When asked what the more prominent online advertising alternatives outside of the digital duopoly (Google & Facebook) are, most digital marketers would be likely name platforms within the list of Amazon, Twitter, Snapchat, LinkedIn and Pinterest. However, one under-the-radar ad platform that we’re very excited about is Quora, the extremely popular Q&A site that millions of users visit to research answers to questions they have about a wide range of topics. Boasting over 300 million MAUs (more than Pinterest and close to Twitter), it’s a bit of a surprise that Quora is still considered a relatively new and/or unknown advertising platform to digital marketers. Here is a breakdown of what advertisers need to know when it comes to Quora:
Ad Formats
Ads on Quora can be displayed across both desktop and mobile devices, below questions and answers on question pages, on the Quora home page, and within Quora Digest emails. Ads can be created in the following three formats:
- Text Ads: ads made up of text only, with fields for a headline, description, company name, and CTA button.
- Image Ads: ads with all the same features as text ads, in addition to an image (1080 x 576 on desktop, 854 x 609 on mobile).
- Promoted Answer Ads: The most recently released ad format by Quora, where advertisers can promote answers already in existence within the Quora Platform. Important to note that these should be answers from an individual in a company, rather than a company itself.
Targeting
Quora has made major strides in expanding the number of ways that advertisers can reach their target market. Here are the six targeting methods currently available:
- Topic Targeting: Displaying ads next to content related to selected topics. A good way of aligning messaging with the content that the targeted user is consuming.
- Interest Targeting: Somewhat similar to Topic targeting, targeting of users who have shown interest in certain topics on Quora (but who may be browsing questions unrelated to those topics).
- Keyword Targeting: Displaying ads next to content that is related to an uploaded list of keywords (broad match and phrase match available). This is one latest targeting methods by Quora and is a great way for Search advertisers to leverage their keyword lists.
- Question Targeting: The most granular targeting method on Quora, targeting ads next to a specific list of questions on Quora. While limited in scale, the relevancy should be extremely high which can help produce the strongest ROI.
- Audience Targeting: Taking a page out of Facebook’s remarketing playbook, audience targeting allows advertisers to target previous website visitors, or an uploaded list of emails (ex: email subscriber list). Advertisers can also create lookalikes from these audiences in order to scale campaigns.
- Broad Targeting: True to its name, broad targeting simply allows advertisers to reach the widest pool of users possible, narrowed down by only the geography specified.
Our Take
Here are a few of our tips/best practices when it comes to getting the most out of Quora Ads:
- Take advantage of audience exclusions when appropriate. For example, exclude past website visitors if your campaign objective is to reach net-new users not familiar with your brand.
- Do not use broad targeting! Although you may be able to achieve lower CPCs using this targeting method, ROI will significantly suffer as the users who end up clicking on your ads will likely be less qualified than users targeted from other targeting methods.
- When using question targeting, be sure to check the secondary option of “Show ads to users who previously read a question”. While placing ads on certain questions will typically produce great results, the scale will be quite limited. Broadening the targeting to include users who previously visited a question helps expand your audience size, while still leveraging the strong relevancy of question targeting.
- Make the most of your ad copy. Keeping in mind that millions of users flock to Quora to find answers to their questions, try framing your ad copy so that your products/services are a solution to their problems.
