Carat Media internship Journal: Entry #2

And so the adventure continues at Carat Media in my first full work day. Yesterday was much more straight forward in terms of the agenda, with more spreadsheets being analysed for larger companies! I organised the data as I did last week only with less help and in similar or greater numbers. The data was promising for the most part, which was a good thing to write although this week I tackled a different perspective in my reports. This time I examined the best data set for both Reach and CPC/CTR. Using FaceBook's advert management tools I was able to reveal the actual advert used and -in my report- began to compare their respective characteristics in terms of language use and image type, in an attempt to determine what was motivating consumers psychologically, both in the highly-reaching "Company 1" market and the high-click low-cost "Company 2" market. Using some simple logic and research along with the data, I formulated an explanation for why each was successful with their target audiences e.g. one being less upmarket than the other and therefore encouraging potential customers through a first-time buyers 20% discount, due to income segmentation, or the latter appealing to consumers through the strapline specifying a new product collection, and therefore appealing to curiosity.

Interestingly I then worked alongside another employee who demonstrated the ability to use Google Maps to geo-target customers with Facebook display ads within the country. The client was currently opening a series of new stores. Carat's job was to target those within an effective radius to ensure that they would have a strong possibility of attendance. I recall a similar award-winning campaign reported in eConsultancy a few months ago for Vodafone, also conducted by Carat! The technology behind the management of these profiles is so seamless and simple once you've gotten used to it. And spending seven or eight hours in an office getting practice is truly a great way to speed up the process I've found already! 

I've been let off the leash!- 

Some tasks to complete (Above)

The newest task that I performed yesterday however was analysing a Facebook campaign and then re-allocating budgets for it. Through Facebook it's very easy to change the budget during a live advert, which is why at Carat we sometimes -in order to test potential, unknown markets etc- set up several different adverts with small budgets and see how they perform. This was set up several days ago and it was up to me to find the adverts that had performed well regarding CPCs/CTRs and put more money into them and for other, under-performing adverts, to pull the funding from them completely and hit the pause button. In the few hours that I've spent using the Facebook advert manager, I've come to think of it as akin to a mixing desk or music sequencer in a recording studio when recording live audio, having to change controls, lift the gain, add EQ etc. and if -in this case- something isn't working, the figures not dancing to the tune, then pause it and either alter or delete!

Finally, aside from beginning a report on one company's performance in June and October, I used the Facebook Ad Planner to discover the statistics for gender and age in aid of the campaign for an event. I took twelve screenshots showing men and women in the UK in the age ranges of 18-25; 26-35 & 35+ and for each of those gender-age demographics, I selected the niches who liked the event, the figures obviously growing smaller as I became more specific. Hopefully they'll become more useful over the next week!

Looking back at what I've just written it's hard to believe I did so much in about eight hours. The tasks were fun to complete and the atmosphere was vibrant enough to work in for an extended period of time. There were no weird or awkward silences, everyone was always either talking to a colleague (about something work-related usually!) or on the phone to someone in another office. It's been so much more exciting than previous jobs so far, and the work that I'm completing is something that I can say I am truly interested in! Without anything else to say, all I can say is long may it continue!

See you next week . . .   

In case you missed Week 1

Week 3