Every day, a growing number of companies are increasing their digital ad spending and improving their return on investment by taking advantage of the great tools offered by the Internet.
With this in mind, Portada interviewed Mario Nissan, Vice President of Consumer Strategy for Flock Advertising, the Mexican shop that has been instrumental in crafting the successful digital advertising strategy of Aeromexico, the country's leading airline.
Advertising and Content, a Winning Combination
Aeromexico is a success story for Flock, not only for having achieved a higher return on investment on its digital advertising than anyone predicted, but also for its content channel – a blog about travel and tourism destinations – that has positioned itself very well and garnered a large audience.
Flock’s strategy entails using both advertising and content platforms to achieve the best results. Nissan told Portada that its strategy for connecting with the public includes the use of "social networks, the travel blog, and online ad campaigns conducted on search engines, content networks, and target sites such as newspapers and magazines."
According to Nissan, "ad buying has to be smart and the only way to do that is through optimization, which in turn depends on two things: being able to listen to the consumer so as to understand him/her and gain insights; and the other important factor is generating content…the important thing now is to generate content that the consumer wants to consume at that moment. If you have a content strategy, such as a blog, an editorial or postings on social networks, you’re clearly going to give consumers a reason for wanting to engage with you, thus increasing the likelihood of a successful transaction."
Buzz and Conversation
One of Flock’s value add-ons is its measurement of conversation or buzz on social networks, which will soon be a feature of its new Aeromexico campaign— a blog that recommends destinations based on buzz and crowdsourcing.
Nissan told Portada that "innovation has been the main value achieved with Aeromexico, because we have a process in place to listen to consumers via buzz on the web. We then use these insights to generate content, from notes to ad banners, making it ad hoc to whatever is relevant today."
Advertising Platforms and Return on Investment (ROI).
Portada: What advertising systems have you used? Which have been the most successful?
Nissan: We use two types of advertising platforms: Google Adwords for search and content, which gives us a higher than average ROI, and we use it primarily for conversion campaigns. We also use a few major media outlets that generate a large amount of traffic for us, such as ElUniversal.com and Google’s banner network.
Portada: In terms of numbers, what have you achieved?
Nissan: Our most important achievement in recent weeks has been an ROI of 257 to 1 on search engines, and an ROI of 80 to 1 on display. Translated into money, this means that for every dollar invested, we get a return of 257.
Digital Media Advertising in Mexico
"One of the most important things that the Internet gives us is the capacity to measure absolutely everything and make accurate investments," says Nissan.
With this in mind, his outlook on digital media advertising in Mexico is that it will continue to grow. "If we read the IAB or AMIPCI reports, we see that advertising dollars are increasingly migrating to digital media. We see it growing more every day with our own clients, who are curtailing their [advertising] investments in traditional media like newspapers, and increasing their investments in digital."
Nissan likewise expects similar growth in the digital content industry. "We’re going to see increasingly specialized media, with more accurate targeting."
Finally, Nissan believes that e-commerce will be instrumental to the growth of digital advertising in Mexico. "Advertising in Mexican digital media will explode as the use of e-commerce increases. When that happens, digital media will be the key to measuring project success, since it its 100% measurable and will give brands a greater degree of certainty. All this will be coupled with the growing pool of Internet users, which according to AMIPCI’s latest report now number 35 million in Mexico."
Mario Nissan is Vice President of Consumer Strategy at Flock Advertising, an agency that specializes in helping brands attract and keep their own audiences. Nissan was previously Director of templeo.com at Televisa Interactive Media.
