Teaser advertising is a low-cost way to reach a large audience with few limitations. However, there is a catch: teasers are not very effective at attracting the right customers and often get clicked by bots. This makes teaser traffic low-quality and unreliable. But marketers can still make money from this type of advertising if they know how to use it properly.
In this article, we will explain what teaser advertising is, how it works and what you need to do to profit from it.
What Does Teaser Advertising Mean?
Teaser advertising is a type of advertising that uses eye-catching images and engaging headlines to pique the user’s curiosity. The main goal of such a banner is to entice the user to click and find out more. It is a bait-and-switch tactic – “click to discover”.
Usually, such an advert shows only a fraction of the product, but does not disclose the main idea and maintains the suspense. For instance, a banner with the text “Just one glass of this drink and you will lose 10kg” is an example of a teaser ad. You are intrigued by the product, but you still have no clue about it.
What Teaser Ads Are For
Teaser advertising can serve different purposes: promoting products, driving traffic to the website, generating leads, etc. The best-selling products through teasers are:
Products for women (hair growth boosters, skin care, etc.);
Medical products (aphrodisiacs, posture correctors, dietary supplements);
News (celebrity deaths, hospitalizations, scandals);
Adult – teasers are often used to lure traffic to adult websites, as well as to sell products of the same niche.
Who Can Benefit From Teaser Advertising?
Teaser advertising is not for everyone. It only works well for offers that:
Have a simple target action (scrolling through an article, etc.);
Promise instant rewards (magic pill for sexual performance, lucky spin for a casino bonus, quick registration for a dating site).
Teaser advertising is suitable for promoting products that have a broad appeal (such as dietary supplements, adult products, etc.). It also performs well in gambling, dating and finance niches.
However, it is not effective for marketing niche products. These include, for instance, building materials, furniture, expensive appliances, specialised equipment, etc. Teaser networks are not ideal for advertising these products because of low-quality traffic (many bots) and limited targeting options.
For example, most networks only offer basic targeting tools: time, geo, operating systems and IP range. Some networks may have more settings, but they are still not enough to reach the right customers. Moreover, it is hard to generate curiosity for products that are mundane or boring, such as a hairdresser’s chair.
How Teaser Advertising Works
Teaser advertising follows this basic process:
An advertiser creates an advertising banner and submits it to a teaser network N.
A website owner signs up with the teaser network N and gets a unique code. This code allows the website to display teaser adverts on it. After setting it up, teasers start showing up on the website.
A website visitor sees the advert, clicks on it and lands on the advertiser’s website. Depending on the agreement, the website owner gets paid a fixed amount for each view or click on the adverts.
Elements of Teaser Advertising
A typical teaser advert has three main elements: a 300×300 image, a headline and a product description. The image in teasers is meant to attract attention, so it is usually colourful and catchy.
For instance, here are some examples of how these elements are combined in offers related to making money. Besides the image and headline, there is also a “partial” description of how to earn money fast.
The same principle applies to dating offers, but with a focus on quick sex or romance.
Types of Teasers
Teaser advertising can be classified into three main categories:
By content format:
Classic teaser – a combination of an image, a headline and a text description of the product.
Banners – animated or static images that can be in different sizes and shapes.
Video ads – short clips (up to 15 seconds) that play when a user watches online videos. If the user clicks on any part of the video (except for the “mute” button), they are automatically redirected to the advertiser’s website.
Messengers – a type of teaser that mimics a message from popular messaging apps, such as Facebook. This teaser looks and sounds like the original app and tries to trick the user into clicking on it.
News articles – topical articles that are not fully displayed. When the user clicks on “Read More”, they are redirected to the advertiser’s offer.
By payment method:
CPM – cost per thousand impressions of the advert. For example, if the advertising campaign targets 500,000 users and the network charges $0.5 per thousand impressions, the advertiser pays $250.
CPC – cost per click on the advert. Advertisers prefer this model because they only pay for users who are interested in their product and want to learn more.
CPA – cost per action. This model has a special feature – the advertiser specifies in advance which user action counts as a conversion: downloading an app, filling out a form, following a social media account, etc.
CPL – cost per lead. In this model, the website owner gets paid only if the user provides their contact information.
By duration of the advertising campaign:
Short-term – the most common type of teasers on the web. A user sees an advert, clicks on it and visits the advertiser’s website.
Long-term – a type of teaser that is used by large companies before launching a new product in the market. For example, long-term teaser campaigns are often used for video game releases. Marketers create hype and spark the audience’s curiosity by releasing trailers on the web. The time gap between the teasers and the product launch can vary, but it is usually 1-2 weeks.
