: How to Use AI Content Generation Agencies Ask: Will Marketing Be Replaced by AI? AI has dramatically altered the marketing landscape, but it's not without limitations. The question "Will marketing be replaced by AI?" can be answered by understanding the limitations of the technology, such as: Lack of Creativity: AI tools are mostly intended to work off of the inputs entered by humans. This requires a creative user with innovative ideas, emotional intelligence, and strategic thinking that only a human can provide. Dependence on Data Quality: AI needs excellent data to perform at its best. Inaccurate or biased data can create misleading results. A data architecture created by human strategists remains an essential component of digital campaigns. Cost-Effectiveness: Depending on the AI tool used, costs can add up quickly to the point where you may be just breaking even rather than profiting from the investment. As you grow, you might find that machines are not your finance department’s best friends. Inability to Self-Regulate: AI cannot self-regulate or put itself through an objective quality control process. Ethical Challenges: If you serve clients in specialized industries like medicine, finance, or legal services, there is an inherent risk. Providing your client’s audiences with inaccurate information could create liability for their business. Someone with industry knowledge is still necessary to review the work performed by AI to safeguard against these issues. Beyond AI: White Label Digital Agency Partners As we saw above, AI does not come without its limitations. It can also not solve every challenge that your agency faces. Sure, it has plenty of conveniences and it helps every agency fill some needs, but when it comes down to elite performance, you cannot just AI your way to the top. A white label digital agency partner is a team of digital marketing and advertising experts that assist your agency in offering an elevated service for your clients. Whether you are facing scope limitations, hiring challenges, issues with managing multiple vendors, or you’ve landed a white-whale client and need to deliver, your agency partner can help you. For example, say your agency excels at SEO and social, but you do not have any programmatic advertising experts in-house. You’ve landed one of the biggest clients in your agency’s history, but they require OTT advertising as part of the campaign. In a scenario like this, you can solve your scope, hiring, vending, and white-whale-sized client challenges in a single solution. Leveraging your partnership with a white label agency, you can entrust their white label OTT advertising campaign to an experienced analyst and re-label any deliverables, reports, or communications under your agency’s own brand. This allows you to maintain greater control over the service you provide to your clients in a cost-effective manner that does not require you to take on more overhead. Connect with a White Label Agency Partner Today At the end of the day, AI has plenty of helpful use cases, but it’s not a perfect problem-solver for everything. When you’re facing new challenges that machines cannot solve, there are other strategies to navigate the changing tides. Let’s break it down into a simple takeaway: Use AI tools to boost efficiency, and leverage a white label agency partnership to boost performance. That’s where Conduit comes in. At Conduit Digital, we strive to serve successful ad agencies across North America as the elite white label ad operations performance partner. With 17 expertly managed channels in one single partnership, we deliver superior results for your campaigns all from our office in New Jersey. To learn more about how we can help your agency scale further, let’s talk.

Jan 30, 2023 No one enjoys massive waves of corporate layoffs. It removes skilled team members from adding value to the company and discontinues their ability to serve their customers. This was the case with Google in January 2023 when they announced they will be laying off 12,000 people. Google represents just one corporate titan in the recent layoff trend. Others like Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, along with Google, have eliminated at least 51,000 jobs in the past few weeks. When the economy entered its first post-pandemic recovery phases, many employers started hiring at staggering volumes. Fast forward a short while later, and now these same entities are deciding that they no longer need the extra help. With Google’s layoffs rolling through their corporation, many of their ad reps that once served their advertising clients are disappearing from the digital ether. Instead, Google has recommended that their advertisers turn to third-party resellers like local ad agencies. While many will be polishing their resumes in the wake of 2023 layoffs and scanning through job listings once again, agencies have an incredible opportunity to continue growing, scaling, and generating new business from local clients that seek an expert ad operations team to support their marketing goals. Clients that once worked directly with Google are now left seeking a new solution. So, what will this look like exactly? We’re going to break down for you what the rest of 2023 will look like for many ad agencies as they navigate a new environment that further increases demand for their expertise. More on Google’s relationship with advertising agencies with Kasim Aslam on Agency Talk (Starts 2:16) What’s Shaping Up for Local Ad Agencies in 2023: Ad Spend is Going to Take (At Least) a 5.9% Jump In a November 2022 report from MarTech, media ad spend in 2023 was projected to leap by 5.9%. Now that Google is discontinuing much of its in-house advertising services, this number will likely increase for local agencies as new eager clients are looking for a new ad operations provider. More Business Development for Local Agencies Now that Google’s internal support for advertisers is decreasing, they will not possess the same in-house bandwidth to support individual advertisers on their platform. For businesses that heavily relied on this service, they are likely to now seek the help of local ad agencies to act as their expert resource. From a business development perspective, this presents a golden opportunity for ad agencies to promote their advertising services, especially campaigns run on Google products. Agency leaders should expect to hear questions from potential clients regarding paid search, YouTube advertising, and programmatic channels as prominent discussion points. Beyond the sales process, agencies should invest heavily in truly understanding their clients’ business models, goals, brand positioning, and target audiences. Google never provided this more specialized level of service, and now this unique selling point for agencies can become their greatest strength. Agencies Will Need More Ad Operations Support As demand rolls in for agency services, a holistic product suite will not be a luxury. Instead, it will prove a necessity. For example, if a client wants to run paid search but you do not offer this service in-house, they will then turn to another competitor that can and will meet these needs. If all you needed was one additional service as part of your offering to land this account, how do you quickly launch these campaigns at a high-performing level? As our friend Marcus Murphy from 5ive has said, agencies often fail in isolation. If you are not actively expanding your network beyond your office doors, are you receiving the support that you need to scale profitably? This is where a white label ad operations partner comes in. Here are some of the most notable benefits your agency receives from a white label partnership: Cost Savings – Avoid the traditional hard costs of building and maintaining an internal digital marketing infrastructure, from software applications to personnel. Increased Expertise – Instantly access another team of experts across a wide range of digital marketing and advertising services. No more crash courses! Scalability – Increase or decrease your volume of work as needed to better stabilize your internal capacity and bandwidth. Flexibility – Tailor your partner’s services to meet the specific needs of your clients. Time-saving – Spend less time recruiting and training people to fill skill gaps at your agency and spend more time on sales, client relationships, and strategy. Reporting – Leverage your white label partner’s comprehensive reports to prove the value of your agency to your clients. Branding - Brand your partner’s services as your own for more control over your own branding and increase your credibility with clients. Get the Support Your Agency Needs for a Busy 2023 Are you anticipating a massive increase in your agency’s services this year, but feeling concerned about how to meet the demand? You don’t have to face it alone. At Conduit, we partner with established and successful local ad agencies across North America to deliver elite, holistic performance for your client’s campaigns in a 100% white label format. With our infrastructure based on communication and performance, we equip you with the means to confidently say “yes” to the biggest and best opportunities to land and expand new accounts. You focus on making your agency the best, and we’ll manage the rest. To learn more about launching your own ad operations partnership, schedule a 20-minute discovery call today.

