Recruiting Top Employees: Simpli.fi’s Programmatic Recruitment Strategies

Hello and welcome to The Simpli.fi Webinar Series. I’m David McBee. Thanks for joining us each month for industry news, interviews, product rollouts and training on all things related to targeted advertising and connected TV. The Simpl.fi webinar series is available on demand with new episodes posted each month at simpli.fi/webinars along with all of our previously recorded episodes. In this month’s webinar, we’ll be discussing programmatic recruitment strategies for employers. Recruitment advertising plays a pivotal role in today’s competitive job market. Simpli.fi offers solutions to help businesses attract the right candidates through targeted recruitment campaigns. Our precise audience targeting capabilities help businesses efficiently maximize relevance with suitable prospective job seekers across all their devices, and take advantage of Simpli.fi’s comprehensive granular reporting to measure campaign performance. Throughout this webinar I will be talking about ads and ad delivery. Let’s establish what that means out of the gate. Simpli.fi started out as a display ad company delivering banner ads via the programmatic exchange across thousands of websites on desktop and laptop computers. As job seekers increasingly explore career opportunities on devices other than desktops and laptops, it’s important that advertisers connect with users across a variety of other devices. Simpli.fi’s recruitment targeting solutions provide advertisers with multiple ways to reach the ideal candidate across all of their devices, including: Display: Target users across desktop, mobile, and tablet devices with relevant banner creatives. CTV: Reach users on the large or small screen as they stream video content, and even track online and offline conversions across devices. Video: Engage users with pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll, interstitial, and in-banner videos across their mobile, desktop, and tablet devices. And Native: Capture the attention of users on mobile, desktop, and tablet devices with ads that are built in real-time to look like content on a publisher’s website or app. One of the things we sometimes hear from employers is that they are already advertising on Google or on recruitment-specific web pages. That’s great! Of course, those are places to advertise, because that’s where people look when they are searching for a job. But those sites are incredibly competitive and limiting one’s ads to these platforms creates a huge missed opportunity for employers. Take a look at these website statistics on google and some of the main places that job seekers visit. There are billions of people visiting Google and LinkedIn each month, and millions to Indeed and ZipRecruiter. But notice the amount of time people spend on these sites. It’s not much really. The average user spends only about 6 and a half minutes PER MONTH on Indeed. https://pro.similarweb.com/#/digitalsuite/websiteanalysis/overview/website-performance/*/999/3m?webSource=Total&key=linkedin.com Meanwhile, the average person spends around 7 hours A DAY on what we like to call, “the rest of the internet.” That’s all the other web pages, apps and connected TV providers out there. https://www.allconnect.com/blog/data-report-how-americans-use-the-internet#:~:text=85%25%20of%20Americans%20use%20the,minutes%20streaming%20video%20every%20day. And here’s the thing… most of “the rest of the internet” is ad supported – meaning Simpli.fi has hours a day – not minutes – to influence potential employees as they surf the web and find themselves in the programmatic environment. In fact, no advertising medium in history has ever had so much opportunity to influence potential prospects. And by the way, guess what happens when a person sees an ad a handful of times? They remember the employer the next time they are serious about their job search and they Google them! https://meetanshi.com/blog/display-advertising-statistics/#:~:text=10%20Display%20Advertising%20Statistics%20to%20Know%20in%202023&text=The%20display%20advertising%20market%20size,90%25%20of%20internet%20users%20worldwide. Alright, so we’ve established the opportunity. Let’s dive into the ways Simpli.fi builds unique and highly targeted audiences by leveraging data. Every audience starts with one of three kinds of data. Online behavioral data comes from a person’s internet activity. Hundreds of thousands of websites are a part of the Simpli.fi Data Network allowing us to see many of the websites that people visit, the keywords they search, the content they read, link and tag data, and the URL data associated with their online activity. These digital breadcrumbs tell us a lot about individual users, which allows us to place them into custom, dynamic audiences that are hyper-relevant for advertisers. Next, let’s look at location data. While it can vary depending on the device and operating system, we know that as many as 90% of people keep the location services function on their smartphones switched to “on.” (source eMarketer). Many of these apps are collecting and sharing location data, either through the app’s SDK (that’s software developer kit) or via the bid stream. Simpli.fi has a lot of smartphone location data and can leverage it to create audiences that are perfect for advertisers. The third kind of data is demographic data. It comes from offline purchases, publicly available data, and self-reported data. Demographics include things like age, gender, and income - which can’t usually be used for recruitment campaigns, but there are hundreds of variables that can be used including several interest-based and occupational demographics that are ideal for recruitment. Data like this isn’t unique to Simpli.fi, but the way we work with it is. Instead of packaging the data into pre-built audiences, our use of the data in its unstructured format allows us to create dynamic audiences that change daily based on prospects’ behavior. An audience targeted on April 1st will look different from the audience on April 3rd, April 20th and April 30th. Every day as new people enter the audience, others are shifted out of it. Why is this valuable? Because it allows us to deliver over 50% of our ads to prospects within 24 hours of when they exhibit the behavior that warranted their inclusion in the targeted audience. The other half of ads are often