Conversational Advertising: The Trusted Definitive Guide [2021]

This is the most comprehensive guide you’ll find on conversational advertising.

If you’re currently running some combination of programmatic display ads, social campaigns, and static landing pages – this guide will teach you everything you need to know about how conversational advertising works, how to put it into action, and most importantly, answer one simple question:

“How can I drive higher engagement from my digital campaigns?”

We’ve created a table of contents in case you want to jump around and go directly to a section that interests you most.

Let’s get started…

Part 1: How Did We Get Here?

Here’s a simple question: Is this what online advertising would look like if the customer experience came first?

People love talking about the best TV spots on the Super Bowl. You might even remember clever print or radio ads.

What about digital? Do you remember the last time you saw – or engaged with – a compelling online ad? If the answer is no, you’re not alone.

Check out some of these stats:

Source: HubSpot, “Why People Block Ads (And What It Means for Marketers and Advertisers”, 2016/2018¹

Of people who have clicked on an ad, 34% said it was a mistake and 15% accused advertisers of tricking them into clicking. Only a paltry 7% said it was because the ad was compelling.¹

27 years after the first banner, we have…pretty much the same banners.

While the media side of the business has evolved dramatically and is incredibly complex, the creative formats and user experiences we started with haven’t really changed.

Some of these formats undoubtedly work for some brands. But the consumer engagement numbers don’t lie.

Here’s why we believe these ‘industry standards’ just don’t work:

The really crazy thing? This isn’t just bad for consumers, it’s terrible for advertisers too! Yet look at the current and projected ad spend:³

Part 2: What is Conversational Advertising?

Conversations are how we naturally engage with each other. Written or spoken, they are our primary form of communication.

Plus, conversations (at least those that we willingly engage in) tick the boxes of what online advertising should do:

It seems like a decent starting point.

What exactly is conversational advertising?
Conversational advertising is the use of automated, natural language conversations between brands and consumers to drive awareness, purchase intent/consideration, and conversion.

Here’s how it works…
Automated conversations (those that are powered by machine learning and natural language processing) are made up of ‘intents,’ which are the basic building blocks of a conversation.

Every intent has two parts:

Here’s a simple example of what an intent for an automotive conversational ad might look like if a user asks about available models…

Utterances in conversational ads are text-based (by clicking a button or typing in a question), but they can also be voice-based, particularly with mobile devices. Responses can be delivered back to the user as any combination of images, text, cards, and buttons – or specialized, custom-built response formats.

A conversational ad, at its most basic, is a bunch of intents that together, help consumers get relevant information about a brand/product/service in a natural, conversational way.

Of course, things can get more involved – for example, if you’re collecting leads, allowing users to upload images, or pushing consumers down a specific path/funnel. 

Now that we have a basic idea behind how automated conversations work, let’s explore why these experiences can be engaging for consumers.

Part 3: Why Does Conversational Advertising Work?

Messaging is the #1 preferred format for consumers when engaging with a brand. Here’s why…

It’s the third point that really sets conversational advertising apart. It’s no longer about a ‘one size fits all’ ad or landing page. Conversational ads deliver personalized, highly relevant content in a naturally engaging way.

Now let’s take a look at the different ways that conversational advertising can be brought to life.

Part 4: Conversational Display Ads

There are a lot of technical hurdles to overcome when developing conversational ad formats. Here are just a few:

With that, let’s take a look at bringing conversational advertising to the ‘walled gardens’ of social apps to get more out of social campaigns.

Part 5: Conversational Social Campaigns

Options are pretty limited when it comes to ad formats and generating unique experiences with social ads.

Although the basic social formats are arguably better than standard display ads, they still don’t offer much in the way of engagement over and above a click, like, or comment.

Conversational advertising on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn…
What if your social ads could trigger an in-app conversational experience on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn?

A conversational experience that runs in-app feels like a natural extension of the social platform and is a less disruptive browsing experience.