Jun 2, 2020 Politics. It’s a touchy subject to bring up around the proverbial water cooler, right? But as digital marketers, we can’t let it be. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, you have to admit that President Trump has forced social media and its uses into the forefront of the political scene. Even those “unsavvy” baby boomers hear all about the daily Tweets, social media posts and the scandals surrounding the last presidential election. It’s crazy to think just how large an impact social media has had on our past and potentially our future elections. There’s just no getting around it. The Spending Boom But why should we want to? Overall political ad spending has topped the $1 BILLION mark ($1.34 billion) reports eMarketer on Feb 16th of this year. This election cycle’s political ad spend is more than three times the amount spent during the last presidential cycle. Presidential candidates have spent more than $796.8 million on Facebook, while $243.7 million went to Google. Bloomberg has outspent all other candidates combined since joining the race in November by more than $10 million dollars. This year, Google and Facebook have served up 2 billion Bloomberg ads, which works out to 30,000 a minute. (Washington Post, 2/19) In the past year, Trump shelled out $14 million for Google ads (with more than $1 million of that spent in a single week of September after House Democrats announced the impeachment inquiry) and over $25 million worth of Facebook ads. Billionaire investor Tom Steyer was a big spender with $13.4 million and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg comes in third at $9.3 million. After spending big on digital ads to kick-start his campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden has fallen behind his Democratic primary opponents in the digital ad race. (OpenSecrets.org, Nov, 2019) This is big money here, people. And although the lion’s share is spent on Facebook and Google, there’s plenty of advertising dollars to go around. Bottom line is: There is Money. To. Be. Made. But you have to know how to navigate through the restrictions and strategies available to make your candidate’s campaign a success – be it on a national or local level. Spending levels by candidate (Statista – Jan 5, 2019-Feb 1, 2020) Traditional Political Advertising Still Reigns Supreme Historically local television still will see a major windfall from political advertising as it has in the past, and according to Forbes magazine (Brad Adgate, Sept 3, 2019) Kantar Media CMAG group estimates that political ads for the 2020 election could reach $6 billion. Others predict spending could reach $10 BILLION, which is almost 60% more than the estimate from just 4 years ago. According to a poll created by Borrell Associates and cited by the Wall Street Journal, 2020 presidential candidates were projected to spend $2.90 billion on digital and online ads. In 2016, presidential candidates spent $1.40 billion and in 2012 presidential candidates spent $160 million. That’s a huuuuge growth in digital ad spend. The History Of Politics And Marketing You may think that the shift to political advertising is the first major “technology shift” to affect the outcome of an election. So before we go any further, there is a story that needs to be shared to illustrate that this has indeed happened in the past. The impact of technology on political campaigns is not a new concept! In 1950, only 11 percent of American homes had television; by 1960, the number had jumped to 88 percent. An estimated seventy million Americans, about two-thirds of the electorate, watched the first debate on September 26th. Young, handsome presidential candidate John F. Kennedy took the time to meet with the producers of the debate to review the camera placement and the look and feel of the set. President Nixon was unable to take advantage of this opportunity due to a medical injury. Kennedy chose his wardrobe carefully to stand out against the television set background. Nixon wore a gray suit and appeared to blend in with the background. JFK spoke directly to the camera and the television viewers. Nixon appeared to be responding directly to Kennedy. Interestingly enough, viewers who watched reportedly felt that Kennedy won the debate, while viewers who were only able to listen to the debate on radio sided with Nixon. Many think this first strong encounter on the television screen shaped the debates and election to come. President Kennedy embraced and took advantage of the new technology at hand to enhance his campaign and go on to win the 1960 Presidential election. Of course, this is an oversimplified view of the election process, but there is no doubt that technology had an impact on the campaign – just as digital marketing plays an important role and impacts our campaigns today. Just as JFK embraced TV back in the late 50’s and early 60’s, so must every candidate at every level embrace the use of digital marketing to enhance their campaign – or risk getting left behind. Television wasn’t the first major impact on political advertising, and our current version of digital marketing is surely not the last. Now, let’s get back to 2020 and the restrictions and strategies you’ll need to know about in this upcoming election year. How Social Media Platforms Are Cracking Down On Political Ads The FEC (Federal Election Commission) clearly outlines the requirements in political advertising, including print and TV ads. The rules and disclaimer requirements are very specific. However, the digital arena is an ever-changing environment where changes by one platform put pressure on another platform to follow suit with restrictions and changes. As it stands now, here are new restrictions to worry about that may not affect your non-political digital marketing campaigns. Facebook announced that its policy would be to not fact-check content posted by politicians, whether paid or organic. A recent eMarketer study seems to indicate that a majority of potential voters think that political ads should be banned. Last month, Google, which of course also owns YouTube, and has always restricted granular microtargeting of election ads, announced that it would limit certain types of political ad targeting, but made no change in allowing politicians to run false ads. It’s against their policies for any advertiser to make a false claim—whether it’s a claim about the price of a chair or a claim that you can vote by text message, that election day is postponed, or that a candidate has died. To make this more explicit, they’re clarifying ads policies and adding examples to show how policies prohibit things like “deep fakes” (doctored and manipulated media), misleading claims about the census process, and ads or destinations making demonstrably false claims that could significantly undermine participation or trust in an electoral or democratic process (Google). Google says it would allow political advertisers to use only three types of audience targeting when buying media: age, gender, and location down to the ZIP code level. The normally valuable tool “Customer Match” (where campaigns can upload a list of prospective voters’ emails or phone numbers and then have that “matched” with their online profiles) will no longer be available to political candidates. Political advertisers can, of course, continue to do contextual targeting, such as serving ads to people reading or watching a story about, say, the economy. This will align Google’s approach to election ads with long-established practices in media such as TV, radio, and print, and result in election ads being more widely seen and available for public discussion. Twitter, who came in third in line of where the dollars are being spent, announced that it will no longer run political ads. It has since backtracked somewhat on it’s position, but restrictions remain. The platform still plans to allow certain groups to advertise on what they consider to be political issues — but only so long as they do not advocate for or against political or legislative outcomes. This is likely to create enforcement challenges and cause confusion for groups seeking to educate the public about issues. (CNN) Facebook has come under fire for not doing more to regulate it’s political ads. Amazon, Bing, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitch and TikTok’s policies include significant restrictions or complete bans on political advertising. Just last week Spotify announced that it will no longer sell political ads starting early next year. But even those platforms haven’t completely stopped candidates and groups from exploiting loopholes to promote political messages. And there are voices on both sides of the table battling over whether these platforms have done enough or too much which restricts our rights to freedom of speech. What Restrictions Mean It’s an ongoing battle that does not look to be resolved any time soon. But we as digital marketers need to stay on top of these actions to ensure that we can run the ads that we need to run on the platforms where we want to spend our budget. Many argue that the restrictions imposed on social media allow the candidates with higher budgets an unfair advantage since they can afford the high cost of TV spend while pushing out candidates who are taking advantage of the more affordable digital marketing routes. It’s a constant struggle for all platforms to restrict ads while at the same time providing transparency to the user. Google says they are expanding the coverage of our election advertising transparency to include U.S. state-level candidates and officeholders, ballot measures, and ads that mention federal or state political parties so that all of those ads will now be searchable and viewable as well. As each platform continues to refine its policies, pressure on the rest of the platforms is high to uphold restrictions as well. There are likely more changes to come in the upcoming months. Either way, we as digital marketing experts follow these changes and trends and will help you determine where and how you can provide a successful political campaign for your candidate. Digital Marketing Political Campaign Strategy In 2020 We need to be smart and strategic in selling our political ad campaigns. For instance, if Republicans are looking to pull in the older demographic, Facebook may be the platform to turn to. Facebook users 45-54 spend more time on the site than any other age group. Even across the same platform, political advertising strategies vary widely – with some candidates trying to reach an older demographic and some targeting the younger voters. