Atlas just released a study highlighting the need to think about times of days for conversions. Their study shows lunchtime and evenings as the best time for buying online and points out that it that the time could be worth up to 35% more in CPM. Interesting piece that you can see here http://www.atlassolutions.com/news/releases/20050914.

So this begs the question, should you turn off media during the lowest productive hours? I depends on your goals. If you are buying on a CPM (cost per thousand) and want to improve your cost per metrics, you might want to. If you want to increase awareness of your product or brand - you should run in the off hours, but negotiate a lower CPM for imprssions during that time. If you are on a CPC (cost per click) basis as in search or on a network - you might manage your bids so that you are paying less on a cpc or pause the campaigns during these hours. If you are paying on a CPA (cost per acquisition) doesn’t really matter because all of the risk is on the publisher.

Bottom line is that the data to make these decisions are there. Sophisticated marketers need the tools to be able to make these types of decisions and the people/systems to implement them. It’s all about the data baby!