Jun 17, 2009

NEW YORK Like print ads, context matters when it comes to the effectiveness of Internet ads, according to new findings from media researcher McPheters & Co. Analyzing the effectiveness of Internet banner ads, McPheters, collaborating with Condé Nast and CBS Vision, found that online ads running on sites with related content were 61 percent more likely to be recalled than ads on venues with unrelated content — a finding that would appear to undercut the case for behavioral ad networks..

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There is a great article on 4 costly metrics misconceptions

Another on “How Twitter and email can benefit targeted marketing.”

How we screwed up online advertising, and finally some guidelines for successful video advertising.

By the way, if you want to make sure that your online advertising buys are working as hard for you as they possibly can, or if you are interested in optimizing your video campaigns you can always take all the guesswork out and give us a buzz.

Though the report projects that overall 2009 spending on traditional, offline media will decline 1.4%, and spending on interactive will increase 7.2 %, it notes that these figures do not tell the whole story.

In fact, 2009 will be the first year since the start of century in which banners, pop-ups, and interactive display advertising overall will show little or no growth, and may likely decline.

For local interactive media, the big slowdown began a year earlier than Borell initially anticipated, magnified and accelerated by the credit crisis. The spending levels by local advertisers – which grew at a frenetic 47% this year – are expected to slow to a paltry 8% in 2009.

Read The Rest—>No Improvement on Horizon for ‘Standard’ Online Advertising

Shoba Purushothaman, CEO and co-founder of The Newsmarket, a Web-based video marketing and distribution platform, said it’s encouraging that the news industry is recognizing it can’t simply take traditional ad models and apply them to digital platforms. “It’s not about slapping it on the Web and saying it’s going to work,” said Purushothaman.

That point is not lost on The New York Times Media Group, which late last month partnered with business social-networking site LinkedIn. In the deal, LinkedIn members who read the business and technology sections on NYTimes.com will automatically have articles related to their professional interest set up for them on the site. (This is made possible by a cookie on LinkedIn.)

Denise Warren, svp and chief advertising officer for The New York Times Media Group, said the agreement allows the organization to tap into “executive decision makers.”

Advertisers will receive targeted information based on profile data — e.g., a person’s industry, job, gender and geography-gathered by the NYT Media Group. Sales reps will help advertisers choose the appropriate platforms — including mobile, video and blogs — for ads ranging from banners to leaderboards.

Last year, for the first time, BBC.com — the international Web site for the BBC (outside of the U.K.) — began selling advertising globally. In April, a multiplatform sales force was launched in the U.S. to sell advertising across BBC.com, BBC America, BBCAmerica.com, BBC World News and BBCworldnews.com. (Advertising on BBC America and its Web site had been sold by Discovery Communications.) Two ad units are available, both offering video capability.
Currently, when users in all markets go to BBC.com, they’re routed to bbc.co.uk.

But the Web site is launching a U.S. edition in the second half of 2009 that will cater to U.S. appetites, according to Mark Gall, svp of advertising sales for BBC America and BBC.com.

CNN “turned a corner” when it struck a partnership in June 2007 with Google’s YouTube to present the network’s presidential debate coverage, according to Greg D’Alba, evp and COO of CNN ad sales. Starting with the 2004 elections, CNN had made a concerted effort to attract election-coverage sponsors with packages that offered a variety of platforms. In 2004, only four jumped on. Now the network has 12 sponsors, including AT&T, Cisco Systems, Exxon Mobil and Hyundai.

The perception is growing that CNN’s product is for a range of demographics, not just “the gray-haired gentleman with a huge portfolio of wealth getting ready to retire,” said D’Alba. Roughly six additional sponsors have inked election coverage packages, he added, though he declined to name them as those advertising flights have not yet begun.

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But they are not analyzing stocks. They are analyzing advertising.

What they are measuring is activity on advertising exchanges, where companies bid to place their online ads on space provided by publishers. As advertising exchanges gain popularity — Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all moved into this arena recently — Madison Avenue is borrowing tactics from Wall Street.

It is reminding some observers of what happened when technology came to the stock exchange, including the arrival of trading advisers like Mr. Zawadzki’s firm, MediaMath, that are running numbers and promising to offer sophisticated financial instruments.

For now, Mr. Zawadzki is using the exchanges to buy and sell ads instantaneously as opportunities arise — a spot market, in Wall Street lingo — but he is working on more complex trading strategies.

“Right now it’s more the in-the-moment, taking advantage of the spot market with aggressive bid management,” said Mr. Zawadzki, whose firm is based in New York. “But we’re certainly thinking about where that goes later in terms of secondary markets, derivatives, options, hedges, all the rest.”

Big publishers try to sell Web site advertising space through their sales forces at high prices. Most cannot sell all their inventory, so they send the leftover, or “remnant,” space to an ad network or to an ad exchange. These deliver an ad, but at lower prices than the publishers’ sales forces fetch — usually around $1 per thousand impressions, versus the $20 and up that top sites’ sales forces ask for.

