Brand Republic
 
Edition:
UK |
Asia
 
Digital jobs

Jobs

 

Directory

 

IAB blog

Education, education, education (part three...and final)

by Nick Stringer, Nov 19 2009, 05:40 PM

I’ve banged the drum in previous weeks about the importance of consumer education about behavioural advertising, and the IAB's recent research has highlighted the need for this.

 

Today the IAB has published a guide on behavioural advertising specifically for industry, our first step in helping educate the market about this practice (although you’ll be glad to know that this will be my last blog – for now - talking about education). The guide explains how behavioural advertising works, how it differs to other types of targeted advertising on the internet, its benefits to web publishers and advertisers, consumer attitudes as well as online privacy and industry good practice.

 

The guide – sponsored by technology company Audience Science – hasn’t been written exclusively by the IAB but by the experts themselves, with contributions from the likes of AOL, Guardian, Profero, Post Office, Yahoo!, ValueClick Media and, of course, Audience Science. 

 

It may not make the Amazon bestsellers list (its free after all) but for anyone who wants to know a little more about behavioural advertising, this one’s for you. Enjoy!

 

Follow IAB on Twitter

 

Game Changer

by Jack Wallington, Nov 17 2009, 09:30 AM

Er, did we all just miss something phenomenal? Hold your thoughts on iPhones and Twitter for a second, a number of the biggest leaps in media and technology in 2009 happened this month and it's tied to one thing: gaming. Let's recap for a second...

1. The biggest media launch in the world. EVER!

Last week saw the biggest media launch ever. It wasn’t a film, it wasn’t X Factor 2: Return of Jedward, it was a computer game. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 sold 4.2 million copies in the UK and US in 24 hours, making a whopping $410 million. This is bigger than Titanic, Harry Potter, Marley and Me - you name it, this is bigger. It garnered not one, not two, but three Twitter Trending Topics (it keeps popping back in the Top 10 even now).

2. Massive audience

There are almost 12 million games consoles in the UK from this generation (Wii, XBox 360, PS3) with the ability to connect TVs to the internet in various ways. This is a large chunk of the population and it’s growing fast. My concern is that people that don’t play games don’t appreciate how much time is spent by people that do. Let's not forget the portable/mobile market either, with the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS handheld consoles and of course iPhone apps, the number of gaming devices is double at over 24 million. Interestingly, advertisers are creating very successful branded iPhone game apps too, like Dare's waterslide app for Barclays, now downloaded over 6.7 million times around the world since July.

3. On-demand video has ARRIVED on your TV

Last week the BBC released a much improved free iPlayer channel for the Nintendo Wii that now works like a charm and it's been available on Playstation 3 for some time too. Microsoft's XBox 360 has Sky running on it. Last week Ashley Highfield - MD of Microsoft, former iPlayer impresario and person responsible for MSN's video player - spoke at our Engage 09 event where he made links between the XBox 360 and the future of video content. It doesn't take a genius to suspect that Microsoft may be up to something mega, particularly as it already offers downloadable films on the XBox 360 in the UK (and a truly groundbreaking partnership with NetFlix in the US).

4. The first market to effectively tackle piracy

The games industry has in many ways always been ahead of every other technology industry. Probably because it a) makes so much money b) attracts so many intelligent gaming geeks. Unlike the music industry that has spent over a decade moaning about music flowing freely across the internet or the press which is looking to remonetise its content, the gaming industry created the ultimate solution: games consoles. Last week Microsoft demonstrated this mighty weapon by permanently locking 1 million Xbox 360 consoles that had been modded to play illegally downloaded copies of games. The only way to play games easily is to pay for them. This is actually amazing.

