Display Advertising

According to Mashable Facebook are set to introduce a new form of interactive marketing which takes into account the number of a user’s friends who ‘like’ a brand and then expands that ads screen real estate in relation. Simply speaking the more of your friends who like the brand the larger that ad will be. The latest development from Facebook is rumoured to be launched during advertising week in New York but we wanted to give you a heads up and highlight some of the areas we feel are likely to influence brands.

Anything that utilises social recommendations will improve an Ads likelihood to engage with the user. A similar product, Sponsored Stories has been a great way for us to engage users and bring them to a branded Facebook destination. This seems like an opportunity to take this to the next level. Google have rolled out the ability to +1 Ads served on the GDN and DoubleClick network in an attempt to integrate social recommendations into display ad serving and targeting.

Alongside this announcement Facebook has announced a new page metric – “people talking about“. “Liking” on its own requires a significant commitment from a user and does not reflect softer social brand recommendations. It is black and white.. Social groups “talking about a brand” – taking into account liking, posting links on Walls, commenting etc – would provide additional social recommendation insights that advertisers could use in future Ad Formats.

We look forward to more information on this latest development from Facebook  and will be sure to keep a close eye on the developments from advertising week. More details to come soon!

According to Brand Republic Google is rolling out a performance bundle for its display network, including four free measurement tools to help advertisers to judge the effectiveness of display advertising campaigns.

First off I think that this is a very smart move by Google, they’re trying to bring greater visibility to display media campaigns run across the Google Display Network (GDN).

This is definitely a USP as to why more display media budget should be run across the GDN versus the rest of the display ecosystem.

Their aim is to bring a greater level of accountability to display media, something that you do not get from buying with Ad Networks and Exchanges outside of the Google Display Network.

This underlines Google’s on-going commitment to being a major powerhouse in display (alongside buying Yield Optimisation tool AdMeld yesterday, Invite media and DoubleClick a few years back).

However I do not necessarily feel that this approach is appealing to the more sophisticated display planner/buyers, it feels as if Google are targeting the more occasional buyers of display media or search agencies that do not specialise in display.

Google clearly want the wider display community to take them more seriously but until they start joining up all of their different product offerings into one easy to use and accessible suite we will not know
how good their offering is against the rest of the very fragmented eco-system.

Time will tell but they are certainly placing themselves in a very strong position regarding display as the future of digital advertising. What do you think?

Let’s get something straight from the off, my role at iCrossing is Senior Display Planner/Buyer. My sole focus is to plan, buy, manage and deliver display media campaigns for iCrossing’s clients, I am biased and I am not ashamed to admit it.

I have 6 years’ worth of experience managing, implementing, strategising and innovating in display, and never in its fledgling history has there been as much scrutiny aimed at deconstructing the value of the medium.

Yet, it is odd that now is the time of scrutiny – display ad spend grew 20% between 2009 and 2010 (IAB UK 28^th March), the industry is abuzz with talk of demand side platforms, real time bidding, ad exchanges, yield optimisers, retargeting and the like so why criticise a channel that has now found a way to drive value for its advertisers?

Why is display media under such scrutiny?
We now live in an age of austerity, every penny of marketing money spent must be accountable, this is where agencies such as iCrossing have stolen a march on the traditional media buying agencies. iCrossing live and breathe the results they drive for their clients and at the same time marketers want more return from their marketing budgets – a perfect fit!

The rise of PPC & SEO and the continued growth of affiliate marketing has seen the prominence of the “Last Click Wins” (LCW) model being adopted by marketers the world over. This has meant that Display has taken a back seat to these channels, as well as Mobile.  Display fell to the bottom of the pile because marketers are prioritising LCW channels and more innovative emerging platforms over the “old lady” of digital marketing.

Display’s role has always been push (and will always remain in part) whilst PPC, SEO & affiliates are pull. Marketers are scrutinising Display because it rarely delivers last click conversions, however display has never been about LCW, it’s always been about brand. With recent technology innovations in the market, display is now combining brand with direct – another perfect combination! Read more…

The February 2011 edition of Revolution covered an article looking at online brand building activity through search at the expense of display according to a recent survey carried out by communications firm Rocket.

Natural search ranked top  with 32% of marketers citing it as the most effective marketing channel for online brand building. As highlighted by iCrossing’s CEO, Paul Doleman, this higher figure is no surprise as SEO offers a trusted source in online brand building with consumers trusting the natural search rankings more for research purposes than paid alternatives. Not only is this content derived from the brand but we must also consider user generated content, reviews and network contacts as key branding aspects highlighted through natural search.

Coming in second at 28%, paid search. Seen as a key response tool, paid search is increasingly being used in creative ways to compliment brand building activities – check out Ann Summers. Likewise, online PR and email marketing sitting in the middle spots at 22%, can drive brand through targeted campaigns to specific demographics with targetted messaging. What is more surprising is the position of display and social coming in at the bottom of the pack.