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, for instance, targets a younger and more male audience. Reports indicate that Vice President Joe Biden does just the opposite – ⅔ of his audience are women and a large majority of those seeing his ads were born before 1975. “Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, more or less, splits the difference between them. She has targeted a Facebook audience that more closely mirrors the projected universe of likely Democratic primary voters in 2020: more women than men (though not by as much as Mr. Biden), leaning older more than younger (but again, not by as much as Mr. Biden).” (NY Times, Oct 14, 2019). As with any other advertising campaign know your goals, determine your strategy and go after a very targeted audience. But there are many other platforms and mediums to take advantage of to reach your targeted audience and each of those serves a very important purchase in the consumer journey of choosing a candidate. By all means, take advantage of the power of social media as most candidates do – target your audience, create look-a-like campaigns, use the many features FB and Instagram now have to offer to reach your desired demographic, but don’t be boxed in by the social-only strategy! Digital strategists describe three phases of online advertising in campaigns. The first is acquiring new donors and supporters. The second is persuading undecided voters. The third is getting people out to vote. (NY Times) We can correlate these phases to what we at Conduit Digital so often refer back to as our digital marketing solutions funnel. We return to this approach because it’s been proven to work time and again. Politics And The Marketing Funnel At the top of the digital marketing funnel your campaign will be focused on acquiring new donors and supporters (those out there still doing their research to decide who to put their money behind). After you get them to donate to your campaign, you want to feed that large audience pool down the funnel toward your specific candidate and then get them out to vote. This can be done through a series of different marketing tactics or a combination in order to hit your target audience from all angles. Engagement is just as important here as it is in other types of conversion campaigns. If the user does not identify with any candidate or party after reading your messages, chances are they won’t take the time out of their busy day to do additional research or get themselves to the polls to vote. Politics And OTT With the rise in TV costs, savvy advertisers will jump on the Over-The-Top (OTT) bandwagon as a new approach to reach their targeted audience. OTT has skyrocketed in popularity as an excellent complement to or coordinated with a television campaign. It will only continue to grow more popular as 5G begins rolling out. It’s a way to reach the cord cutters of all ages while they are watching their chosen programs on the big screen. Don’t let your potential candidates overlook this important digital channel! Politics And Programmatic Pair this top of the funnel product with an Audience Targeting display and pre-roll campaign. Those display ads are a close cousin to those pesky yard and roadway signs that the candidates always forget to take away after the election. We’ve all seen them. 20 signs with the same candidate’s name within the space of 25 feet. Annoying and invasive as they may seem to be, the frequency ensures that you know that candidate’s name come time to cast your vote at the polls. And you may just go home and go online to do a little more research about those candidates. Display advertising can give your candidate that same frequency approach with even some real estate on the ads to include a web address and slogan. You can reach candidates who are reading relevant content on their phone or at home/work on their desktop computer. And then….if you draw them to your site, retarget them again to reiterate your strong campaign message! Event targeting (political rallies, debates, conventions and the like) is a perfect opportunity to gather a pool of potential voters to reach at a later date closer to election day. You may even be able to pull constituents away from competing candidates by putting a geo-fence around their event location! Politics and PPC Although this is counter-intuitive to a normal digital campaign strategy, Pay Per Click may be an option at the Top of the Political digital funnel. We normally think of PPC as a conversion driver at the end of the consumer journey. In the political environment, we want the support and donations (conversions) to come in at the beginning of the campaign so that the campaign can continue to the next stage! Now is when you want to run “Ads” for your candidate that solicit political donations. You’ll want to drive potential supporters to a strong website or landing page where they can immediately donate or continue down the research stage, where, with additional strong Calls To Action, they can then donate after learning the strengths of the candidate or party in question. Here’s an example of Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders putting that strategy into action: Note the multiple calls to action – Join the Campaign or Donate Today. Within an ad, there are multiple opportunities to click to donate. There’s a catchy Description line (“unlike Trump, we don’t have billionaires funding our campaign. But we do have you.”) If I was an “undecided” or a non-Trump supporter, I might just click in to learn more about this alternative candidate. The importance of a strong web or landing page plays into this strategy, so it should be noted that you’ll want to make sure the site is user friendly, quick to load, has valuable content at a 15-year-old reading level, and plenty of Call To Action buttons in the right places. If Form Fills are included, keep them above the fold and make them short – including only information that is necessary! Politics And Social Media Now, as you bring potential voters down the political advertising funnel, we again know that social media is a strong platform for those who have expressed interest and are in the consideration phase. You can use the powers of social media targeting to create a custom audience to show your message to! But again, there are so many more options to reach those middle-of-the-funnel undecided voters! In addition to social content and paid social media on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and the like there is a very popular and very effective tool – YouTube! Politics And Video Advertising Harness the power of the largest streaming website in the world! More and more YouTube is becoming a “search engine.” (SEO for YouTube is not far off in the future!) Especially if you have a candidate with a strong visual presence, why not take advantage of the lesson learned from the JFK campaign? A strong video can tip an undecided voter in your favor. Here’s an opportunity for the undecided voter to get to know your candidate on a more personal level – see them smile, shaking hands with constituents, speaking to a hometown crowd! Even with the recent restrictions, YouTube can still target users based on age, gender and geography. Make sure to include your important visuals and identify your party or candidate in the first 5 seconds of the video! Keep in mind that for videos that are shorter than 30 seconds – your client is only paying for completed views! A few seconds of free advertising is never a bad thing! Don’t overlook the power of video! Middle of the funnel – persuading undecided voters (those showing interest and consideration for a particular candidate or party). Politics And Email Marketing If you have email, there’s a good chance that you check it every day. And so does your target audience! Consider this fact: according to Statista, in 2019, there are 293.6 billion emails sent every day and only 24% of people in the US never check their emails during vacations in 2018. Personalized, targeted emails utilizing engaging, and captivating creative can reach your candidate’s very targeted audience. Send an email to those affiliated with your candidate’s party or, better yet, target those younger demographic potential voters who have not yet declared themselves! They could become followers for life for the cost of the price of chewing gum. Now that so many of us ready email via smartphone – according to Campaign Monitor – up to 85% of us – email marketing remains a very powerful platform choice. What It Means For Your Agency We now have potential voters who know your candidate’s name from the Audience Targeting ads, perhaps reinforced via a strong video OTT or YouTube ad. Maybe you even were interested enough to make a small donation or volunteer some time! Now we are in the home stretch! We need to get the voters to the polls to elect your candidate. We need that final conversion goal to be met! Driving traffic to the website and landing pages is still key. What we want to change up now is our messaging! The research phase is drawing to a close, and now we want to be the candidate that can convince our constituents to get out to the polls and vote! Strong, consistent messaging is key. Depending on the scope of the campaign, a local candidate can even hone in on dynamic ads which will assist voters in knowing where the polling places are in their area (and naturally recommend voting for your candidate!) This is the time for frequency across all platforms and multiple screens with your Get Out and Vote! message. This may be the time to double down on your Facebook or Instagram advertising or to increase the frequency of your YouTube and OTT videos. These are just some of the potential ways to reach potential donors, supporters, and voters. Although due to increased pressure from outside