ROI critical, invested heavily in self-service ads platform: Lorry Destainville, Quora
The Head of Advertising Sales & Partnerships, Quora, talks to exchange4media on its pitch to advertisers and the value that it offers to marketers
Quora has a mission- to share and grow the world's knowledge. And Indians seem to be the biggest agents for achieving Quora’s mission. As of May 2017 Quora has 200 million unique visitors monthly. At 70+ million monthly unique visitors from the subcontinent, India is one of the leading markets for Quora globally. Launched in 2009, Quora opened up its platform to advertisers only in 2016 and in 2017, the company introduced the self-serve ad platform. In 2018 Quora brought Httpool on board as the official ad sales partner in India.
Quora promises an engaged audience that has a high intent to marketers in India. exchange4media spoke to Lorry Destainville, Head of Advertising Sales & Partnerships, Quora to understand its pitch to advertisers.
Edited excerpts:
Quora though a very favoured platform among a certain demographic has been slow to join the monetisation game. Why has this been the case?
As a company, we have always had a long-term view. In the early years of Quora, we were 100% focused on building the best possible product for users. Monetising Quora was a big decision that we took back in April 2016. We know that when done carelessly, ads can often be negative to user experience, and it was important that we rolled out ads at the right time, in a manner that would make Quora a better product for businesses and our global community of users. To fully achieve our mission we need to make sure that the knowledge on Quora will improve and last forever. Building sustainable revenue from ads will play a part in empowering us to do that. Since the launch of our Ads platform, we have quickly ramped up the platform with several robust targeting and measurement tools, making Quora Ads a valuable acquisition channel for marketers.
What category of advertisers can benefit the most from advertising on Quora?
People come to Quora every day to ask questions and read insightful, credible answers. With 70M+ monthly unique visitors in India, our audience is engaging with content on a variety of topics. Given this, we believe any business can have success advertising on Quora! We capture intent, interest and behaviourial signals and empower brands to capture those, leveraging our advanced targeting capabilities.
Quora offers a unique opportunity to reach potential buyers during the research and consideration phase of their purchase process, particularly around high value items. Users are already on Quora trying to get the best organic answers around the best airlines to travel to Europe or other important decisions. For example - consumer technology, financial services, education, travel and auto are just some of the verticals where advertisers are seeing success, finding their target audience on Quora.
Where will the ads appear? Do you plan to contextualise the ads with the questions asked?
Ads on Quora appear on the question and answer pages as well as in a users feed. We try to ensure our ads are relevant to the user and offer a variety of targeting options to help our advertisers reach the right audience with the right message.
What are your thoughts on using the platform for content marketing?
Our existing text and image-based ads are 100% native ad units. Additionally, we are exploring ways for advertisers to promote content on Quora as well in addition to investing in organic content marketing on Quora.
What kind of interest have you seen from brands so far?
Brands, in India and other markets, have been interested in leveraging three core aspects of our platform:
A lot of platforms including Quora are building self-serve ad platforms. How has the market received this? Do you see a wider group of advertisers using Quora to promote their products because of self-serve? Are SMEs making use of this feature?
Advertising is becoming increasingly automated and as such, marketers want more direct control over their spends across various channels. Self service platforms give advertisers the ability to create, optimise and manage all of their campaigns on any given channel. At Quora, delivering advertiser ROI is extremely important to us, which is why we have invested so heavily in our self service ads platform. We also offer best in class measurement tools to further support our advertisers in measuring and optimising the ROI from Quora Ads. Large, public companies such as Shopify, as well as small startups are all currently using our self-service platform.
In India how many advertisers partner with Quora?
Quora already has over 1,000 active advertisers on the platform. We've had many businesses advertise on Quora since we launched our self-service ads platform in May 2017. The success of several of these advertisers has been one of the many reasons we've chosen to expand our support via this partnership with Httpool to advertisers in India.
How will the collaboration with Httpool improve the Quora Ads product?
We are excited to partner with Httpool to provide brands and agencies with Quora advertising expertise along with premium support and services across Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. Quora offers a fantastic opportunity for brands to capture highly relevant and engaging content, and we could not think of a better partner than Httpool to help advertisers find value on Quora.
