Top internet properties and publications succeed when they offer a variety of advertising options, including sponsored content, programmatic inventory, social channels, standard display units, and high-impact rich media. But pulling together all the collateral, examples, and specs for various ad types and offerings can be a lot for internal sales teams to keep track of. Often, what gets sold is what’s easiest for sales teams to present and remember, and that isn’t always the most profitable offerings. When a publication can equip its sales team with real-time examples of top units, naturally more of those units get sold.
Ranker, a Los Angeles-based pop culture and entertainment website with 35+ million monthly unique visitors, did exactly that through its partnership with Clipcentric. Clipcentric’s platform for building standard and premium display units instantly extended the portfolio of formats Ranker was able to sell, but first the publication had to educate and equip its direct ad sales team with information on these new units.
“It’s really important to us at Ranker that we’re offering clients as many different options as we can to reach our audience,” said Dana O'Malley, VP of sales at Ranker. “The partnership with Clipcentric opened up a lot of opportunities for new display units, but we needed to make sure our internal sales and ops teams understood those and could clearly communicate them to prospective advertisers, so that we could sell packages that meet their goals and our own,” she said.
Clipcentric suggested a live branded ad gallery, which it then created for Ranker by developing demo links of various ad units. Being able to show real units, from real brands, and seeing how those units look and feel on Ranker’s site (especially mobile), makes it much easier for sales reps to talk with brands or media buyers about how to create high-impact advertising executions.
“Live ad galleries are a great way to showcase the formats and features that you know work well on your site and generate results for advertisers,” said Shawn Pokorny, Clipcentric’s head of customer success. “When we began working with Ranker, we developed templates for key high-impact units so that creation of those ads would be fast and seamless for them and their advertisers.”
In addition to the branded ad gallery, Clipcentric often supports Ranker’s sales team with custom-branded mocks and demo ads for specific advertisers, so that when Ranker’s team pitches a specific package or format, they can show the brand’s own products and logos in a live, mocked-up ad. This has helped Ranker sell-through campaigns on several occasions.
“It’s a much easier sale to make when an advertiser can envision their own brand in an ad execution,” said Dana. “We have been able to close many deals more quickly simply because we can present a live, working ad in the discussions that features the advertiser we’re talking to. They can really grasp what a campaign would look like and it wins them over.”
Finally, Clipcentric created ad spec sheets, with Ranker’s branding, to clearly lay out the creative assets and requirements for each type of unit. This ensures that when Ranker’s team sells a campaign, there’s upfront alignment on what images, videos, copy, data, or other information will be required to pull off the campaign.
By combining comprehensive spec sheets with a live ad gallery right on its website, Ranker created a one-stop shop for its sales team and prospective advertisers to view live units and understand the creative assets required to run them.
When it came to production of sold units, Clipcentric ensured smooth campaign execution for Ranker and its advertisers by creating easy-to-use Adobe Photoshop templates for each type of ad format in Ranker’s portfolio. These templates make it simple for designers to create ads in the environment they’re most comfortable in, with layers in the templates pre-mapped to various ad states (expanded, collapsed, etc.) for the unit. A quick import into Clipcentric’s platform lets the designer link up final assets, like video files, and generate the tag.
“The combination of the branded ad gallery, spec sheets, and Photoshop templates made it incredibly easy for us at Ranker to move from primarily standard units to higher-performing, higher CPM premium units,” said Dana. “Clipcentric gave us not only great technology to build and deploy these units, but also the support and ideas for how to educate our sales team and advertisers so that we could see a quick uptake,” she said.
Ranker’s premium display ad impressions have significantly increased since augmenting its portfolio with Clipcentric’s formats. The company is now exploring how to use its own proprietary, first-party data to create additional units with Clipcentric to further target its highly engaged audiences for advertisers.
