How Ad Intent Works
We'll answer questions like:
- How and where Ad Intent builds and sources traffic from
- How Ad Intent differs from other ad networks like Meta Ads, or Google Ads
- How your ads will look like, and where they'll appear
How Ad Intent works
Ad Intent is an ad exchange that works with display ad networks to source qualify traffic for customers. Ad networks are networks that aggregate ad space, often called 'inventory'. Ad Intent acts as a wholesale purchaser in these networks.
Ad Intent Exchange
When you place an order on Ad Intent, our team builds these campaigns and sends them to our ad network partners who then bids on our campaign based on their ad placement prices, audience relevance, and inventory availability.
Our team typically finishes building customer campaigns within 24 hours, and it may take an additional 24 hours for our ad network partners to bid and get matched to our customer campaign. In total, a campaign order takes 24 - 48 hours to go live from the time an customer places an order, but often sooner.
Pricing
Ad Intent's campaign price includes the cost of our team building your campaign, as well as the ad spend for the entire month. For example, this means a $40 campaign will last for 30 days and covers the entirety of the campaign fees. There are no additional charges with the exception of taxes where applicable.
Refunds or cancellations
Since our team builds each campaign, when you cancel we'll deduct a $10 campaign setup fee from your order, and the rest is refunded back to you on a prorated basis based on your remaining balance.
For example, for a $40/month plan that's cancelled 15 days into the 30 day campaign; we'll first deduct $10 for your initial campaign setup fee, the remaining $30 is refunded back to you on a prorated basis. In this case, $15 dollars will be refunded back, which represents 15 of your remaining 30 days of campaign.
We have a no hassle cancellation & refund policy. See our refund policy for more details.
How Ad Intent differs from Meta Ads or Google Ads
The primary difference between Ad Intent and Meta or Google Ads where we source our traffic:
Ad Intent sources traffic from display ads (more on this below)
Meta Ads sources traffic from Meta's social media platforms
Google Ads sources traffic primarily from it's Search Network, but also includes Youtube and 3rd party publishers (Adsense)
| Ad Exchange | Targeting | Retargeting | Pros | Cons |
| Ad Intent | Keywords | No | Simple to use and cheaper | Lower engagement rates |
| Google Ads | Primarily keywords, some demographic & interest based targeting | Yes | More advanced keyword capability | More expensive |
| Meta Ads | Primarily demographic and interest based targeting, some device targeting | Yes | Detailed demographic based targeting | More expensive |
Recommendations:
Since Ad Intent's traffic tends to be much cheaper while offering traffic from display ads which tend to engage less, our team typically recommends customers do the following:
Recommendation #1. Use standard+ or pro plans. These plans are typically only $20/month more but offers keyword targeting. This adds significantly better audience targeting and helps to improve conversion rates.
Recommendation #2. Use product-descriptive keywords like "women's high heel boots", avoid generic keywords like "boots". More descriptive keywords help our ad engine by matching your store with more relevant audiences.
Recommendation #3. Change keywords when needed. Finding well performing keywords can be a bit of a trial and error and our team typically recommends customers consider switching keywords after 1-2 months if engagement is lower than expected.
Letting the campaign run for at least 30 days allows our ad engine to properly learn from your campaign performance and gives you the opportunity to measure true performance for the current set of keywords since performance may fluctuate daily in the initial month.
Recommendation #4. Consider running a second campaign in parallel, or using a retargeting campaign from Google or Meta Ads. Google and Meta ads tends to be significantly more expensive than Ad Intent's campaigns, but by using a smaller retargeting campaign, customers can often leverage Ad Intent's cheaper campaign while adding Meta and Google's more powerful targeting capabilities.
What your ad will look like and where they'll appear
Ad Intent uses display ad networks to source traffic. Display ads are the banner, box or menu ads you've likely come across while browser the web. They are typically inserted on publisher sites (like blogs) and can be placed in different areas and comes in many sizes and shapes.
These ads are programmatically generate by our team and then placed on publisher sites based on contextual relevance. The primary drivers of where your ads will be displayed is based on:
- Price: larger plans like our pro plan is typically able to sponsor better or higher engagement ad inventory
- Keywords: the specific keywords you provide in your order has a large impact on where your ads will be displayed, and on what sites, which ultimately drives audience targeting
- Landing page content: our ad engine queries the website you provided to understand context and aims to match your site with ad inventory in the same niche. This is particularly important for our standard plans which does not have keyword matching built in
Some limitations with our campaigns include the following
1. Customer ads are programmatically generated when our team builds the campaigns and sends them to our ad network partners for bidding. This means customers do not have access to view or approve specific ads. For total control over your ad strategy, we recommend using Google or Meta Ads. Ad Intent's campaigns are meant to be a simpler and cheaper alternative.
2. We do not have access to the specific sites or pages where customer's ads will appear. This is a limitation as the ad network partners we work with do not callback to our ad engine with the specific publishers who'll be publishing our ad. This helps to maintain anonymity for our ad network's publisher clients.
Ad Intent's quality policy
1. Ad Intent strives to ensure all ads created and served are safe and adheres to customer's keywords. In most cases, the ads are simple link ads where the anchor text is simply the keywords provided by our customers, or keywords extracted from our customer's website.
2. Ad Intent do not work with any malicious actors, spamware or illegal sites. This means that we do not accept clients that are attempting to promote these sites, nor do we ever publish ads on these sites.
3. To ensure the safety of our clients, we follow Shopify's terms and conditions when selecting and approving ad networks to work with.
If you have any additional questions about Ad Intent's marketing campaigns, or how our services work, you can reach out to our team here.