sources many platforms are continuing to change restrictions on political ads, there are still solid targeting options to reach your desired audience of voters. Using the features and strengths of each type of advertising – from Audience Targeting to PPC – we can assist you to formulate a full funnel digital solution that will meet your candidate’s needs. Do their strengths lie in their spoken content? Physical presence? Campaigns high in video content may be your answer. Does your content have strong written content on important social issues? Focus on your website or strong engaging, content on your Facebook page. Looking to primarily solicit donations and support? Lead generation type social campaigns and Pay Per Click may be your answers. A careful mix can bring you success at all stops along the digital funnel as long as your candidates budget is carefully managed. Soon your election year may mean that voters and potential voters are texted messages about candidates and mass texts may be sent on election day to get us out to the polls. When you wake up for your morning coffee on election day, your Google Home or Alexa device may remind you to get out and vote and, based on your cross device search behavior, may even recommend a candidate or two for you! When you get in your car or stop at a stoplight that’s been geofenced, maybe you’ll receive and ad right on your dashboard. Maybe…when you turn on the biggest screen in your house, a hologram of a political wannabe comes into your living room to talk to you about the issues that are important to you! Who knows what the next big technology shift will be? As digital marketers, we’ll be at the forefront of delivering these new and personalized messages. When all is said and done and another election night is in the books, it will be interesting to assess the data to see how digital marketing had an impact on the 2020 election – at a national AND local level. Our impact is important – it may affect generations to come! At the very least, the current buzz in the media will perhaps make voters carefully consider the messages they are receiving and perhaps even drive them to do a little more research before committing to a party or candidate. But one thing is for sure – whether it’s helping your agency to grab a piece of the pie at the national or regional level, or helping a local school board member to get elected – a digital marketing campaign has become a necessity for success and Conduit Digital is here to help! How We Can Help At Conduit Digital, we have our pulse on the digital marketing environment, and with our analyst’s vast experience in the media industry, we understand the political environment and how to bring results for your candidates! We have internal data to guide us in all of our campaign decisions, and with 24/7 reporting, you’ll be able to see those optimizations made to your campaigns as they are made throughout the month. There are more regulations and more pitfalls to watch out for based on public outcry and privacy and security concerns begin to scrutinize and monitor political advertising and we will be here to guide your agency and your clients every step of the way! Let us be your watchdog to ensure that your ads will not be restricted or disapproved due to the ever-increasing regulations; we will ensure that your ads have the desired impact on the audience your candidate is trying to reach! Your agency’s client success is our number one mission! Call to discover how Conduit’s White Label Digital Marketing Services can increase your revenue, increase your client retention, reduce your costs, and grow your agency!

Aug 28, 2020 Before you can make money selling Programmatic Display advertising, a good starting point is reading our Ultimate Guide To Programmatic & Native Display. It quite literally is “the ultimate guide” that will provide you with the confidence and ammo to sell Programmatic efficiently, effectively, and correctly. Great – now  that you’ve read that, we can help put you on the right path to making money selling Programmatic Advertising with these key tools. When you use programmatic display advertising in your marketing strategy, you not only will increase your ROI but it will also help increase your client portfolio. Benefits to Using Display Ads When you are advertising for your client’s business, it’s important to keep three main factors: visual appeal to grab attention, target location, and the ads messaging. This is why display advertising has become so popular in recent years. With display advertising, you are able to deliver a visually pleasing powerful message, that gets in front of the target demographic. So what more could you want? Other benefits to using display advertising include: Visually Appealing Built Brand Awareness Effective Targeting Increase Brand Visibility Ad Retargeting Capabilities Collect More Consumer Data Understand How Programmatic Display Can Achieve Your Client’s Goals Programmatic Display is an essential tool for driving brand awareness and obtaining significant reach across highly targeted audiences. It allows your client’s brand to have access to 99% of the internet’s ad-servable inventory which helps reach their target users at the right place and right time. Sounds like a pretty powerful tool, right? It can be, but it’s often sold incorrectly. This can be prevented simply by understanding what your client is trying to achieve for their brand as well as knowing the fundamentals of what programmatic display can do. For instance, say your client is a private gym owner who’s looking to drive awareness about her grand opening to fitness enthusiasts in the area. Programmatic Display is the perfect solution for this! Through the use of first & third-party data segments, geo-fencing, search keyword targeting, whitelisting sports/fitness websites, and website retargeting, you could deliver a top-notch programmatic solution that reaches your client’s ideal market whether they’re at a competitor’s gym or browsing the latest health trends online. Know That It’s the Foundation Of Successful Campaigns Programmatic Display is like apple pie – it’s great by itself, but once you add ice cream, it’s 10x better. The ice cream to the Programmatic apple pie is any intent-based product, like Paid Search. The benefits of both are truly amplified when paired together to make a multi-product solution for your client. Referencing the same hypothetical gym owner client in the section above, imagine that their goal is to increase form fills for a free trial week on their website. Programmatic Display isn’t going to achieve this goal as effectively as it could without the addition of an intent-based product. That’s because it’s a top-of-the-funnel solution designed to bring brand awareness rather than drive bottom-of-the-funnel users to convert (i.e. fill out a form, make a phone call, etc.). In the example above, the solution would be to run a conversion-driver product like Paid Search alongside a Programmatic Display campaign. Programmatic Display would assist with conversions by nurturing potential leads at the top-of-the-funnel like retargeting interested users who visit the website. Due to the awareness and brand recognition that this product brings, users are more likely to make an intent-based search, click on the Paid Search ad, and fill out the free week trial form (i.e. convert). Be Transparent With Your Client The nature of the Programmatic world sometimes allows for some sketchy players. Clients want to know where their money is being spent, and rightfully so. Separate yourself from the pack with transparent reporting for your client. Provide things like domain-level metrics so they can see exactly where their ads are being served, conversion reporting, audience performance, demographic insights, and ad performance. This will lead to trust from the client as well as establish credibility for your agency. Moreover, by providing tangible results that can be translated to your client’s positive ROI, they will be more likely to increase their investment and/or expand the campaign to multiple locations or focus areas. Embrace the World Beyond CTR We all know that the industry standard for measuring Programmatic Display campaigns is by click-through-rate (CTR), but it’s important to know that CTR alone should not define success. Clicks don’t provide the whole story (what happened after the click?) and they don’t necessarily mean a quality user (CMG Solutions). Some things you should look for to prove positive Programmatic Display campaign results: An Increase in Direct Traffic Programmatic Display campaigns are meant to drive more brand awareness, so an increase in direct traffic upon going live isn’t coincidental! Conversions Yes, we said this product isn’t best for driving conversions like form fills and phone calls, but that doesn’t mean it can’t. These types of conversions demonstrate a highly engaged user, but you could also track page view conversions to show user behavior. This can provide some visibility into what your audience is most drawn to on your site and could even help make the case for an additional campaign. Maybe users are really engaged with the Employment Opportunities page? Recommend a Recruiting campaign! Foot Traffic Attribution Geo-Fencing allows your client to have insight into how their campaign is performing via offline conversions. By drawing virtual fences around brick-and-mortar locations that your client’s ideal audience frequently visits, and by fencing their location as the conversion zone, a Programmatic Display campaign has the ability to track visits from these users to your client’s location! This makes for a strong case of proving positive ROI. So while it’s okay to use as a benchmark for your ad quality (is your messaging clear/engaging?) or keyword strategy, proving value beyond the click is key for getting your client to invest more in Programmatic Display with you. Conclusion Programmatic Display sells itself if its capabilities match the client’s goals. When you’re making money by maintaining customer satisfaction & providing proof of positive results that translate to their ROI, it’s easy to see why using display advertising is the right choice.

