Clocking in Conversions: Nailing Time Targeted Advertising
Time targeting enables advertisers to schedule their campaigns and run them at specific hours or days of the week. It is an essential feature for those who want to align their ads with a user’s activities online.
With timed targeting, you can:
- Run ads only during your working hours.
- Promote time-bound offers, like lunchtime deals or ‘End of the Year’ sales.
- Avoid wasting money on inactive targets.
Setting up time targeting cannot get any more straightforward:
- Start by selecting the time zone you want your campaign to follow. This could be your local time zone or that of your target audience if they are in a different region.
- Once your campaign is live, keep an eye on performance metrics. If you notice certain hours or days are underperforming and not getting enough engagement, tweak your schedule to focus on high-impact periods.
Consider how IPL (Indian Premier League) advertising spaces or Super Bowl commercial slots sell for jaw-dropping prices (in 2024, a 30 second commercial slot during the Super Bowl cost a whopping 7 Million USD). Why? Because brands know their audience is glued to the screen during these sporting seasons. The same principle applies to your campaigns. Your ads must show up when your audience is paying attention and is more than ready to engage. Aberdeen Strategy & Research’s report on Purchase Data highlights that timing is crucial to reaching your intended audience. Without accurate timing, even the best ads can fail to make an impact.
Take my mom, for instance. She loves gardening and often scrolls through Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts after 10 p.m. If she sees ads for gardening materials during her nightly scroll, she is much more likely to click on the ad and buy something. But show her those same ads at 9 a.m. when she is busy prepping for the day ahead? Forget it- they would be nothing more than an annoying interruption.
Thus, timing is a tool and a strategy to connect with your audience when they are most receptive.
Recall your most recent day off. You most likely ended up doom-scrolling all day but did not realise that you were exposed to hundreds of ads in the process. But how many of them do you remember? Maybe 2 or 3 at the maximum. Timing, content, and relevance really does matter if you want to make an impact.
But sometimes, this ‘timing’ is not very straightforward. Imagine you are a restaurant advertising your Lunch Menu. You cannot simply reach your audience when they are hungry—you must also consider catching them when they are planning. Showing ads for lunch specials at 1 p.m. could cause you to miss the window when most people decide where to eat.
A more effective strategy for a restaurant might be to run ads during morning commutes when people are scrolling through their phones, deciding what their day looks like or in the evenings when they are winding down and planning meals for the next day.
For example, showing ads with “Pre-order your lunch for tomorrow and skip the wait!” during the evening could help secure customers ahead of time. By thinking ahead about when your audience makes plans, rather than acts, you position your brand as part of their decision-making process.
Choosing the right time depends on what you advertise. Tweak it right and it can make a big difference in your ads’ performance!
Don’t know where/when to start or how to make a switch? Use Cubera’s DSP- Edge, to kickstart your campaign!