There are a couple of different ways these conversational experiences get deployed in-app. 

For Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, the conversational experience gets triggered by an ad and loads in the in-app browser. Depending on the campaign goals, the entire customer interaction can remain in the chat, or consumers can jump over the advertiser’s site at appropriate times in the conversation.

For Twitter, the integration can either be through the in-app browser, or a native integration.

What’s the difference? The native integration uses Twitter’s UI, so everything looks and feels completely seamless. And users can engage with the chat session through an ad, or by sending a DM.

Replace Static Landing Pages With Conversations
Most social ads direct users to a static landing page on click. And a lot of times these landing pages are a ‘wall of text’ that the advertiser hopes the consumer is interested in reading.

Therein lies the problem. It’s just not realistic to expect that every consumer is going to get the information they want or need from the same static landing page.

By replacing these static pages with in-app conversations, the ‘one size fits all’ nature of the experience is gone – and replaced with something that is engaging, highly personalized, and non-disruptive.

Let’s take a look at one more way to use conversational advertising – as a destination for other marketing activities.

Part 6: Conversational Landing Pages

Most marketers do more than run display ads and social campaigns.

But what if all channels – programmatic buys, Instagram ads, direct mail, and Out Of Home – had a consistent, relevant destination that engaged consumers in a conversation? 

Build Once, Deploy Everywhere
The benefit of building an experience on a conversational ad platform is that it can be created once, and deployed in multiple environments.

It can be used as a stand-alone experience on a landing page, or be integrated into an existing page or pages throughout a website. 

A conversational landing page experience works in exactly the same way as display ads and social campaigns.

An added benefit is the ability to target different parts of the conversation depending on the channel consumers are coming from.

For example, an email announcing a sale on multiple products might drive recipients to a product recommendation quiz within the landing page conversation. Social ads might drive to another section of the conversation entirely.

The point is, each channel or even different ads or campaigns in a channel can all drive to a different conversation within the same bot.

For one client (Troy-Bilt agency Marcus Thomas), we’ve built a single conversational format that runs in Messenger, in programmatic display ads, and as a landing page. In each channel, the ‘starting point’ of the conversation is different.

Part 7: Measurement & Analytics

None of this much good without a solid way to measure engagement.

At the very least, analytics should measure:

Measuring Conversation Flow in Conversational Ads
Conversation Flow measures interaction on an aggregate level, breaking down the most popular messages sent to the chatbot. In the diagram below, we can explore various paths that users have taken through the experience before either leaving the chat experience via clicking on an exit URL or by leaving the session.

Part 8: Future Formats

While conversational advertising is still new, there’s no question that the future lies with voice assistants.

It remains to be seen how Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa will integrate advertising into their ecosystems, but it will undoubtedly happen.

Here are some key stats on the penetration of voice assistants. With a market this big, advertising can’t be far behind:

Conclusion

Conversational advertising is one of the best ways to generate a positive return on ad spend (ROAS), whether you’re building a brand, launching a product or service, generating leads, or remarketing. 

It’s a highly engaging format that allows consumers to self-select the content they’re interested in, increasing the likelihood that they will engage and walk away from the experience better-informed.

Interested in learning more? Book a demo to see how AdChat’s conversational ad platform can bring it all to life.

Sources

¹ https://blog.hubspot.com/news-trends/why-people-block-ads-and-what-it-means-for-marketers-and-advertisers

² https://www.adobe.com/advertising/25th-anniversary-digital-ad.html

³ https://www.emarketer.com/content/global-digital-ad-spending-2019

⁴ https://chatbotslife.com/messenger-chatbots-the-stats-dont-lie-f8cd640152f1

⁵ https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/09/voice-marketing-is-a-looming-opportunity-but-not-without-its-pitfalls/

⁶ https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-bets-on-voice/

⁷ https://venturebeat.com/2018/03/20/taking-command-of-voice-what-the-new-channel-means-for-marketers/