Jul 22, 2020 Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Pay-Per-Click (PPC) as it is also referred to, is a common and effective channel within digital marketing. Many people within the digital space understand that PPC is a great way to drive conversions and leads for your clients by leveraging the bottom-of-the-funnel targeting capabilities that are available. However, many digital advertisers do not either have the experience or the man-power to offer the set up and management of PPC campaigns to their clients. If this is the situation that you find yourself in, then you will most definitely benefit from learning about white-labelled PPC solutions. After reading this article, you will hopefully be more well versed in: What is White-Labeled PPC Reseller vs A True White-Label Partnership Benefits of White Label PPC The White Label Process What Is White-Label PPC? White-Label PPC is a process in which one agency leverages PPC management services from another agency, but offers these services to their clients under their brand name. Essentially, white-label solutions allow for the agency seeking out the services to do one thing: scale. Let’s dive into PPC a little more. Pay-Per-Click marketing leverages search engines like Google and Bing to serve ads that are listed above the organic search results. Within the account, marketers create ads consisting of headlines and descriptions that users click on to get brought to the client’s landing page. To dictate who sees these ads, marketers include what keywords users can search for in the search bar, which is what makes PPC such a great bottom-of-the-funnel marketing channel. You can essentially determine what ad copy gets served to a user who is searching for a specific keyword. When you incorporate other key tips and industry secrets to your campaign build, you will be able to create better ads than your competitors. As previously mentioned, white-labeled PPC services allow the agency buying these services to scale their business without making modifications under their own roof. This allows the agency to continue working within the marketing channels that they manage best and specialize in while adding in PPC to offer a more robust digital suite to their clients. PPC is one of the most powerful channels in terms of driving conversions, and pairing this with other products will bolster the campaign’s purchasing funnel. If an agency does not offer in-house PPC, partnering with the right white-label agency will only extend your offering and results for clients. Now you may be asking: What is the right white-label agency for me? White Label PPC Partnership vs. Reselling PPC Within the digital space, agencies looking to leverage services offered by another agency have options of how to go about doing so. You may have heard of reseller programs and full-service white label ppc partnerships and how they are similar in many aspects, but it is very important to know the difference between the two when deciding what avenue your agency is looking to take. A true, full-service, white label paid search partnership will essentially work as an extension of your agency. Partnerships can be customized to fulfill a multitude of needs within campaign set up, ongoing management and optimization, as well as reporting, client relations, and new client acquisition. All aspects would be white-labeled, or rebranded to your agency, meaning that you clients would be of the understanding that all of the work is being done under your roof. A PPC reseller is more specifically involved in running PPC campaigns across platforms like Google and Bing for agencies that do not offer PPC in-house, or are looking to scale more without taking on the cost of increasing their man power. While signing on with a reseller, your agency will still be tasked with the client relationship side of the business. You would not be able to leverage a reseller for client prospecting, proposals, reporting, or strategic guidance. Obviously the set up of an agency and what they offer is always different, which makes understanding what type of partnership to make very important. Benefits Of A White Label PPC Partnership If your agency is really looking to scale, then singing on for a white-label partnership might be in your best interest. While no additional work will need to be done by your agency, you can make your product suite more robust without the hassle of building the product offering, ramping up expertise or hiring new employees, and creating sales collateral to acquire new clients in a space that you are less familiar in. By essentially flipping on a switch, your agency will be able to bypass the headaches and time required to formulate a new PPC offering from scratch and ramping up expertise on the ins and outs of highly competitive search engines like Google and Bing. Your partner will have you covered here, and the margin agreed upon will generally outweigh the overhead cost of creating your own solution. With the right agency partner, you can be confident that your clients get great results from experts running your campaigns on Google and Bing along with strategic guidance that will negate client churn. White-label partnerships are generally as collaborative as you would like to make them. This means that your team will always have a say in what service areas you’d ideally like your client’s campaign to focus on as well as the specific ad copy and keywords to achieve this. This also means that transparency should never be a worry. This relationship will not be treated as a sign-up-and-hand-over-the-keys scenario. Your team will be able to preview the campaign specifics prior to launch, and influence the optimizations throughout the life of the campaign. Sticking with negating churn, your partnership will be a true extension of your agency, meaning that you will always be in a symbiotic relationship: when one side wins, the other does as well! Simply because of this, you can be confident that all facets of out-sourced operations are carried out with two goals in mind: driving new business and expanding existing business for your agency. Finally, and most simply, this new relationship will be an added revenue stream for your agency. At the agreed-upon management fee or margin, you can generate additional revenue from existing clients and new clients looking to run search ads on Google and Bing. Join A White-Label Program That Will Change Your Company If you feel that a white-label ppc partner is the solution that your agency would benefit from, we are confident that you have come to the right place. Conduit Digital has been helping agencies open doors for 7 years across 95 Nielsen markets. Aside from offering expertly-certified PPC services, Conduit Digital offers a range of white-labeled ppc solutions that will help scale your business in the areas that you do not currently offer, and a full service team that will stand with you in every step of your process. We aim to make things as collaborative as possible, as our main goal is to help grow your business.

Sep 3, 2020 OTT Advertising is a form of advertising that enables you to serve ads on an internet-based, non-skippable, and immersive content format. Advertising on OTT platforms allows advertisers to engage with a unique audience that is committed to the content it is consuming. As one of the fastest-growing digital products of the past 5 years, there is an incredible opportunity for your agency to sell OTT Advertising. In this guide, we are going to break down everything you need to know about OTT and how to make money selling OTT Advertising. What IS OTT? OTT stands for Over-the-Top Television, which originally referred to the devices that go “over” a cable box to provide the user access to TV content such as Roku or AppleTV. In OTT channels, content is delivered via the internet rather than through a traditional cable/broadcast provider. A connected TV, also called CTV, is a television or connected device with an internet connection and a UI that enables users to access OTT content through applications. Is OTT content delivered to all devices, or just to the TV screen? This should be an easy question right? Well, believe it or not, the digital marketing industry is fairly split on how to actually define ott. 50% of people believe OTT is “streaming video that appears on any screen (TV, Mobile, Desktop, Tablet) other than live TV. 48% of people believe OTT is “streaming video that appears on a TV screen other than live TV” At Conduit Digital, we believe the latter and have aligned ourselves with the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) by defining OTT as “Video content transported from a video provider to a connected device over the Internet outside the closed networks of telecom and cable providers.” To put it simply, we define OTT as Video content, delivered via a connected device, to the Television Screen We chose to include the Television screen in our definition as we believe this clarifies the value prop of OTT and focuses on it’s biggest strength… harnessing the power of the largest screen in the house! OTT Ads OTT advertising is an internet-based, non-skippable, immersive content format where advertising is delivered directly to viewers over the internet through streaming video services or devices, such as smart or connected TVs. OTT has the ability to run on multiple devices ranging from Smart TVs, gaming consoles, Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV to Chromecast giving advertisers the ability to reach their target audience no matter where they consume content. But reaching your target audience is just half the battle, it is of the utmost importance to put a high-quality advertisement in front of your audience. To ensure your ad is quality make sure to include your brand’s logo and provide your ad in multiple different lengths to ensure you are not missing quality users because of inventory availability. Make sure to include the website and phone number of the business and have a clear message on what the product or service is you are promoting. When it comes to running on specific inventory, like Hulu, for example, it is also important to check if they have their own specific creative requirements.  