Paid-Media Outside of the US

Being an agency that works with a variety of clients, we have had multiple opportunities to advertise internationally over the years. Whether the campaigns are for a tech company with a global presence, a consumer goods company expanding markets, or a non-profit organization expanding its reach outside of the US (indeed, these are all real examples), we have often observed that the paid-media metrics are unbelievable, marking the performance as phenomenal when compared to equivalent campaigns in the US. For traffic campaigns, CTRs are higher, for video campaigns, CPVs are lower, for search campaigns, CPCs are lower, etc. all driven by eyeball-popping-ly low CPMs.

While witnessing such amazing results (everyone is happier when costs are lower), we have always wondered if the media performance is truly indicative of success. Are the incredible numbers distracting from true business results? If not, and the numbers are validly supporting business success, then what is it about international campaigns that makes running paid-media such a breeze?

Figure: CPMs by country, provided by Lebesque. The CPM in the US is by far the highest.

In a recent study by Lebesgue, an emerging MarTech company with an “AI CMO” software solution, the US has by far the highest CPMs on Facebook, oftentimes twice as high as many other developed and English-speaking countries. From our experience, similar trends are observed across other social platforms. With such discrepancies in cost so prevalent between the US and other countries, should we drop everything and only start advertising internationally? After all, clients would love to see their budgets going further, right?

As you may have guessed, our suggestion is no. Well, it depends. With any campaign, the most important question to keep in mind is “How can I best reach my target customer or audience?” Assuming that you users of a certain platform do have a presence in an international market, other factors apart from cost should be considered when evaluating the effectiveness of an international campaign.

 Awareness

While the CPM in another country might be incredibly low, allowing you to deliver far greater impressions than you could have with the same budget in the US or even driving a lower CPV for video campaigns than in the US, it is important to consider if the messaging is properly being received. If the ads or social posts and are receiving as much engagement as such posts would normally, then the campaign messaging would seem to be resonating. However, for a video campaign, if view rates are lower than benchmarks or goals, then despite low CPVs, then the perhaps advertising in this country is not as efficient as initially thought, because the video ads are not really leading to anything of significance.

 Consideration

CPC, Cost-Per-Click – one of the most sought after KPIs in paid-media, from social to search to display. Many people, agencies, and vendors will swear on their ability to deliver the so-called efficient clicks at hilariously cheap CPCs. Such a fixation on numbers can also occur when advertising in international markets. At the end of the day, what is the point of a click? To deliver traffic to the website, right? Okay, what is the point of website traffic? The answer to that will depend on your individual goals, but without a doubt, engagement time on the website is important. Like Referral Spam (we recently posted a blog about this), traffic from international markets is oftentimes meaningless with near-zero engagement times. While the platforms may be delivering on high CTRs or low CPCs, the value of that traffic is crucial to evaluating the effectiveness of the international campaign.

Conversion

Similar to evaluating website traffic for consideration campaigns, conversion campaigns should be evaluated by determining if the end goal or action is actually occurring – registrations, purchases, donations – whatever it might be. Such analysis could tell you a lot about your target audience too. Perhaps the consumers in this country are awarenessaware of your product or brand, but are not educated enough yet to convert – time to shift your messaging!

Digital Paid-Media outside of the US – Untapped Opportunity or False Validation? Like, most advertising discussions (and things in life), it depends. As tech-savvy marketers in a digital world, it is important for us to holistically evaluate plans and campaigns, despite what the numbers might initially be indicating…and how our clients or stakeholders are reacting to the numbers.