5. Online gaming is social media

PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 have allowed gamers to meet, video chat and play against each other online for years. Games are by far the most advanced social media platform in existence. Now Twitter and Facebook are coming to TV screens via all consoles too. Also exciting is online gaming like Flash games on websites. Last week Electronic Arts (EA) – one of the biggest global game publishers – purchased social gaming website Playfish.com for £170 million. Think online games (or apps) that can be shared in other networks like Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. It’s one of the most successful websites in the world and EA’s purchase is a very smart move. Over 100 million games from Playfish.com alone have been installed in the last 20 months or so; it took Monopoly 45 years to do this. To put it simply, people like playing games, especially with friends and being able to do this in social networks makes online gaming a huge chunk of content and time spent online.

Conclusions

Jack WallingtonFrom all of this I draw three conclusions. Firstly and reassuringly, this is evidence of seamless convergence of all media. Secondly, gaming is a major, growing medium in its own right and advertisers should be having a say in shaping its future otherwise they will miss a huge opportunity forever. Thirdly, it is becoming increasingly important for great content to be created specifically to penetrate a ‘social environment’, and in the right hands the likes of gaming and video are two of marketer’s greatest tools to do this.

I’ll finish with something I picked up from the Guardian's Activate 09 conference I attended earlier in the year. Andy Baio of Waxy.org gave a talk on gaming in marketing and he said that marketing campaigns with "game like qualities succeed." From past experience working on digital campaigns, I have to agree that competitions, challenges and games do increase campaign efficiency because people have to actively engage, think about and can even be given a competitive element to beat. Plus it's fun!

The gaming world is without doubt a huge part of our modern, connected society – do you consider its many guises for your campaigns?

Follow me or the IAB on Twitter

 

Adverts around Computer Games

by Jack Wallington, Nov 09 2009, 10:07 AM

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear, I’m a technology addict. I’ve had a Wii and Xbox 360 for a couple of years now, and last week I was given a Playstation 3 for my birthday. I’m not the only person that loves games, millions of people spend hours every week playing them. Hours that are therefore taken away from online, watching TV, reading magazines, cinema etc etc. Traditionally these platforms haven’t been heavily used as an advertising platform but that has changed. While playing the Playstation 3, I came across a couple of interesting uses of computer games for advertising.

First was in the game WipEout HD which has short dynamic video adverts that play during the loading screens (dodgy, blurred photo below). I know this is nothing new and many other games do this, but this was the first time I’d seen them. I was particularly struck at how engaged I was during this 10 sec loading screen ad – it’s not like I can leave to make a cup of tea in that time, I have to sit and watch. Shame the only ad I’ve seen so far has been for the DVD of “Rocky Balboa”. Still…

WipEout HD adverts

The second thing I found interesting, albeit utterly flawed, was the recently released game Uncharted 2’s use of Twitter. In the game you can sync up your Twitter account so that it automatically updates your feed every time you make certain achievements. One of the aims, I guess, being to publicise the game’s release to all of your Twitter followers. While it was flexible, it is ultimately pointless and I’ll switch if off because it removes all personality from updates (plus, horror of horrors, it blocked me from my Twitter account).



There are lots of ways to use games for advertising and consoles have been online for years now. The potential however comes from advancements in integrating the gaming world with the online world. While the Uncharted 2 Twitter example is far from perfect, it’s a nice step toward a single ‘joined-up’ approach to platforms which developers can only improve on and marketers use to reach this hard to reach audience.

Follow the IAB on Twitter

 

Effects of social media on search

by Jack Wallington, Nov 04 2009, 11:10 PM

The relationship between search and social media is the subject I get asked the most about by advertisers and agencies at the moment. It’s a hugely complex area because both search and social media mean so many different things and work together in so many different ways.

To make matters worse, the last 18 months have seen radical developments in both. However, the two have an undeniably positive effect on each other and I believe that the secret to the most effective, integrated online campaigns lies at the heart of this relationship.

The IAB will be looking into this in far more detail in the future, but right now I wanted to share my own experience below and to gather some of yours. If you feel I’ve missed something, please email me or leave a comment below so that I can adapt it.

What is search and social media?