This can often be the case, and could potentially be limiting your ads from serving even though they may not have any issue serving to open exchange inventory! Growth of OTT OTT has seen a tremendous amount of growth from its inception in the early 2010s. According to emarketer in 2017, there were 153M OTT subscribers 55.7% of internet users growing to 170.1M (60.8%) in 2018, and 181.5M (63.9%) in 2019. Growing over 18% from 2017 to 2019 and is expected to reach a market size value of $332.52 billion by 2025 (Allied Market Research). With more and more people “cutting the cord” and migrating away from traditional television OTT is leading the way to be the new norm for users to consume content. Users want to consume the content they want when they want and before OTT there wasn’t a viable option for them to do so until the emergence of OTT. With the growing costs of cable network bundles and the set lineup for content users are seeing more and more benefits to cutting the cord and controlling their own content. Backing this is the mass flooding of the OTT network from some of the largest entertainment companies in the world. According to TechRadar Netflix still leads the way as the top streaming service with 182.8 million subscribers, followed by Amazon Prime Video with an estimated 112 million subscribers in the US, Disney+  surpassing 50 million, Hulu with 30 million. We have already seen the likes of YouTube TV, HBO Now, Sling TV, Crunchyroll, Apple TV, and Crackle round out the top 10 streaming services. With the emergence of Comcast launching Peacock and others like Quibi and HBO Max already entering the market, there are more and more options for users to consume content. The Biggest Benefits of OTT Advertising With the emergence of OTT Advertising as a major digital marketing platform, you may be wondering to yourself, “What does it have to do with my agency?” There is an amazing opportunity for your agency to sell OTT Advertising. Here are some of the biggest benefits for your agency to sell OTT Advertising. Big Screen Viewing When users are enjoying the content they want via an OTT device they are most likely watching on the biggest screen they have in the house, their television. This is a substantial benefit to OTT advertising, usually, people are consuming content on their televisions with others. Giving your single impression multiple sets of eyeballs increases your brand’s exposure and ability to reach more unique users while influencing drive, recall, engagement, consideration, and influence purchasing behavior. Audience Targeting With OTT you have the unique ability to target audiences that have already shown an interest in your brand, products, and services that traditional television advertising just simply cannot provide. With the ability to target users based on their behaviors and interest it is almost guaranteed you are reaching your target audience every time your Ad is shown on the big screen. Brand Exposure When you use the full power of OTT to gain brand exposure your single commercial is most likely being viewed by multiple sets of eyeballs but you are only charged on a 1-to-1 rate. According to studies by IAB, OTT has an estimated 1.94 co-viewing rate compared to traditional linear TV with a 1.86 co-viewing rate. With OTT you get maximum brand exposure for your advertising dollars. Pairs Perfectly With Traditional TV Advertising Why not pair OTT with your traditional television advertising media plan? If you are running your commercials on traditional television and not on OTT platforms simultaneously then you are missing a huge audience that your traditional television ads could be missing. OTTs audience targeting capabilities and its power to maximize your brand’s exposure to those target audiences is a huge asset to any agency and it’s clients. Pairing OTT and its highly engaged audiences with traditional television advertising only helps create more brand exposure while increasing brand recognition and recall. Users on OTT platforms are more engaged with the content they are consuming rather than most watching traditional television and this is proven by OTT’s outstanding video completion rate (VCR) of 97% according to Forbes. This means users are not switching programs due to advertising they are sitting and engaging with these ads because they chose the content they wanted to consume making them more invested, pair that with traditional television advertising now when a user sees your ad again on traditional television you just created a connection through brand recall. Targeting Capabilities of OTT One of the biggest differences between Traditional Television and OTT is the targeting capabilities. Below, you can find all the ways OTT campaigns are able to target users and hone in on only the most relevant of audiences. With nearly 60% of Americans ‘cutting the cord’ and replacing traditional TV with OTT, finding ways to take advantage of all of these capabilities is becoming more important every day! Geographic Targeting Geographic targeting is one of the most advanced location-based advertising techniques for targeting users based on a specific and sought after geographic area. This offers you the ability to accurately geo-target potential customers across connected and streaming platforms. This enables you to capture your audience’s location within a country, media market, city, state, zip code, and/or radius requested. Streaming Service & TV Application Whitelists At Conduit Digital, our OTT team has put in countless hours finding the right Streaming Services and TV Applications to serve your client’s ads on. The team has identified over 1,000 domains to only serve where relevant audiences will see your clients’ ads while also driving great performance. These whitelists can be layered with other targeting tactics to combine for some really advanced targeting. Site Retargeting Is there a more ideal user to target than someone that has previously shown interest in your client by visiting their website? Did you know that 96% of users who visit a webpage will leave without ever converting to a lead or sale? Well, by utilizing Site Retargeting, OTT is able to serve ads to these users who have previously visited the client’s website! Email Retargeting Email Retargeting is a powerful way to reach an audience that is interested in your client’s industry! OTT campaigns have the ability to create custom audiences of users based on their subscriptions and newsletter emails they receive. Purchase Receipt Retargeting Just like Email Retargeting, Purchase Receipt targeting uses emails that users receive to build a custom audience. The difference, however, is these users have received receipts after purchasing something online. For example, if someone just received an email receipt for a dog collar, they could be categorized within a ‘dog owners’ audience. Search Behavioral Search Behavioral targeting allows for custom audience creation based on a list of keywords that are relevant to your client’s campaign. Behavioral targeting enables advertisers to combine the effectiveness of search with the brand impact and reach of OTT targeting. Point of Interest (Geo-Fencing) Point of Interest (POI) targeting, sometimes called Geo-Fencing, utilizes multiple data sources to pinpoint a user’s exact whereabouts, allowing clients to target competitors’ locations and other relevant physical locations where their target audience may frequently visit. POI targeting can also be coupled with foot traffic attribution, so your clients will know how many times someone visits their business after viewing an ad! At Conduit Digital, we found that users who were served one of our clients’ ads after visiting a brick and mortar location were about 3 times more likely to convert than those who visited the same targeted locations but were not served an ad! Demographic & Interest/Affinity OTT campaigns are able to reach users based on their demographic and psychographic affiliations utilizing first and third party data. In terms of demographics, your clients’ ads can be targeted towards people based on things like their age, gender, income, education, and marital status. This can be paired with the ability to target user’s interests, like coffee drinkers, fitness enthusiasts, and musical instrument buyers to really put the ads in front of the most relevant audiences! In-Market or Intent Intent targeting can be utilized to target users who have shown behaviors putting to them in-the-market to buy a specific product. This is a great opportunity to target users who may be searching on competitors’ websites or doing research on which specific brand they should spend their money on. Dayparting While it is important to always try to reach the right audience, it is just as important to reach that audience at the right time. With dayparting, your OTT campaign will have the capability to serve your clients’ ads during the time of day users are at their most engaged. Application Diversity The success of OTT as a revenue-generating platform for both