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What’s An Ad Exchange?

What do you mean a Job Ad Exchange?

You may be shopping around for ways to get more people to know about the job opportunities you’re hiring for. You research different channels and ways to share your job ad, then see the concept of a Programmatic is mentioned a handful of times. In that Programmatic bucket, a common idea that is discussed is a Job Ad Exchange.

The name of Job Ad Exchange doesn’t explain much about what it does for your job advertising. That’s why we’re here writing to clear things up and show how Job Ad Exchanges simplify the entire job advertising process.

Here’s a breakdown of the Job Ad Exchange aspects that we’ll talk about:

• What does ‘Exchange’ mean?
• How jobs ads get posted
• Factors to consider in a Job Ad Exchange
• Keys for success using a Job Ad Exchange

What Exactly Does ‘Exchange’ Mean?

I know first getting to know what about Job Ad Exchanges, I had no clue as to what they could mean by ‘exchange’. I thought “what is there to exchange with job ads?”

Soon I realized that it’s thought of as a sort of marketplace. Think New York Stock Exchange – instead of stocks being bought and sold, its Job Ads.

A Job Ad Exchange pools together Job Ads and Ad Space into one place to sort out which ad goes where.

Check out this diagram outlining the two sides of a Job Ad Exchange and the connection is builds:

Your Ad with Job Ad Exchanges

Your job ads are ready to get out there so you move forward with a job ad exchange.

When you feed the ad exchange your jobs, it takes into account two things: the contents of the ad and the bid price.

These two factors are used to decide which publisher/site your job ad should appear on. The contents of your job ad tell publishers in the exchange about what search keywords would match. This way when their audience is searching for a particular job, they can easily select yours to display now that its categorized.

Now let’s say your ad and another, come head to head where keywords are identical. Which will the publisher choose? This is where the bid comes in to play to help determine who gets their ad displayed. In this case, the ad with the higher bid would be shown because it means a higher payout for the site.

This entire process occurs the very moment you upload your job ad to the ad exchange. Your ads will then be set in the job ad exchange ready for publishers to start displaying on their sites.

Considerations Before Using Job Ad Exchanges

Your job ad content and the bid prices are what Job Ad Exchanges depend on. However, there’s more to think about before moving forward with one.

Think about the landscape of your job ads.

Certain industries of jobs are more competitive in the job advertising world. This can result in bids being held at high prices due to the demand of hiring certain talent as soon as possible. Common industries this applies to are Trucking and Healthcare jobs, where the cost-per-applicant are typically on the higher side.

These particular industries are ones that no matter the job ad, getting visibility to these job ads is mainly based on the highest bidder.

Also consider the expected reach of your job ad campaign. How many jobs are you advertising and where are they? This will be key in preparing the right budget and what changes you can make to optimize. You can advertise a small set of jobs that are very niche, however, you may not see a lot of traction. Increasing bids significantly is an option but your returns may suffer. This could be due to locations being too out of town or audiences are too small. Answering this question will dictate whether a job ad exchange is the right solution for your jobs.

The right fit for a Job Ad Exchange

You now know about Job Ad Exchanges and how they work. Should you move forward with it? Let’s think it through together.

The Basics

Do you have multiple job ads? Are you looking to get your ads displayed on a variety of job sites?

If it’s yes to both of those questions, then absolutely a Job Ad Exchange does exactly that. An exchange prevents having to juggle multiple publishers and managing those accounts.

It’s one place for you to put your job ads while the exchange handles posting it on the right sites.

The Time

How hands-on are you looking to be with your job advertising campaign?

If you want to have control over every detail of your job campaign, then then ad exchange is not ideal.

Job Ad Exchanges are designed to be “set it and forget it” by putting the ad buying process on autopilot. Ad exchanges aim to bring stress relief by keeping the amount of changes and ‘ifs’ you can make to a bare minimum.

Maintenance

Do you have a CPC (cost-per-click) or CPA (cost-per-apply) number in mind? Do you have an idea about expected results about your categories of jobs?

Answering these questions does require a bit of research and discussions with job ad exchanges to gather insight. However, once you have them, you’ll use your answers to set up your first campaign on an exchange.

As you gather info you can start to review which ad exchange provider is best for you. *Shameless plug* Some background about our Job Ad Exchange can be found here – www.jobadx.com/advertisers.

Your CPC and CPAs help you set the right budget that the job ad exchange uses to make sure overspend doesn’t happen. As campaigns run, having insights about your job categories will help with optimizing by preventing increasing or decreasing bids by too much.

The Verdict

A Job Ad Exchange is a good fit when you have various job ads that you want published well with minimal leg work.

You have some basic knowledge of how much it costs to see results and some wiggle room to make adjustments along the way. You also don’t want to spend too much time managing every detail of your job advertising.

In that case, Job Ad Exchanges are your safest bet.

Getting Started

Job Ad Exchanges are sounding like a good idea and here at JobAdX, we’ve built a robust exchange.

We welcome pilot campaigns to see if Job Ad Exchanges are right for your recruitment marketing. We don’t require any minimums so you can use us as you please.

Reach out to us to get some feedback on a campaign you have in mind. We can share with you how things related have performed recently and give guidance on optimizing.

Give us a shout @ jobadx.com/get-started-today

Happy Hiring!