The Value of A/B Testing in Paid Media
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Madailein Emerson
Media Analyst at Wavo
Wavo Blog: This series shares information that’s most relevant to music marketers around the globe.
“This blog post explores the importance of A/B testing in maximizing digital advertising results in music marketing.”
Context
In today's age, digital advertising has become a crucial tool for promoting music and reaching fans. With so much noise in the digital space, music marketers must maximize their digital advertising results to ensure their campaigns are effective and generate returns for their artists. This blog post explores the importance of A/B testing in maximizing digital advertising results in music marketing.
We’ll provide strategies and tips to help music marketers maximize their impact through the use of dynamic optimizations in their advertising efforts. Dynamic optimizations benefit from starting with a broad strategy - a variety of audiences and creatives.
By starting broad, we provide more options to the machine learning on the platforms to figure out what resonates the most with fans. From there, Wavo makes consistent campaign optimizations that further emphasize what works and reduces spend on what doesn’t work. After all, that’s the benefit of digital advertising - real time results mean we can constantly tweak our campaign strategy.
“We’re providing more opportunity for the machine learning on a given platform to discover the most efficient combination of audience and creative.”
Content
A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of a marketing asset, such as an advertisement or a landing page, to determine which one performs better. A/B tests allow music marketers to determine which version is more effective and make data-driven decisions about how to optimize their marketing efforts.
When planning an ad campaign, Wavo works with clients to identify their goals and then applies various data informed best practices. These best practices inform the platforms and targeting approach best aligned with a client's goals.
One way our clients can help support A/B testing is by providing agencies with a number of different creatives. Creatives refer to the visual or audio components of a marketing campaign, such as the design of an advertisement or the sound of a promotional clip. Testing different creatives can help marketers understand which elements of a campaign are resonating with their target audience and which ones need improvement.
At Wavo, we’ve found that testing multiple creatives plays an integral role in helping us gauge our audiences’ ad preferences both during and following the campaign’s flight. For this reason, incorporating at least two creatives from the beginning stages of a campaign is vital to ensuring maximum engagement from our audience as well as avoiding ad fatigue. For more on creative strategy, check out our Wavo Labs series which tests paid media best practices.
By including a strong variety of targeting and creative with each campaign portion, we’re providing more opportunity for the machine learning on a given platform to discover the most efficient combination of audience and creative.
Once the campaign is live, we’re able to assess how users are engaging with the content in real time. Not only are we able to extrapolate costs, results rates, and secondary metrics, but we are also able to determine the types of users our campaign is pulling in the most effectively. For example, if we are running a campaign for an artist whose genre is both Pop and Indie/Alternative, we can begin to see and understand their niche and optimize towards the strongest and most engaged audiences for the remainder of the campaign’s flight. Moreover, running multiple audiences and creatives offers us flexibility when providing optimizations in our updates. The more variety we have in our audiences and creatives, the more we are able to modify the campaign in order to achieve its goals.
While campaign updates highlight the potential benefits or disadvantages of certain audiences or creative styles, the campaign wrap-up phase offers definitive answers on what to include, expand on, and avoid in the future. These reports include all the relevant data and insights needed to inform future audience and creative strategy so that the next campaign is better than the last.
“By testing both audiences and creatives across our campaigns, we get a better understanding of how to reach and engage our target audience in the most cost-effective way.”
Key Takeaways
At its core, A/B testing is the basis on which we approach every campaign. By testing both audiences and creatives across our campaigns, we get a better understanding of how to reach and engage our target audience in the most cost-effective way. With the ever-increasing competition in the music industry, utilizing A/B testing can give marketers a competitive edge and help them stay ahead of the curve.
Written by Madailein Emerson, Media Analyst at Wavo
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