content creators and advertisers has seen an explosion of OTT platforms. Here are a few of the OTT platforms that Conduit Digital has seen incredible success serving our clients’ ads on. PlutoTV Pluto TV is a FREE internet-based streaming service. Pluto TV has become one of the most popular OTT applications in the market with 22 million active users as of December 2019. Pluto TV generates revenue through OTT advertising in between programming, keeping their more than 250 channels free of charge making it a very popular option for cord-cutters and everyone alike. Xumo Xumo is a free live and on-demand streaming service with over 190 channels for users to consume their content of choice. Xumo reports having 5.5 million monthly active users watching popular channels such as NBC News Now, ABC News Live, Newsy, and Bloomberg TV. Tubi Tubi TV is a free, ad-supported streaming service, with advertisements shown during commercial breaks between programming. It is the largest independently-owned video service in the United States since Pluto TV’s acquisition by Viacom. As of June 2020, Tubi TV offers more than 20,000 films and TV series with deals from major content creators such as NBCUniversal, Lionsgate, and Warner Brothers. Tubi has over 25 million monthly active users watching 163 million hours in December 2019, up 160% year-over-year. Sling TV Sling TV is a subscription-based streaming service with advertisements shown in between programming. Since Sling’s debut in February 2015, it has 2.59 million users in the United States with over 50 networks such as ESPN, TNT, and AMC available. Hulu Hulu, which was recently acquired by the Walt Disney Company, is a subscription-based OTT streaming service, providing live television programs as well as on-demand. In the second quarter of 2020, The Walt Disney Company reported that Hulu had 32.1 million paid subscribers, up from 25.2 million in the corresponding quarter of the previous fiscal year. Hulu offers upwards of 60 live channels as well as their full library of content. AT&T tv Now AT&T tv Now, formerly Directv Now, is a family of streaming multichannel television services offered in the United States by AT&T. With over 1 million subscribers, providing a range of over 60 channels for users to consume their content of choice showing advertisements in between programming. Learn Why OTT Is The Perfect Extension Of Traditional TV Advertising Reporting Capabilities Over-the-Top Television is a top-of-the-funnel product and specializes in creating brand awareness. Measuring the total reach for an OTT campaign is not an easy task, but there are multiple ways to report on the full performance of a campaign. Transparency is key here, as you will want to see all the nitty-gritty metrics and everything your ad dollars have paid for! Important OTT Reporting Metrics The first thing that should be on every report would have to be exactly what your money is paying for: impressions and completed views. Please note, these two things are not the same thing. The number of impressions is exactly how many times your ad was served to a consumer. A completed view is exactly what it sounds like: how many times an impression was watched to completion. From these two metrics, your report should calculate the most important OTT KPI: video completion rate, or VCR. VCR is square one for understanding the efficiency and effectiveness of your [OTT] campaign. VCR is a measurement of the rate at which your digital video impressions play to 100%. By reporting on the percentage of impressions that were watched all the way to the end, you will be able to get a good idea of exactly how much reach or brand awareness your OTT campaign has resulted in. “High VCRs result in more time spent with your message and a lower cost-per-view.” Hyper-Targeted Audiences On top of the overall campaign performance, it is important to also have specific targeting level metrics. OTT has a variety of ways to target different audiences, so it is important to see how many impressions might be allocated to targeting a certain demographic or to see the VCR driven by targeting users who are in-market for your client’s industry. Another important thing to be included in all OTT reporting is a list of domains that your ads are serving. This list will allow you to see all the different streaming services or tv applications that are serving ads for your campaign. This should also include the number of impressions as well as the VCR by domain. The domain list is extremely important to know as it is very easy to serve impressions to pre-roll inventory instead of OTT, which is a completely different way to serve ads. A pure CTV OTT campaign should produce a VCR of at least 90%, so if your campaign is lower, take a look at what domains it is serving on. What To See. What NOT To See While it’s important to know what you should be seeing in your OTT reports, it is also important to know what you shouldn’t. If you are running an OTT campaign that is driving clicks, you may be spending money on something that you didn’t want. OTT ads are not clickable, so any amount of clicks means your ads have been serving on non-OTT inventory. Some OTT reporting will include the device types that your campaign has been serving on. This could include CTV, desktop, mobile, or tablet. Again, as stated earlier, OTT is simply described as ‘video content, delivered via a connected device, to the Television Screen.’ If your reporting includes impressions served to different devices, make sure the majority is spent on CTV. People watching OTT on CTV are much more engaged and drive a higher VCR. Also, a high impression share on the other devices could mean your OTT campaign is a blend of OTT and pre-roll. Lastly, but certainly not least, OTT reporting should always include daily impression delivery, as well as hourly delivery. It is important to see that your campaign is not taking any days off. A well-oiled OTT campaign should be delivering a steady number of impressions each day, while also avoiding times where users are likely to be less engaged. By utilizing dayparting, your OTT campaign should avoid certain times of the day, like between midnight and 6 am. This will help your campaign avoid serving to users who have fallen asleep. Why Should My Agency Sell OTT Advertising? Why Would My Client Buy It? OTT, CTV, and Internet TV are popular buzzwords in the digital advertising world, and rightfully so. Based on the significant video advertising shift towards OTT Television, agencies are missing more than just the boat if they are not including it within their product suite. At Conduit Digital we like to call it “Tra-Digital” because OTT is the perfect extension of traditional advertising but with the power of digital targeting. The explosion of 170 million OTT users was led by streaming on Smart TVs and devices like Roku, Amazon Fire Stick, Google Chromecast, and Apple TV that allow them to access television content for free through the internet. Powerful OTT applications like Pluto TV, ABC News, Sling TV, ESPN, and NFL allow viewers more live TV and on-demand content than they can possibly consume. When it comes to brand awareness, OTT is king. CTV delivers commercials with an average Video Completion Rate of more than 90% and those ads are non-skippable! High video completion rates mean high engagement and relevance. Here are our Top 4 reasons to add OTT and CTV to your digital advertising lineup and why your clients would be smart to utilize it: 1.  Large-Screen Advertising Connected TV advertisers are able to target the largest screen by household giving advertisers the capability of targeting audiences with a great likelihood of reaching multiple viewers at once when factoring in co-viewing. According to IAB, most platforms are watched with others, with a rate of ~65% watching together as opposed to only ~35% watching alone, with up to 76% of OTT users watching with other people! 2. Superior Targeting Capabilities Whether it’s targeting users based on their online behaviors, demographics, or physical location, there is no doubt that targeting your specific audience is much easier than traditional TV. As explained in the Targeting Capabilities section, there are multiple ways to find potential customers on the internet and serve them an ad at the right time. 3. Live and Dynamic Reporting Be transparent with your clients. Conduit campaigns come with advanced reporting capabilities giving agencies and advertisers data on delivery by day, application by keywords and helps to inform other marketing plans. VCR and Domain transparency allows clients to see the percentage of their commercials that are being watched from start to finish and what streaming services or TV apps their ads are served on. CTV advertising offers an industry VCR rate of more than 90% and is exceptional for advertisers looking to improve brand awareness and reach. 