When deciding where and when your ads appear on a publisher’s site or network, you need to know whether to be specific or more generalized. RON (Run of Network) advertising is one of several strategies you can use depending on your marketing goals.
If you’re not sure whether you should advertise with a RON strategy, read on. We’ll break down what RON means, how it works, and the differences between run of network and run of site advertising.
To understand RON, you need to understand what an ad network is.
Simply put, an ad network is a platform or company that brings ad inventory together, organizes it, categorizes it, and then sells it to advertisers that want to use that inventory for online ads. Think of ad inventory as ad space, like banner ad slots or top-of-page ad slots.
For example, a publisher might have a specific ad network with ad units across several websites. Still, all those websites are connected by a similar industry or visitor interest, such as tech, business, or finance.
Ad networks can be generalized or specialized depending on the needs of the publisher and their potential customers. They can also be focused on specific ad formats, like video ads, pop-up ads, or native ads. These days, many ad networks are focused on mobile ads, especially since lots of online traffic comes from mobile devices.
Some ad networks are further specialized as blind ad networks. Blind ad networks are those that don’t allow advertisers to pick the exact sites where their advertisements show up.
Instead, advertisers choose a general category plus some other information, then let the publisher decide where the ads appear for viewers.
Let’s break down what run of network (RON) means and how it can help optimize your conversion rate.
RON is an online advertising strategy or campaign type that doesn’t allow advertisers to pick the sites where their ads are run. Instead, advertisers choose to run one or more ads on a publisher’s entire advertising network (as the name suggests).
As a result, the advertiser theoretically receives web traffic from the whole network, not just from a specific website or category of websites. RON is contrasted with run of site (ROS) advertising, which we’ll explore later.
There are plenty of benefits to RON advertising, which is one of the reasons why it’s such a popular marketing method.
For starters, digital marketing advertisers benefit from flat lower prices, especially when they use crypto-friendly platforms like AdQuick. When they run a run of network campaign or ad placement strategy, they don’t select specific sites on which to show their ads.
Instead, they put that power in the hands of the ad network or publisher. They usually get discounts on ad prices as a result.
Because of this, advertisers get much more reach for lower marketing prices across the board. This can be beneficial depending on the goals of your marketing campaign.
Say you are starting a new business or trying to market for a fresh organization. In that case, you want to improve brand awareness as quickly as possible. Simply spreading awareness ads across a broad network ASAP could get the job done while spending minimal advertising money.
RON advertising is untargeted by nature. That means you have to choose a specific network if you want to target specific traffic or customers. Unfortunately, there’s no guarantee that your target audience will see the advertisements that you place out.
Furthermore, some advertising networks put all unsold traffic on RON campaigns. Your advertising materials might show up on low-quality or undesirable websites. If left unchecked, this could damage your brand’s reputation or cause you to waste marketing cash.
After all, if only people outside your target audience see your ads, each dollar you spent was essentially worthless.
Because of these drawbacks, RON advertising is best used strategically and for specific circumstances, not as a catchall advertising method.
RON is opposed to run of site advertising.
In run of site advertising, you put an ad on a network where the ad shows up somewhere on a specific website. However, you can’t determine exactly which page or ad slot the ad appears in.
Say you want to advertise on a specific news website for a specific industry, like tech developments. You can order a run of site advertising campaign for a handful of ads your team carefully crafted. Then, the publisher decides where those ads appear on the website.
There are benefits and downsides to this marketing technique as well. The benefits include greater targeting ability. You can decide more specifically where your ads appear and target your ideal consumers more consistently.
Again, following the above example, if you put up your ads on a run of site network for a tech website, those ads will likely be seen by tech fans or professionals in the tech industry.
On the downside, run of site advertising campaigns are usually more expensive than RON campaigns — sometimes considerably.
In addition, run of site advertising may provide you with a lower quantity of web traffic. That can operate contrary to your marketing goals.
For instance, if you want to improve brand awareness, you might be better off spreading your ads as far as possible rather than targeting viewers with any specificity, especially if you are still learning about those target viewers and their demographic attributes.
The best times to use RON advertising is when you want to improve brand awareness or run a general branding campaign. For instance, if you want to announce a rebranding for your company, a RON advertising strategy could be the ideal way to do so.
You can post many ads across a publisher’s comprehensive ad network to announce the rebranding without trying to sell specific products. Since the advertising is RON, you can accomplish this goal cost-effectively.
RON advertising is helpful if you want to spread your ads far and wide across a publisher’s ad network. It’s ideal for boosting brand awareness and learning more about your target consumers in certain contexts.
In a way, it’s similar to wide-scale billboard advertising, which AdQuick can help you facilitate. AdQuick Pro is the comprehensive tool you need to compare OOH inventory, save time and money, and help quantify the impact each billboard ad has on your marketing campaign and target audience. Try it today.
Sources:
Get Started ->
Launch hyper-targeted OOH campaigns in minutes