Archive for Advertising
Classic Mac ad: the way it should have been
April 2nd, 2008 • Advertising, Life
And the future of video advertising is… overlays?
August 28th, 2007 • Advertising, Video
Big buzz today. YouTube has finally decided on its advertising format of choice, and it appears to be transparent overlays.
This is major news. YouTube now accounts for 10% of all internet traffic, and is costing Google the earth. And until today, there was little way to guage how the search company would see a return on its $1.65 billion investment.
The challenge has been made all the greater by apparent public resistance to pre-rolls (ads that run before the video begins), with complaints in research groups that they ruined the experience.
But after much soul-searching, Google has finally gone for a semi-transparent overlay. Read more »
Where now for video ads?
August 11th, 2007 • Advertising, Video
No-one’s quite sure what to do with advertisements in video, according to today’s Wall St Journal.
The issue is intrusion: as previous research has shown, people focus hard when watching online videos (more so than they do when watching TV), so anything that kicks the flow into touch is disliked.
As the WSJ explains, one new format that’s proving popular is the ticker, an advertising message running across the bottom of the player. Elsewhere, the likes of Heavy are betting the house on skins, wrapping the video in one big message.
Me? I’ve never seen the problem in the first place. I grew up as an online video consumer watching the likes of DiggNation and Rocketboom: the issue to my eyes was always tone andc context, never the existence of the ad in the first place. I know of GoDaddy.com, purely because it sponsored the hell out of the start of DiggNation for heaven knows how long. If that’s advertising working, then it works.
paidContent.org: No Holy Grail For Online Video Ad Model, But Various Formats Find Their Converts
New Yahoo! SmartAds: saviour, or intrusion?
August 10th, 2007 • Advertising, Internet
The right offer at the right time. The ninja sales guys around me would always insist that this was the key - know what your client wants, and fulfil their needs.
So using that criteria, it would seem that Yahoo! is doing a damn fine job. According to today’s WSJ, the new SmartAds appearing in Yahoo! Travel have been a wow with advertisers, and the company now plans to roll them out into other channels.
How does it work? You start digging around in Yahoo! Travel for a break in Toronto in October. Like all good researchers, you don’t buy the first deal on offer. So a few days later you go back - and hey presto, there are leverly placed ads that offer good deals on holidays in Toronto in October.
In theory, it’s a win for everyone - you get the right service at the right time, and the advertiser gets the right buyer at the right time. But, as the WSJ story points out:
There also is a danger consumer online-privacy concerns could derail them, since Yahoo makes heavy use of data about its visitors to target ads, including information users supply during registration, location data from their computers and insights into their interests gleaned from their online “behavior,” such as where they have gone within Yahoo and their keyword-search history.
Yahoo Banks on SmartAds To Lift Display Business - WSJ.com
Maybe I’m soft, but such ‘intrusions’ have never bothered me. I’m quite used to supplying information online that will enable people to cut their cloth they offer to my needs. Would I rather have a banner ad for a new car while I’m hunting for that well-earned holiday, or a list of flight and hotel prices to the place that are actually useful. No brainer.
Social networking to go mobile?
August 10th, 2007 • Advertising, Mobile
A new report from Juniper Research suggests that the world of user-generated content is about to break free of the PC. In fact, it predicts an explosion - from 14 million users this year to a simply huge 600 million by 2012 (shurely shome mishtake? - Ed).
The report also suggests that developing countries will be at the forefront of the growth; as late arrivers at the technology party, many have gone straight-to-mobile.
Worldwide, end-user generated revenues from social networking, dating and personal content delivery services will increase from $572 million in 2007 to over $5.7 billion in 2012, with social networking making up 50 percent of the total by the end of 2012.
Pop-ups: coming to your mobile any day now
August 8th, 2007 • Advertising, Business, Mobile
Yep, the scourge of the desktop browser has spotted one final frontier - your handset. Soon, you’ll be able to enjoy compelling marketing propositions as you wait for the 07.36 at Clapham Junction.
Actually, it’s a little more complex than that. It transpires that a few companies in the US have been trialling a service whereby customers download a small app, and are then fed ads with ‘genuine’ killer offers. The app learns: after a while, it should only feed the sort of ads that you click on, and not the ones you don’t.
Mobile Posse is one of the companies trialling the service. Its CEO, Jon Jackson, reckons that its system is far more attractive to advertisers than mobile banners…
That’s because banner advertisements are limited to the approximately 30 million people in the U.S. who use mobile Web browsers. On average, those people rack up four to five page views per month. Compare that, he says, to the approximately 200 million people who can receive idle screen ads from Mobile Posse, and an advertiser may see a more interesting prospect.
Pop-up ads: Coming to a mobile phone near you? - Yahoo! News
Google says ‘trust me’
August 6th, 2007 • Advertising, Business, Google
Vodafone pulls Facebook ads
August 2nd, 2007 • Advertising, Business
Oe of the by-products of welcoming all-comers - Vodafone withdraws its Facebook campaign after discovering that the ads were appearing alongside the BNP’s official presence on the site.
“We have withdrawn our advertising from Facebook and will be working with OMD to ensure there are more controls on the site,” she said.”We want to continue to advertise on Facebook but only when we are comfortable that this is compatible with our other policies.”
Facebook ads pulled in BNP row | Media | MediaGuardian.co.uk
TV advertising should return to the 50s
August 1st, 2007 • Advertising, Television
David Kiley at BusinessWeek is sick of the quality of television commercials, and argues that the broadcasters are becoming ever more desperate in their ploys to make you watch ads. I think I agree: it may be a result of old age, but I seem to remember better TV advertising in the 80s and 90s than I do now. But I shouldn’t worry: David has an idea that could save the day…
One idea for getting high commercial ratings would be to go back to having hosts like Ferguson and Jay Leno read ads and hold the product up. That is an ad that will score very high.
These guys could probably invent cool riffs on the products. Johnny Carson used to do it. Even Edward R. Murrow read ads on his show. Don Imus, before he got canned earlier this year, used to riff on ads for Bigelow Tea, Tassimo coffee makers and North Fork Bank. And they were far better ads than what was coming out of the ad agencies.
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