Much of the focus at the moment on social, everyone’s talking about it. As outlined by Rocket’s MD, Pete Hendricks, ‘social media pretty much matches search engines in terms if traffic nowadays [...] but some brands don’t see social media as such an effective medium for brand building as there is much less control.’ the age old question of ‘what is the ROI’ maybe a concern for some but surely, in branding terms, social media done well is invaluable which makes it’s low position surprising. Instant consumer reviews, interactions and improved customer service can be the instant gains from social but dedicated resources and management are required to benefit from such rewards. Read more…

As mentioned by my colleague, Jake Hawkins, Google recently tested a significant new layout for their search results. This new system provided a preview of the target page when the searcher hovered over the link, with the relevant section of the preview highlighted in orange.

Were this interface to be adopted by Google, what are the key things that we should be considering for our current search strategy?

1.    Well targeted creative
Google preview brings more choice to the user faster than before, giving a website with well-targeted content and design more chance to be clicked on. A website in position 4 is going to be clicked on much more than 1, 2 or 3 if the user has hovered over those sites and hasn’t liked what they’ve seen. This wouldn’t work with Google’s current set-up, because at the moment the user has to physically click through and visit the website to get a view of it. Read more…

I was fortunate enough to see the latest Google test of previewing website pages within the browser this morning.

Initial analysis of the results highlights some pretty major issues with Flash, splash pages and landing pages designed for snapping up traffic (low on content, high on optimisation).

Layout:

Hovering your mouse over the listings will display a blue box – this means you are able to view previews of web pages! Sweet! Clicking on the little magnifying glass will bring up the preview page to the right side of the screen, and yes this does cover up some or all of the paid ads depending on how big the preview is. What does this mean for paid search? Read more…

In October 2009, Guardian News and Media launched its online Fashion Store, allowing users to browse from over 300 retailers and once again proving its ability and willingness to evolve. With this have they hit upon a business model which works for advertisers, publishers and users alike?

Cutting out the middle-man

With publishers increasingly looking to advertising and sponsorship deals to replace lost revenue from dwindling newspaper sales, the Guardian has effectively cut out the middle-man to provide a useful service for its readers. Given the choice I, personally, would much rather a dedicated area within which I can browse a number of brands and ‘shop the look’ championed in this week’s style section, than sidebars full of promotion boxes for brands I may have no interest in.

Indeed, online retail analysis has suggested that people shop for fashion online in a different way to how they might shop for other products. Most clothes shoppers know what stores and labels stock what they’re looking for. So, rather than searching for a particular item, they would look for their favourite clothing brands and then search for the item within the brand’s site. As the Guardian Fashion Store offers the choice to search by brand, it fits with this shopping model much more snugly than side-bar advertising could.

Read more…

In what some say is a reaction to an industry that refused to self-regulate, the EU has jumped into the problem of data privacy and cookies, and voted to pass a ruling that requires a user’s ‘explicit consent’ before they receive a cookie. There appears to be some exceptions to this ruling, including cookies used for logging in to sites and for shopping carts, but mostly, permission will have to be sought.

This will have significant impact on all types of digital marketing, including display, affiliate marketing, email, analytics and search; how much impact will depend on each member state’s interpretation of the ruling when they implement the law, something that has to be complete by April 26th 2011. We must not take this as a soft threat – the EU has taken action before in relation to Phorm, the ever controversial ad network that worked on deep packet inspection – and never got off the ground in the UK.

Behavioural Targeting techniques like Phorm are probably the cause of the fuss – thanks to the media exchanges we are going through a mini revolution in display media where we can target consumers more accurately than ever before – but how much is too much? Clearly the EU felt that Phorm had crossed the line and are now redrawing the battle plans to say that ALL Behavioural Targeting is too far without a user’s consent.

I wrote about this on my personal blog as the news broke in the US.  Read more thoughts on the new EU law, the implications for the USA and how this may get implemented.

You may or may not have seen the recent coverage of our display and creative teams being appointed by one of our existing search clients, the Microsoft owned Multimap, to promote their specialist online mapping service. In a nutshell, this is what it’s about…

The new campaign will see Multimap launch a series of tailored creative executions that highlight specific use cases for target audience groups identified by research. Specialised ad-creative focused on promoting Multimap’s user functionality will be targeted at mums, business users, students and outdoor activity enthusiasts.

The campaign has been based around the insights gained through a social media audit. For example we found one common use of the service was to explore where an individuals could find routes for outdoor activites such as mountain biking. The creative has been targeted towards such groups.

…The story has been covered throughout the industry press, and although we don’t like to blow our own trumpets on this platform too much we thought we wouldn’t be doing the campaign justice without some examples of the great creative concepts in action.

So here it is… Read more…

BT recently announced that they would be trialling the Phorm ad network on their ISP backend, and join the ranks of Virgin Media and ‘Talk Talk’ from Carphone Warehouse.

Put simply, Phorm is an ad network that works by recording the pages that ISP customers visit and then serving ads that are more relevant to that user. They use a sophisticated system of unique code numbers as opposed to identifiable consumer data, and will categorise the sites visited in pre-determined buckets.

But there has been consumer backlash, most recently highlighted in a New Media Age survey. It states that 65% of UK adults would leave their ISP if it adopted ISP-based behavioural targeting, and 81% wanted the ability to opt-out.

But I think consumers have got this wrong.

Read more…