The mission of Bank of North Dakota (BND) is to “Promote agriculture, commerce and industry.” BND’s vision is focused on the customers it serves and continuing to help North Dakota grow. As the only state-owned bank in the United States, it performs a unique role for North Dakota residents.
BND is conducting this solicitation to procure available digital advertising inventory from popular websites. The ad inventory for these websites is not available via the advertising mediums currently used by the in-house marketing staff at BND. BND’s experienced marketing team of a graphic designer, business writer/videographer, media buyer and manager currently use the following mediums to place media buys: Google Ads, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook. The programmatic buy offered in this RFP is not to include any of the four previously listed mediums.
The BND program that will be the focus for this RFP campaign is the BND Student Loan program. BND staff will provide the vendor with all creative elements for this campaign. We have :30 and :15 second video ad spots as well as accompanying graphic and copy elements for static ads.
BND Student Loan Program
a) History
The BND Student Loan (formerly the DEAL Loan) was introduced in 1997 and was originally intended for aviation, medical and law students at University of North Dakota because federal student loans did not cover their needs. It quickly expanded and was available for all North Dakota students. North Dakota residents attending in-state or out-of-state schools and out-of-state residents attending North Dakota schools do not pay fees and pay lower interest rates.
b) 2019 marketing plans
Marketing mediums that will be used, in conjunction with what is offered in the RFP, for the BND Student Loan program in 2019 include the following: Network and cable TV, Pandora internet radio, Gas Station TV, Google Ads (display and search ads), YouTube, Bing Ads (display and search), bus advertising in Grand Forks, ND and Fargo, ND, BEK Sports TV, and Facebook.
c) 2019 marketing goal
Increase percentage of students with alternative student loans at NDSU and UND by five percentage points each.
Scope of Work:
The Bank of North Dakota (BND) is soliciting proposals for a vendor to use programmatic ad buying, or a similar digital real-time bidding system, to place online advertisements in the 2019 year for Bank of North Dakota’s Student Loan program. The winning offeror will place digital media ads created by BND staff. Offeror must be able to manage and measure the effectiveness of digital media ads and provide BND staff with weekly reports showing the effectiveness of the campaign. Offeror must also be able to provide statewide coverage across all of North Dakota and coverage of the Minneapolis, MN and St Paul, MN regions.
The primary target audience for this BND Student Loan campaign is parents of children attending college (ages 36-55). The secondary targets audiences are high school students and college students attending NDSU and UND (ages 17-25). The offeror is not responsible for creating ad material for any campaign and will use only the ad material we provide. Ad material includes copy, graphics, pictures and any video elements. The run dates will be split into two campaigns, a spring campaign and a late fall campaign. The Spring campaign will run from May 1, 2019 through August 31, 2019. The late fall campaign will run from November 1, 2019 through December 31, 2019.
Services requested include the following:
• The placement of digital media ads provided by BND staff.
• Ads should not be placed on websites portraying content that is sexual, suggestive, vulgar, contains profanity or shows death.
• If requested, offeror must indicate all websites on which ads were placed.
• Ads should be placed on websites that fit the target audience listed in 3.1 (Scope of Work) as well as the following websites, if possible: weather.com, and any news-related websites providing local news coverage.
• will provide industry benchmarks of click-thru-rate (CTR) and cost-per-click (CPC) to BND staff. These will be used, in addition to the BND has gathered from ad campaigns, to establish the CTR and CPC benchmarks that will be used to campaign’s overall effectiveness.
• Weekly account reporting providing BND staff with counts of impressions, clicks, and costs and a list of all websites on which ads were placed.
Campaigns must include geo-targeting. Each offeror must also provide the name of their programmatic ad buying source or their technology partner for digital advertising should they make use of one.
Due Date:
April 12
Address:
Relevant agencies to consider include W2O Group and KCSA Communications.