Ad networks and ad exchanges are both in the business of selling remnant inventory, but they do it in slightly different ways. The networks, which function as middlemen, sell chunks of inventory through their sales forces, which can simplify the buying process for advertisers.

Exchanges, on the other hand, let advertisers buy ads directly, and place them one by one. Because there are usually lower fees, buying off exchanges tends to be cheaper — though more labor-intensive — than buying through networks.

In 2007, exchanges sold about 15 percent of the remnant inventory, and about 5 percent of online display advertising overall, according to ThinkPanmure, a research and financial services company. Most of the other 85 percent was sold through networks.

The major appeal of exchanges is that with some analysis, advertisers can buy ads one by one, and track the performance of each ad. This contrasts with ad networks, which roll up broad audiences for advertisers (often using the exchanges) through their own sales forces.

Ad exchanges have gotten a few big boosts lately. In 2007, three major portals announced they were buying exchanges. Yahoo bought the Right Media exchange for $650 million; Google announced it was buying DoubleClick in April, which had announced weeks earlier it was setting up what is now called the DoubleClick Advertising Exchange, for $3.1 billion; and Microsoft acquired the exchange AdECN.

Last month, the advertising holding company Publicis Groupe said it would start working with DoubleClick and Right Media’s exchange to buy advertisements. The advertising companies Havas Digital and WPP have announced similar deals with Right Media in recent months.

But it is not so much the exchanges themselves that is interesting the advertising world — it is what can be done with them.

“The exchanges are just a platform to buy and sell media, but you have to layer the measurement and data on top, which could come from different areas: some agencies will build it, some agencies will partner,” said Darren Herman, head of digital media at the Media Kitchen agency.

“We use the analogy of, anybody can trade on the financial markets, anyone can get an eTrade account, but it’s how you’re smart about how you use your eTrade account that determines how well you’re going to do trading,” Mr. Herman said.

With some Wall Street-like analysis, advertisers can find individual Web surfers, figure out how much to pay to show them an ad, and analyze how those ads have performed. Firms like Mr. Zawadzki’s are analyzing which of those users might be attractive, then tracking whether people click on the ads they see. If an advertiser wanted to reach a very specific group — say, people in Atlanta who have already visited its home page — it might bid more to get that audience.

The growth of exchanges has a clear benefit to advertisers, allowing them to test multiple ads quickly with specific groups, potentially minimizing expensive campaign testing and focus-group work.

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Online, widely connected,
ad-tolerant

In just eight months, the use of online and mobile devices for entertainment rocketed among online US consumers, according to the second edition of the State of Media Democracy survey from Deloitte & Touche, reports Reuters (via MarketingCharts).

38 percent of consumers now watch TV shows online, compared with 23 percent eight months ago, the study finds.

And some 54 percent use social-networking sites, chat rooms or message boards. 45 percent said they have a profile on a social-networking site.

The report of the online survey of 2,081 US consumers, conducted Oct. 25-31, is slated for release in Jan. ‘08. Deloitte provided the findings early to The Hollywood Reporter, which reported some of the results:

Among the study’s findings related to advertising…

• 85 percent cited TV advertising as among the types having the most impact on purchase behavior; 65 percent cited online ads; and 63 percent pointed to magazine ads.
• However, 59 percent said they pay greater attention to magazine ads – and 55 percent cited newspaper ads – than any type of internet advertising.
• Online, search ads were cited as the most effective (78 percent), followed by interactive ads (62 percent), banner ads (60 percent), pre-rolls (31 percent) and post-rolls (19 percent).
• 67 percent said they would be willing to be exposed to more online ads in return for free content that’s valuable.
• However, 37 percent said they would rather pay for online content than be exposed to advertisements.
• 65 percent said they consider any type of internet ad more intrusive than newspaper and magazine ads.

New research suggests that most marketers continue to use traditional marketing tactics on social networking sites, and it’s affecting their return on investment.

by Helen Leggatt

Forrester Research released the results of a study last month appropriately titled “Marketing on Social Networking Sites”. The results indicated that traditional advertising techniques and microsites were still being used to “push” messages to users of these networks. However, the return on investment from these type of campaigns remains low.

“We believe that marketing needs to turn itself on its head,” said Gurval Caer, president and chief executive at marketing agency Blast Radius. “The goal should not be messaging customers, but rather should be building relationships from the first moment of a delightful experience that will make people’s lives easier, better and richer.”

Forrester found many Internet users were interested in viewing marketer’s profiles – one-third of Gen Y users and nearly half of adults. The best way to engage them on social networks was, the report said, to make use of branded viral elements and to form personal relationships as “friends”, much like “how bands promote themselves on sites like MySpace”.