Quora promises an engaged audience that has a high intent to marketers in India. exchange4media spoke to Lorry Destainville, Head of Advertising Sales & Partnerships, Quora to understand its pitch to advertisers.
Edited excerpts:
Quora though a very favoured platform among a certain demographic has been slow to join the monetisation game. Why has this been the case?
As a company, we have always had a long-term view. In the early years of Quora, we were 100% focused on building the best possible product for users. Monetising Quora was a big decision that we took back in April 2016. We know that when done carelessly, ads can often be negative to user experience, and it was important that we rolled out ads at the right time, in a manner that would make Quora a better product for businesses and our global community of users. To fully achieve our mission we need to make sure that the knowledge on Quora will improve and last forever. Building sustainable revenue from ads will play a part in empowering us to do that. Since the launch of our Ads platform, we have quickly ramped up the platform with several robust targeting and measurement tools, making Quora Ads a valuable acquisition channel for marketers.
What category of advertisers can benefit the most from advertising on Quora?
People come to Quora every day to ask questions and read insightful, credible answers. With 70M+ monthly unique visitors in India, our audience is engaging with content on a variety of topics. Given this, we believe any business can have success advertising on Quora! We capture intent, interest and behaviourial signals and empower brands to capture those, leveraging our advanced targeting capabilities.
Quora offers a unique opportunity to reach potential buyers during the research and consideration phase of their purchase process, particularly around high value items. Users are already on Quora trying to get the best organic answers around the best airlines to travel to Europe or other important decisions. For example - consumer technology, financial services, education, travel and auto are just some of the verticals where advertisers are seeing success, finding their target audience on Quora.
Where will the ads appear? Do you plan to contextualise the ads with the questions asked?
Ads on Quora appear on the question and answer pages as well as in a users feed. We try to ensure our ads are relevant to the user and offer a variety of targeting options to help our advertisers reach the right audience with the right message.
What are your thoughts on using the platform for content marketing?
Our existing text and image-based ads are 100% native ad units. Additionally, we are exploring ways for advertisers to promote content on Quora as well in addition to investing in organic content marketing on Quora.
What kind of interest have you seen from brands so far?
Brands, in India and other markets, have been interested in leveraging three core aspects of our platform:
- A highly engaged audience, with 70M+ Monthly Unique Visitors in India
- A high level of intent, with users researching important decisions. Our ads platform empowers brands to capture these user behaviours and bring the right message to the right user at various levels of the marketing funnel.
- A safe place for brands to tell their story. We take Brand Safety very seriously; our philosophy towards user engagement “Be Nice Be Respectful” along with additional controls for marketers defines what content gets associated with their ads.
A lot of platforms including Quora are building self-serve ad platforms. How has the market received this? Do you see a wider group of advertisers using Quora to promote their products because of self-serve? Are SMEs making use of this feature?
Advertising is becoming increasingly automated and as such, marketers want more direct control over their spends across various channels. Self service platforms give advertisers the ability to create, optimise and manage all of their campaigns on any given channel. At Quora, delivering advertiser ROI is extremely important to us, which is why we have invested so heavily in our self service ads platform. We also offer best in class measurement tools to further support our advertisers in measuring and optimising the ROI from Quora Ads. Large, public companies such as Shopify, as well as small startups are all currently using our self-service platform.
In India how many advertisers partner with Quora?
Quora already has over 1,000 active advertisers on the platform. We've had many businesses advertise on Quora since we launched our self-service ads platform in May 2017. The success of several of these advertisers has been one of the many reasons we've chosen to expand our support via this partnership with Httpool to advertisers in India.
How will the collaboration with Httpool improve the Quora Ads product?
We are excited to partner with Httpool to provide brands and agencies with Quora advertising expertise along with premium support and services across Mumbai, Bangalore and Delhi. Quora offers a fantastic opportunity for brands to capture highly relevant and engaging content, and we could not think of a better partner than Httpool to help advertisers find value on Quora.