For the purpose of this article I have made three key assumptions:
  1. Search = a website where the primary function is to search content including video, image, blog articles etc (e.g. Bing, Google, Yahoo!)
  2. Social media = a website or tool that allows for user interaction and content creation, whether that's a blog, forum, picture upload site, social network etc (e.g. blogs, forums, review sites, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube)
  3. Social search = the search function on a social media website, e.g. Twitter search, Facebook search, Digg search.
    (NB: Digg, Technorati etc can be classified as search engines, but because their content is primarily user generated or user rated, for the purpose of this article, they are classified as social media)

Table showing the effects of social media on search

This probably makes things seem a lot more complicated and perhaps a little too general, but I wanted to document everything in one place.

search and social media

Explanation of the effects

  1. Direct improvement on own website search rank (via links)
    Major social bookmarking sites and networks include ‘nofollow’ script which currently reduces the effect a link has to different degrees across each search engine. However, search engines still follow and record these links and of course there are many other benefits of receiving links from the sites, e.g. gaining traffic and raising visibility of an article to help bloggers pick it up. That said, blog articles tend not to have 'nofollow', so receiving a link within an actual blog article is currently the most effective direct use of social media for improving your own website's rank. The reason a blog, forum or review section on your own site can help is because of a technique known as 'pagerank sculpting' that allows you to raise the importance of your own pages - but this is an advanced and perhaps changing technique so I won't elaborate here! :)

  2. Significantly improves reach in search
    While you can optimise your search campaign to target lots of relevant key terms, it’s not always possible to cover the thousands of key terms that attract smaller - but once combined equally important - amounts of traffic. This is known as the ‘long tail’ and where the power of Forums and Reviews created by users come into their own. Users can create thousands of new articles, allowing you to reach the thousands of search terms that may only attract one or two people each but that you'd otherwise have missed.

  3. Improves brand visibility in search
    Pages of content that you run in social networks like Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are all part of your own web presence, they also tend to rank highly in search engines. Use this to your advantage to help control the top 10 search results for your key terms.

  4. Includes visuals or special placement to help visibility in search
    Search engines now show more than just links and text results, they also show images, videos, stars for review scores and even author details. Some social media can help you make the most of these, e.g. it’s easier to include a video in Google’s results if it’s on a well optimised YouTube page, and once integrated, Twitter results may be separated out in a special part of the page in the same way that News and Blog articles are.

  5. Improves control of brand reputation in search
    Linked to 2., by extending your web presence in search and social media using social media tools, it also means you have more control over your own reputation. This doesn’t mean you can control what people say about you online, it means you can attract comments to your own properties rather than on some random ‘hate’ forum, then you can learn from it and do something about it!

  6. Drives significant traffic to your site without search
    It’s not all about search of course, social media can drive traffic to your website directly via links.

  7. Extends brand presence into ‘social search’
    By conducting the specified social media activities highlighted with green in the table above, you can ensure your brand will appear in various social network searches, e.g. Twitter, Facebook etc.

  8. Indirectly increase searches for brand or brand phrases
    You don’t always need a link, sometimes an interesting article or advert can spark a consumer to search for your brand, product or service in a search engine.This however is harder to track and measure in social media.

Conclusions… for now

This article is a whistle-stop tour of search and social media, trying to squeeze a very big subject into very few words. I’ve left a lot out here but I hope this has helped you think about the relationship between these two important marketing channels.

For me, the major breakthrough for advertisers will be the continued realisation that your web presence no longer means just your website. In fact, it’s interesting that actually, only links from other people’s blog articles will offer a significant direct improvement to your own website’s search ranking when talking about social media, while everything else is indirect word of mouth and branding.

However – and it’s a big ‘HOWEVER’ - by using social media in its many different forms, you can significantly increase the overall search ranking and visibility of your brand’s web presence in search engines in ways that no other media can.

Follow the IAB on Twitter

 

Education, education, education (part two)

by Nick Stringer, Oct 28 2009, 11:45 AM

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of informing and educating consumers about the internet. This followed a revamp of the IAB’s website – www.youronlinechoices.co.uk – aimed at helping internet users understand online behavioural advertising, how it works and how to switch it off if they want to. Today the IAB, in partnership with business law firm Olswang, has published new research confirming that consumers need (and want) more information and education about online privacy and the practice of behavioural advertising.

