The Beginner's Guide to Buying Ads: When to Buy and When to Hold Back

Advertising can be a powerful tool for businesses, but knowing when to invest in ads and when to hold back is crucial for maximizing your marketing budget. Here's a beginner's guide to help you navigate the world of ad buying:

When to Buy Ads

1. Launch of a New Product or Service
When introducing something new to the market, ads can help create awareness and generate initial interest.

2. Seasonal Promotions
During peak buying seasons or holidays relevant to your business, ads can help you capitalize on increased consumer spending.

3. Clear ROI Potential
If you have data suggesting a positive return on investment from previous campaigns or market research, it's a good time to invest in ads.

4. Targeting a Specific Audience
When you've identified a clear target audience and have messaging that resonates with them, ads can help you reach these potential customers effectively.

When Not to Buy Ads

1. Unclear Marketing Goals
If you don't have specific, measurable objectives for your ad campaign, it's best to hold off until you've defined clear goals.

2. Limited Budget
If your budget is too small to make a meaningful impact, it might be better to save and invest in a more substantial campaign later.

3. Unprepared Website or Landing Page
If your website or landing page isn't optimized to convert visitors, advertising may drive traffic but fail to generate leads or sales.

4. Lack of Understanding of Your Target Audience
Without a clear picture of who your ideal customer is and what motivates them, your ad spend may be wasted on the wrong audience.

5. Election season

Politicians (and their donors) have extremely deep pockets. Do not try to compete with them during election season.

Why brands used to pay for agencies (before AI came into play)

While many aspects of digital advertising are accessible to beginners, agencies can provide valuable expertise:

1. Strategic Insights
Agencies often have broader market knowledge and can provide strategic insights based on industry trends and competitor analysis.

2. Advanced Targeting Techniques
Experienced agencies can leverage advanced targeting options and audience segmentation strategies that may not be apparent to beginners.

3. Creative Optimization
Agencies can bring professional design and copywriting skills to create more effective ad creatives and conduct A/B testing to improve performance.

4. Cross-Platform Expertise
Many agencies specialize in managing campaigns across multiple platforms, optimizing your presence across various channels.

5. Time-Saving Automation
Agencies often use sophisticated tools and automation techniques to manage and optimize campaigns more efficiently than most beginners can.

AI now replaces what agencies do

Gen AI is now making the work of advertising agencies obsolete. Gen AI is capable of learning across a lot more data than the humans at agencies and making better ad buying suggestions to you. For instance, platforms like Ise AI's sell through engine can automatically generate thousands of editorial-grade product content for each of your products every week, learn from big data on which ad content works best, and automatically optimize your content across different sales channels. This technology allows for:

• Rapid creation and testing of multiple ad variations

• Automatic adjustment of visuals and copy to suit different platforms

• Continuous optimization and personalization to your consumers based on real-time performance data

By leveraging such AI tools, you can increase sales much more rapidly than using an agency. While beginners can certainly start with basic ad buying, AI sell through engines come with insights compiled across a huge number of products, brands, and sales channels, and thus can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. As you grow more comfortable with advertising, consider whether the expertise of an AI sell through engine could help take your campaigns to the next level.