Photo by William Hook on Unsplash
Welcome back to CHANNELS, where we discuss one of the many programmatic channels available to marketers today, and if they are right for your business. Last week, we talked about Digital Out-Of-Home advertising; this week, we’re posting about Social Mirror Ads.
What are social mirror ads?
Is it a social media post? Is it a display ad? A social mirror ad is a beautiful combination of both.
These ads replicate the format and feel of social media content but are hosted outside of social networks, on websites, apps, or digital billboards, seamlessly blending with the user’s online experience. They’re a chameleon of the digital ad world, mimicking the look and feel of the platform they appear on, which makes them less intrusive and more engaging.
This also lets you get around the walled gardens of social media and utilize the targeting options of programmatic advertising.
You can create social mirror posts for the eight largest social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, X (formerly known as Twitter), and LinkedIn.
Social mirror ads mimic the look and feel of your social posts, but run on the open internet.
What are the benefits of social mirror ads?
Familiar format
People spend a lot of time out of the day online. Of the 503 minutes (8 hours and 23 minutes) spent on digital media in total in the U.S., people spend an average total of 2 hours and 6 minutes a day on social media. Each of the major social media platforms gets on average, 20-30 minutes of daily use. There are 5.04 billion social media users as of 2024.
However, there’s still 6 hours out of the total usage where internet users are not on social media, so placing ads outside walled gardens gives you more chance to get eyeballs.
Cut through banner blindness
Social mirroring achieves higher click-through rates because it is a format that people are familiar with and don’t necessarily associate with being an ad, and it may be a way to cut through banner blindness. People are familiar with social media, and it’s designed to be engaging, for good or for bad.
Many CTA placement opportunities
Social mirror ads have several places and possibilities for CTAs:
- Link to your social media page
- Link to the social media post you used for the ad
- Giving a CTA to the specific page or campaign, directing users to make a purchase, reserve a spot, sign up, et cetera.
Cross-platform consistency
When a user sees your company across various websites, they become familiar with your brand and can consider you as an option if they are making a purchase. It takes around 20-60 touch points, from the top to the bottom of the sales funnel, to get a sale. This is known as “brand reinforcement.”
As the field of marketing develops, we’re finding out that there is not necessarily one single factor that convinces someone to choose your brand; but rather, a variety of consistent, quality content that shows you understand your customer’s mindset and pain points that eventually gets them to choose you.
Repurposing existing creative
With social mirroring ads, you can utilize your existing high performing video and still assets, which saves money and time, gives them new life, and allows you to test them out on other websites.
Social mirroring targeting options
Here are just some of the targeting possibilities for your social mirror ads:
Location: Target users based on where they are in the country, or exclude locations you don’t want to target. This can get as granular as targeting a latitude and longitude, or excluding a particular airport.
Keyword: Show your ads on websites that use similar keywords to yours.
Retargeting: Show your ads to users who have visited your website or taken another action on your page.
Lookalike: Target individuals who share similar interests and characteristics as your target audience.
Third-Party Data: Attaining third-party data from your chosen DSP.
Social mirror KPIs
Here’s a few ways you can measure the success of your social mirror campaign:
Click Through Rate: The number of users who clicked on your ad
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): The number of conversions or revenue attributed to ad spend divided by the cost of the campaign
Impressions: Amount of times the ad was viewed
Revenue: Amount of revenue generated by the campaign
Acquisition: Number of unique customers generated by the campaign
Cost Per Thousand (CPM): Number of thousand views the ad received
How to create a social mirror campaign
Social mirror campaigns can be run through a DSP; or you can use a platform like ORION to run multiple campaigns on multiple DSPs, gaining cross-platform and cross DSP insights.
It’s incredibly easy: Share the link to your social media post, then it can be automatically rendered to run across the web. You can re-use high performing social media assets in your post.
Thinking about adding social mirror ads to your marketing strategy? Version2 can help set up your social mirror campaign using our proprietary platform ORION, in as little as 10 minutes. We also provide content creation services if needed. Additionally, our expert team can advise on strategy, execution, and optimization throughout the campaign.
We prioritize and deliver unprecedented results above all else. To see if Version2 and ORION are right for your team, schedule a free demo. With our proven track record of achieving amazing results in programmatic, we’re excited to provide a solution for you.