4. Fast Growing Audiences In 2019 IAB reported there are now over 97 million homes that have a CTV, equating to over 75% of all homes in the USA, surpassing cable TV households (89 million). A study by Roku shows that 31% of the US population are cord-cutters or cord-nevers. With this, Roku predicts that this number could double to a total of 60 million households by 2024. They also explain that 82% of cord-cutters are happy with their decision to cut the cord in favor of streaming services and OTT providers. People are very quickly realizing that OTT is the future of the television space, and it is important for the advertisers to follow! Learn How OTT Is Going To Skyrocket With The Roll Out of 5G OTT Trends OTT advertising is the fastest growing digital marketing product. In fact, the data suggests that it will only keep growing. Here are some important trends currently happening in Over-the-Top marketing: 61% of Americans own a Smart TV (or CTV) 52% of Americans use OTT services For viewers between the ages of 18-34, OTT usage is over 65% The average OTT customer owns up to three OTT devices they can use to watch OTT content and subscribe to different services People spend more time watching OTT content than they do driving a car or talking to friends and family As OTT services gain more and more popularity, this presents grim news for cable, satellite, and broadcast providers/advertisers. Cord-cutting millenials are supplanting aging baby-boomers as the primary consumer target. In fact: Millennials who subscribe to at least one OTT service watch more than twice as much OTT content as they do live TV. The top content that people want is movies, followed by scripted TV shows. Live news and sports, thought to be the killer app keeping broadcast and cable alive, rank #3 and #4 respectively across all demographics. Fewer than 40% of Millenial OTT users plan to keep their cable package. The amount of cord-cutters is rising exponentially. Nearly ⅔ of cord-cutters are more like “cord burners;” they say that cutting cable has noticeably improved their life and there is nothing a cable company can do to lure them back into having a bundle. It is no lie that OTT audiences are growing at an awesome rate, however, some people may argue that most of these users just subscribe to Netflix and never even see any ads. According to IAB, 73% of adults 18+ who typically watch streaming video say they watch ad-supported OTT video, AND on top of that 45% of adults 18+ who typically watch streaming video say they watch ad-supported OTT video MOST out of streaming videos. So while Netflix may be king at the moment, people are still watching ad-supported OTT. How A White Label OTT Advertising Partner Can Help Your Agency Make More Money From rapid audience growth to enhanced targeting capabilities, OTT is a raw, but still very powerful brand awareness generator. People seem to be flocking to different streaming platforms to catch the latest binge-worthy series, while also showing great engagement with the ads presented in front of them. As the user base moves from traditional TV towards a more modern OTT-filled solution, will your clients be more progressive and start reaching an audience that has proven to show effectiveness? If you have decided that white-labeling your OTT advertising services is right for your agency, it is important to understand what to look for in a white label partner. Ultimately, the agency you choose to provide you with white-label digital services has to align with your vision and goals for your company. With a vast sea of potential partners on the market, which white-label provider is right for you? Conclusion In an ever-changing world, OTT has shown to be no different. From rapid audience growth to enhanced targeting capabilities, OTT is a raw, but still very powerful brand awareness generator. People seem to be flocking to different streaming platforms to catch the latest binge-worthy series, while also showing great engagement with the ads presented in front of them. As the user base moves from traditional TV towards a more modern OTT-filled solution, will your clients be more progressive and start reaching an audience that has proven to show effectiveness?

May 31, 2023 Come July 1, 2023, Google Analytics 4 (GA4) will supersede Universal Analytics (UA) as the standard analytics platform offered by Google. UA will disappear shortly after, and with it, valuable data that many marketers have relied on for previous campaigns. That is unless you take the steps now to prepare for the migration. To prepare for GA4’s arrival, we are going to cover exactly what you need to know to ensure a smooth migration. First, let’s talk about why the best day to implement GA4 was yesterday but today is a very close second. Why is It Important to Activate GA4 ASAP? GA4 does not have historical data. Therefore, this should be treated as a fresh start or a much-needed refresher for accounts. Your insight and analysis are only as good as the data you have. Ensuring your data is clean, tangible, and functional is crucial. For some accounts, the UA property has been set up for years. It has seen many iterations of changes from new websites, new marketing channels, and revised priorities and goals - some of which are no longer relevant. Think about it. If you moved into a brand new home, would you take the bag of slimy lettuce from the back of your fridge that you swore up and down you’d make a salad out of a month ago to your new home? We’re hoping you’re shaking your head no. So treat your new GA4 property in the same way and clean up your events! While UA accounts will eventually disappear, there is still time to configure your migration. To help marketers currently using UA, Google has offered an automatic migration to allow current accounts to maintain data continuity. However, it’s not a perfect science, and Google even recommends that you configure your GA4 account manually. Opt Out of Automatic Migration To ensure that you can maintain a continuous level of measurement prior to the July 1st deadline, Google has been automatically opting IN all accounts by default to be automatically migrated to GA4. This would copy over applicable Universal Analytics configurations unless you opt out of this service. Google themselves strongly recommends not relying on this auto-migration, but rather configuring your GA4 manually. The two primary reasons for this being: Not all UA configurations have obvious GA4 counterparts The automated process may not make the same choices you would - causing things to get missed, removed, or no longer be relevant. If you have already created a GA4 property, the auto-migration will copy over any configurations from UA that you have not marked as ‘completed’ in your GA4 Setup Assistant panel, unless you opt out. If you opt out, the toggle in UA should be gray to the left. You are opted in if your toggle is blue to the right. If it is gray to the right, that means you do not have the permission to edit this setting. Important Reminder: Auto Migration is done at the property level. Meaning, if you have multiple properties within your UA Account, you will need to opt OUT of every applicable property you do NOT want migrated. What if I didn’t opt out in time? Google has already begun creating these automatic GA4 properties for those that are opted IN. An easy way to tell if this has been done for you is if you see this red header in your GA4 property. If you want to manually configure your GA4 settings OR Google automatically created a property you did not want to migrate, follow these steps: 1. In your UA property, click Admin (lower left) 2. In the Property (middle) column, click GA4 Setup Assistant. 3. Under Connected Property, click Disconnect 4. Navigate to the GA4 property that was disconnected, click Admin (lower left) 5. Under Property, navigate to Property Settings (second option) 6. Select Move to Trash Can in the upper right a. Note: you cannot delete this GA4 property if it is still connected to UA. You must disconnect the properties first b. Also, be sure you are deleting the property not the account. 7. Confirm. Do I Still Need to Opt Out if I Already Created a GA4 Account? This will depend per account. Some accounts will prefer to manually configure all settings - in this case you will still want to opt OUT in UA. If you are looking for some, but not all configutations to be automatically copied over, you will want to continue to be opted IN and follow these steps: In your GA4 property, navigate to Admin (lower left) In the Property (middle) column, click GA4 Setup Assistant. It's the first option. Mark the configurations that you don’t want copied over as complete Click the arrow to the right of the configuration Mark as Complete Repeat step 3 as necessary for each configuration If you have created your GA4 account already and want some configurations are auto-migrated, be sure the two accounts are linked. You can do this by Navigating to the UA property, under Admin > Property Settings > GA4 Setup Assistant In the I want to connect to an existing Google Analytics 4 property section, select the Google Analytics 4 property that maps to your Universal Analytics property. Click Connect properties. All information regarding how this auto-migration process works can be found here. Please note, it is recommended to manually configure your GA4 property. There’s Still Time to Beat the GA4 Clock - Let’s Get to Work! When you’re in the middle of navigating the neverending chaos that comes with every digital channel always seeming to update their platforms at once, it can be tough to know the right direction to take. With the timed sunsetting of UA, the urgency only magnifies. Instead of waiting for the inevitable, take charge of your clients’ data destiny and set them up the right way before July 1. To ensure a smooth transition, you can also ask your partner for help. For you, we may be that partner. At Conduit Digital, we serve as the elite white label digital ad operations solution for established and successful local ad agencies in North America. Lean on our team of Google Analytics experts to assist you in navigating to GA4 while also setting up your client’s organic and paid digital campaigns to reach new levels of performance you never thought possible before. To learn more about how we can assist your agency, schedule a quick call with us today.