The research confirms that consumers today are far more trusting of the internet as a medium, compared with more than five years ago. People – particularly young people – are more comfortable with sharing their personal information with shopping websites, banks and social networking sites. But there’s no room for complacency: consumers may be more acclimatised to the internet and the role it now plays in our everyday lives but they also want to have it on their owns terms and wish to know more about new digital marketing techniques, such as behavioural advertising.

 

72% of internet users are – unsurprisingly – unaware about behavioural advertising, how it works and what information is collected and used. However, the research results are particularly enlightening when consumers are provided with the relevant information. For example:

• 81% of internet users do not know the level of control they actually have over behavioural advertising, such as their right  to switch it off.
• 74% of internet users are actually more comfortable with behavioural advertising when they are provided with information about what data is collected and used and how it can be controlled.

Behavioural advertising remains a relatively new online practice. As the Government’s Digital Britain report acknowledged it is an important business model to help web publishers convert “creativity into value”. Industry needs to find a balance between making advertising more measurable and effective whilst protecting consumer privacy. It’s a balance that the IAB, its members and the rest of the advertising industry is working to get right and education – as this research very clearly shows – needs to be at the heart of it.

Follow the IAB on Twitter.

 

Digital creativity dead?

by Jack Wallington, Oct 27 2009, 10:29 AM

Of course it’s not, but the digital creative industry can be as quiet as a corpse sometimes. This year I’ve seen absolutely blinding digital creativity in web design, interactive rich media, even in the copy used for search ads. Actual creative genius resides in digital – but sometimes, digital creatives can be so polite amidst the marketing rabble!

The IAB has Creative Showcase, which highlights the best of the best and there’s Creative Review, which is ace. Plus I’m sure creative agencies highlight their best creative to clients and internally, but if we’re to continue proving this medium I honestly believe digital creatives need to become collective uber show-offs of the highest order. And there doesn’t always need to be an award at the end of it.

Print, outdoor and TV ads sometimes end up in art galleries. Why not digital? Some digital creativity is beautiful! A stunning, interactive work of art. There are barely any digital creative blogs/sites either, yet campaigns are going live daily. Digital’s very nature makes it mass broadcast but on a personal level – so while it’s hitting the mark with its target consumers, it needs that extra push in the marketing industry to get it noticed. Here’s my push of a simple, but beautiful and clearly messaged pre-roll ad for the RAF edited specifically for online and run across WebTVEnterprise’s network. Click on the image to watch it:



Another ad I’ve seen recently that I think is brilliant is for the band Alphabeat’s new single, created by Silence Media. What I love about it is the way it grabs attention through a simple, yet inventive piece of video made specifically for online. Also, the usability is second-to-none with an expandable panel that waits 3 seconds to make sure the user really wants to see it. Please don't try to click the links within the ad because it's been taken from another site and they won't work in this example.



The IAB always recommends that online creative should be planned right at the very beginning and not pushed to one side in favour of other mediums. This has clearly been the case for this campaign, as Paul Barnard of Silence Media explains:

“The idea for the ad was discussed and planned between ourselves and the client when the campaign was first commissioned. Once the creative strategy was agreed on, the band filmed the footage. The campaign went live two weeks before the single release with the main focus being the gay market. On the week of release we broadened the campaign out to focus on a 13-34 female audience. The ad featured across key music sites and blogs along with gay, celeb and gossip sites.”

You can view more of Silence Media’s ads in their gallery and if you’ve seen some other particularly good creative, please send it to me!

 

iPhone – so should you

by Stuart Aitken, Oct 20 2009, 05:02 PM

In Saturday’s Guardian, Alan Rusbridger listed the 10 ways in which his life has changed since the last century. It was no great surprise that Google took the top spot. Neither was it a massive surprise that Wikipedia came second – although there is evidence to suggest that this online super power is on the wane. Twitter coming in third place raised a few more eyebrows while Rusbridger was forced to admit that putting Comment Is Free in fourth position was “a plug for the home team”. Perhaps the biggest surprise in the list though was the iPhone coming in a paltry 6th position.