delivered within just a few days of that behavior, but can be delivered indefinitely if the prospect continues to act in a way that we want to keep targeting them. These dynamic audiences truly help maximize the relevance of your ad campaigns. Simpli.fi is aware that there are certain restrictions that often accompany recruitment campaigns. For that reason, we can be sure to create target audiences in a way that is never discriminatory. Next let’s talk about the targeting tactics that are available starting with… Site retargeting is a classic tactic that allows employers to RE-target users who have previously visited their website. If you’ve ever shopped for something and then started seeing ads for that product, you’ve been re-targeted. For employers, we can place a pixel, which is a brief piece of code, on the careers page of their site, so that we are only re-targeting job seekers, and not customers. Keyword Search Retargeting puts ads in front of users based on the exact word or phrase that a user searched for or reads on a webpage. For example, a campaign recruiting health care workers could use terms such as medical technician, radiology tech, medical assistant certification, nursing jobs, etc. Contextual targeting allows us to reach users on websites that feature content related to career planning, job fairs, and relevant industry information. For example, a retail advertiser could target contexts such as “eCommerce” and “purchasing” to reach users who are reading content about the industry. Geo-Fencing targets individuals who are actively searching for jobs by targeting relevant locations that they visit. We can draw custom, precise shapes around these locations to capture users and retarget them with variable recency for up to 30 days. Example locations include employee recruitment offices and temp agencies. This tactic can also be used to target competitor locations. For example, if a medical facility is looking to reach the employees of a competing facility, geo-fencing can be leveraged to show ads to the “frequent visitors only” of that facility. This ensures that the ads are targeting the employees and not so much the patients or customers. Geo-fencing can also be used - - - AS A CAMPAIGN SUPPLEMENT - - - to target events like job fairs. This is a great way of reaching attendees when the employer is unable to attend the event in person. Or, if they are there in person, this allows the employer to reach prospects on their digital devices after the event is over. Note: Event targeting can be unpredictable and should never be sold as a stand-alone tactic in a campaign. Addressable Geo-Fencing targets address lists to reach potential employees at the household-level. Ideal for employers who have a list of their own to target. Worth mentioning, the addressable geo-fencing tactic has a 90% match rate compared to the average clearing house match rates which are normally only 40 to 60%. Employers who don’t have a relevant address list, can build their own custom addressable audience with Simpli.fi’s Addressable Audience Curation tool choosing from over 3,000+ demographic factors, and filtering the audience using location details. For example, a fitness studio that is looking to hire employees could target nearby households that include people with interests in aerobics, fitness, and healthy living. I’d like to show you an example of how that tool might be used. In this example, we’ve identified over 232 thousand homes in the Chicago Illinois metro where we have identified blue collar workers. The tool even breaks down how many devices are in each of these households. As you can see, an employer can get quite a bit of reach using this tactic, all while feeling confident that their ads are reaching the right kinds of workers for their job opening. Here are the results for white collar workers. If you’d like to see an example audience for a job you are seeking to fill, please reach out to your Simpli.fi account manager. The final tactic that I’d like to discuss is one that most demand side platforms have access to – 3rd party segments. So if none of the previous tactics sound like a good fit, there are literally thousands of pre-built audience segments that you can choose from. Audience segments are very popular for a reason, and while Simpli.fi offers our own set of proprietary tactics, there’s no reason advertisers can’t activate the segments they are familiar with on the Simpli.fi platform. Before we can discuss our next topic, attribution, we need to briefly talk about Simpli.fi’s extensive cross-device graph. Using multiple device identifiers from a variety of sources, Simpli.fi can determine which devices belong to the same household. This gives us the power to track behavior on one device and deliver the ad on another device in that household. An example of this would be our CTV retargeting tactic. When a prospect visits an advertiser’s website on their computer or smartphone, we can later deliver the advertiser’s ad to their connected TV. Great for targeting, this is especially valuable when measuring the actions taken by prospects. When it comes to attribution, Simpli.fi can track various online and offline actions. Let’s start with online conversions. After being delivered an ad on any of their devices, should a prospect visit the advertiser’s website, a pixel on that website can track visit from those users. Simpli.fi can track: § Website visits § Specific page visits § Form completions § Job Applications (on their own site) § Or even specific button clicks that might indicate a specific action. and… For in person job applicants, we can track foot-traffic conversions. By placing a geo-fence (which we call a conversion zone) around the employer’s physical location, we can track applicants who were served an ad and then visited their physical location. These are true conversions, not estimates based on extrapolations from a small user pool. The next part of our story speaks to the granular and transparent reporting that Simpli.fi makes available to our advertisers As businesses begin to hire new employees, they need to know that their advertising efforts are driving results at a low cost. Simpli.fi’s robust Reporting and Analytics Center provides advertisers with the metrics they need to help gauge ROI and make informed decisions regarding their advertising budgets. By tracking both online and offline