Strategies for Teaser Advertising Campaigns
The strategy depends on the click-through rate (CTR) of the teasers. To find it out, run a test using the CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model with the highest bid. Then track the metrics: if you get 30 clicks out of 1000 impressions for 1$ then the cost per click is: 1$ / 30 = 0.033$. If you get 5 clicks out of the same 1000 impressions, then the cost per click is: 1$ / 5 = 0.2$. Next, we compare the prices with the bids for clicks – if the price of a click is 0.1$, then CPM at 0.33$ will work for you, but 0.2$ will not.
Each niche has its own optimal CTR. The average CTR for all banners is 0.2% and anything above 2% is considered good. Based on the CTR of the banner, you can choose one of three promotion strategies.
The lowest price per click
You create 5-6 banners (the more the better) and run them in the teaser network. You set the lowest price per click. This strategy aims to get as many impressions as possible. In this case, you only pay for clicks on the advert and the impressions are “free”.
The highest price per impression
You start with the highest price per impression and then gradually lower it. Teaser networks operate on an auction principle. Therefore, advertisers set a high price per impression in the first days/weeks. When the advert becomes popular, they start to lower the price. By then, teaser networks already regard the banner as an advert with a good performance and will keep giving it high positions, regardless of the price.
In this strategy, it is important to monitor the number of clicks on the advert. If they are consistently high, then even with a lower price per impression, traffic will not decrease much.
Average price on the website
With this strategy you need to do two things:
Set an average (competitive) price per click on the website;
Set up targeting for all regions except for your target region.
For example, you sell a product in London, but you advertise it all over the United Kingdom, except for London. This is necessary for the banner to gain popularity on general impressions and therefore lower the price per click.
Then you switch the warmed-up adverts with high CTR and low price per impression to London. By the time you connect your target region, the platform already considers the teaser clickable and puts it in good positions even with an average price per click.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Teaser Advertising
Teaser advertising can be more profitable for companies than, for example, running a targeted ad on social media or advertising platforms. This is because of the characteristics of teaser advertising.
Advantages
Relatively low cost. If in Google Ads the price of a click can reach $50, then in teaser networks this amount is much lower – from 0.5 cents to $2. This low cost allows more opportunities to test hypotheses and reduces the spending on tests.
Large audience reach. Large teaser networks display adverts on a huge number of websites. And, usually, the audience of the network grows every day, as webmasters with new websites join the system. Therefore, teaser adverts get thousands of views in a short time.
Easy launch. Creating a teaser is easy, it’s almost like a social media post: you need a bright image, an enticing headline and a product description (up to 200 characters) with a call to action. Even if you have no experience, you can make a “teaser” yourself and run it on a teaser network.
Few restrictions. Unlike contextual advertising and social media targeting, teaser networks have fewer restrictions. For example, an ad that won’t pass moderation in Google Ads will most likely be launched through a teaser network without any problems. Teaser networks have few restrictions at all, some networks don’t even set a minimum price per click. The restrictions are mainly set by the website owners themselves – many don’t want to host casino adverts, betting, etc.
Niche-oriented networks. There are many teasers on the Internet tailored for a specific niche. For example, some networks are ideal for adult traffic, while others are perfect for gambling.
Disadvantages
Low quality traffic. Teaser networks give access to a large audience. But because of the almost complete lack of targeting, more than 70% of the users you get are “cold” prospects. Besides, in teaser networks there are always many bots that click on the adverts.
They get old quickly. If you manage to create a cool teaser, it is likely to be copied by other advertisers. Because of this, teasers lose their appeal quickly. There is another point – it is technically easy to create a “teaser”, but not everyone manages to make it completely unique. Many ads use clichéd phrases and dull images that bore the audience. And as a result, the advert gets low CTR.
Teasers are not suitable for all products. This type of advertising is more suitable for businesses with a wide audience, teasers here more often “hit the mark”. But advertising campaigns of a narrow segment are likely to fail.
Ad blockers. These extensions successfully “remove” adverts from websites and services and you don’t get the necessary exposure.
Banner blindness. Internet users are so used to advertising that they have learned to ignore it. To reduce the level of “banner blindness” of the target audience, analyse competitors’ ads and create a campaign that will stand out from others.
Conclusion
Teaser advertising, if used wisely, can be a potent way to market online. Teasers have many benefits: they can reach a large audience, generate a lot of clicks and have few limitations in the design of the advertising campaign. This gives advertisers more freedom and flexibility to create daring adverts that would not get approved by Google.