 

“Can you remember the moment when you first held one?” asked Rusbridger. “The involuntary gasp as you saw what it could do?” While he acknowledges that as a result of the iPhone, “the only limit to what a mobile phone could become is human imagination itself”, it’s something of a surprise that the editor of The Guardian shouldn’t rate the technology higher, given its potential for growing his brand’s digital audience.

 

As well as offering a serious boost to Apple’s bottom line, the iPhone has revolutionised the way we consume media. IAB research shows that 40 per cent of iPhone users already use the internet on their phones more than on a PC, helping to fuel a spectacular surge in mobile internet usage. What’s more, over one billion iPhone apps have been downloaded worldwide with the average UK user downloading 37 each. According to Comscore, 11.3 million people in the UK use the mobile internet per month, representing a rise of 28 per cent year on year, while some 597,112 people in the UK use applications per month, a 1,724 per cent rise year on year.

 

This has helped to feed improvements across the board in the mobile market with rapid improvements to handsets and high speed networks, affordable data plans and mass consumer browsing now the norm. As Tim Hussain, head of mobile and video advertising at BSkyB, said at the IAB mobile forum last month, "the world did change with the iPhone".

 

On Monday, Rusbridger’s paper wrote: “Have you noticed how it’s impossible to read a newspaper these days without coming across a story about an iPhone? It’s as if the very word confers instant coolness and connectedness”. The Guardian concluded that the word “iPhone” had occurred “a whopping” 143 times in national newspapers over the last week. Two things are interesting about this. Firstly, 143 mentions of the word “iPhone” doesn’t actually sound like a lot, and secondly, “coolness” is not the most important reason for talking about the iPhone.

 

We at the IAB believe that the iPhone – and other smart phones like it – go beyond cool and instead open up hugely useful services for people looking to consume media on the move.  It’s as a result of these changes that we’ve decided to revamp our mobile offering in partnership with Incentivated. Our new mobile site is now up and running – why not check it out.

 

Follow the IAB on Twitter

Filed under: , ,

1 comment(s)

 

By removing anonymity social media has found its voice

by Jack Wallington, Oct 19 2009, 11:56 AM

Online communities and sites with user generated content (UGC) have been an obsession of mine since the late 90’s ever since I discovered chat rooms, instant messenger and forums. My single greatest passion is being involved in and running online communities for people to chat and share ideas and information. UGC has since been morphed by marketers into ‘social media’, which, when you look beyond the jargon, is just a more advanced platform for UGC with one significant difference: the removal of anonymity behind usernames. In my youth mine was the wildly inappropriate “FatXena”.

FatXena was a trigger happy opinionated so and so, whereas Jack Wallington was far tamer in reality. This created a split in personality between my online and offline life. I wasn’t alone either, it was always well documented how vocal people felt they could be behind a username online even when the person tapping away was a timid little mouse.

Thanks to social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and even UGC like BBC’s Have Your Say, this e-bipolar disorder is gradually being wiped out, although it still exists on forums which make up the vast majority of social media. I have many theories about the effects this is having, but for advertisers my point here is that removing anonymity means users are a more accurate portrayal of their genuine personality. One thing I’ve observed in my own group of friends is that the most social offline are also the most social online – in the past, during FatXena’s time, it was generally the absolute opposite.

There’s always been much talk among online community managers about finding the ‘opinion formers’ when in the past, the ones they found online were probably not the kind of people to drive opinion offline. Therefore, the real reason for marketers to be excited about ‘social media’ is not only because it is mainstream, but because there is a very real crossover in personalities. I’ll leave it up to you to decide what this means for your business, but to me, it’s one of the most exciting developments of our era.