conversions, Simpli.fi enables advertisers to fully understand how their campaigns are performing at a granular level and whether they are influencing user behavior. Use this granular reporting to guide real-time campaign optimizations, ensuring you actively reach relevant candidates in a timely manner. Here’s an example of Simpli.fi’s online campaign attribution, which identifies the number of job applications submitted on an advertiser’s website from users who were served ads. Additionally, this tracking can determine the number of conversions from users who were targeted with CTV advertising, as a result of the extensive cross-device matching that we discussed a moment ago. Another benefit that comes from Simpli.fi’s transparent reporting is the ability to optimize campaigns. Because the data is used in its unstructured format, advertisers can see nearly every aspect of their campaign in action, from audience to delivery to attribution. Believe it or not, advertisers can optimize campaigns all the way down to the individual keyword level, to specific geo-fences, and/or unique demographic audiences. They can optimize frequency and reach metrics, choose websites and apps where their ads are delivered by leveraging allow lists and block lists. They can even choose exactly which devices where they serve their ads. Every single report (which can be run daily) has the potential to reveal ways to improve the campaign. Our next strategy, campaign audience retargeting, gives advertisers the ability to retarget users who were previously exposed to one of their ads and deliver additional messaging across different creative types. Often used to decrease overall campaign costs, campaign audience retargeting easily blends creative types, increases unique touchpoints, reinforcing messaging and guiding users through the sales funnel from awareness to action. As an example, advertisers can deliver an ad on CTV and then follow up with display or video ads delivered on computers and mobile devices. Not only does this provide additional impressions at a lower cost, it gives the prospect the opportunity to easily click and convert. This snapshot shows that Simpli.fi worked with over 1400 advertisers, running over 5000 campaigns. That’s over a million dollars in campaigns that generated over 19,000 in-store visits with an average click through rate of .11%. The average cost per thousand impressions was around $4. 84% of the ads were display ads and 16% were video ads. And that’s just one month’s worth of data. I’ve got a couple of recruitment case studies for you as well. IN this one, a manufacturing company partnered with Simpli.fi to reach their ideal target audience and maximize applicants with a three-month campaign. Amidst a busy hiring season. Together, Simpli.fi and the employers agency developed a comprehensive programmatic strategy to target relevant job seekers using a mix of Simpli.fi’s targeting solutions. Overall, the brand wanted to maximize applications and achieve a CTR of .10% and a low Cost Per Action (CPA) across both online applications and in-person visits. First, the advertiser used Simpli.fi’s Addressable Audience Curation tool to build a custom audience following criteria for households in 159 postal codes: The manufacturing company also used Site Retargeting to re-engage users who previously visited their website but did not complete a job application. In order to measure performance, we tracked both online and offline actions: 1. Online visits to the “Thank You” page after submitting a job application 2. In-person visits to the advertiser’s three distribution centers Due to the granularity of insights, the team could see which elements were driving the most actions and optimize accordingly to lower the CPA. For example, the “line supervisor” creative drove 111 actions and the “machine mechanics and operators” creative drove 206 actions, combined accounting for more than half of all campaign conversions. By the end of the three-month flight, the campaign generated 634 total conversions across both in-person and online actions, indicating that users were applying both in-person and online for the available job opportunities. It also achieved a CTR of 0.15%, above the client’s goal of 0.10%. Together, the visits to both the website and the three distribution centers led to a low Cost Per Action (CPA) of $19.37. Our second case study is for a US Armed Forces Branch recruiting ROTC members. The agency knew the ideal profile that ROTC recruiters look for, and leveraged Simpli.fi’s Addressable Audience Curation tool to create a custom audience of households featuring users aged 17-24 with an interest in “Sports”, “Rock & Roll Music”, “Healthy Living” and “Video Games” across seven U.S. states and territories. The agency also used Keyword Search Retargeting and Keyword Contextual Targeting tactics to reach people who indicated interest in military service based on their online behavior. This allowed the agency to target users who were actively searching for and reading ROTC-related terms such as military careers, military education, military scholarships, and much more. Simpli.fi’s automated back-end algorithms, as well as strategic manual optimizations, helped to significantly improve performance, particularly during the first four weeks of the campaign. Adjustments to blocklists, pacing, device delivery, and much more drove a 40% increase in website visits, a 117% Lead Rate increase, and a 76.9% improvement to the High Value Action rate all within the first month. Additionally, the Click Through Rate improved by 30% and suspected fraudulent traffic was reduced by 30%. Overall, the military branch and the agency were excited with the results, and renewed the ROTC recruitment campaign based on successful performance across each KPI. Thank you for joining us today. I hope this deep dive into the world of programmatic recruitment strategies helped you to better understand the detailed methods of audience targeting with Simpli.fi. With our powerful combination of granular reporting, dynamic audience adjustments, and an array of targeting tactics, we truly believe that employers are better equipped than ever to achieve their recruitment goals. If you have questions about Simpli.fi’s offerings, please reach out to your Simpli.fi account manager or send an email to hi@simpli.fi. I’m David McBee. Be Awesome, and we’ll see you next time.