Follow the IAB on Twitter

 

No one's an expert

by Jack Wallington, Oct 14 2009, 02:48 PM

Other advertising platforms like outdoor, print and radio have been around for decades and significant changes to each medium have been few and far between, allowing people ample time to learn their intricacies and perfect their skills. The problem with the internet is that it’s only been around for two decades, mainstream for far less and everything keeps changing. How can people possibly keep up?

I've met hundreds of marketers from across the industry in my daily work here at the IAB and while many are expert specialists and we have lots of excellent digital leaders, no one is an expert in everything because it is impossible to be. This is a huge challenge because quite often people will need to work with technology or a technique from an area they’ve never used before. It befuddles them, delays them, and before they know it everything’s moved on.

Bill Gates once said that the leaders of the future will be those that can adapt to change the fastest, which I can’t disagree with at the moment given the current speed of technological change. But do we really want a world built on change experts? Sometimes the best results come from time and experience learning something’s intricacies.

As I’ve mentioned, internet advertising does have strong expertise in silos like display, search and affiliate. Here the technology evolves and improves and the specialists can keep up with this if it’s their primary focus. Bringing it all together and delivering a fully integrated, expert marketing solution is the difficulty.

“Lack of communication” is the phrase I hear the most in digital, so communicating more, sharing knowledge and ideas is obviously key – but does anyone really do it? And if they do, is it enough? Well, I obviously see knowledge sharing on a daily basis in meetings and events. However, I think we as a marketing industry can and must share a lot more information. While they exist, asking for simple things like great creative and successful case studies can be like drawing blood from a stone. Too much of internet advertising is perceived to be built on ‘knowledge’ and people are too protective of it.

Sharing is a vital step for internet advertising to continue to mature, but fundamentally I believe the biggest fault lies with technology providers and software engineers: they make things far too complicated. Even the most user friendly technology isn’t user friendly enough if you look at the big picture. No, you will never need a single person to login to your display ad network interface, search interface, enewsletter admin, booking systems, planning systems, reports etc etc. It makes sense to have specific teams, but we do need people that understand to a significant degree what they all do to allow them to become the ‘internet advertising overlords’ we need.

This has turned into a two sided rant, so I’ll bring it to a close with this:

Share more + make things easier = more experts

It seems like a no brainer, but who’s honestly doing both?

Follow the IAB on Twitter

 

Celebrity

by Jack Wallington, Oct 09 2009, 01:51 PM

A while ago I questioned where all of the celebrities were in online advertising, the question still stands – where are they? Using celebrities is a number one tool in your marketing tool box for brand endorsement and attracting attention. If print, outdoor, radio and TV gets Cheryl Cole, why can’t we in display ads? Over to you L’Oreal.

 

 

A race online for 2012

by Stuart Aitken, Oct 07 2009, 04:18 PM

The government’s Digital Inclusion Champion, Martha Lane Fox, made a strong case about the importance of inclusion at yesterday’s Digital Engagement conference.

 

Explaining that she was drawn to her job (which carries with it what she called “an insane title”) because it offered an “irresistible challenge”, Lane Fox argued that there are two main reasons why we should care about the large portion of society who are socially and economically excluded from the digital world.

 

Topping the list for Lane Fox was social cohesion. “I believe in an equal society”, stated Lane Fox. As a result the Lastminute.com founder is keen to use digital technology in an effort to avoid creating an excluded “needy sub class”.

 

As a case study, she pointed to the example of Knowle West Media Centre, a project that is empowering a generation through digital media (for those of you unfamiliar with Knowle West, it’s where Tricky was brought up – this video gives a good idea of what it’s like).

 

 

Such projects, argued Lane Fox, “increase education, employment opportunities and give people a voice.”

 

However, social factors are not the only issues at play for Lane Fox. The “brutal economic reasons” are equally crucial.

 

Outlining some headline figures from PwC research due out next week, Lane Fox argued that if all children were given online skills and access to online tools, this would result in a £25bn saving to the UK through increased employment. What’s more, if five per cent of those currently unemployed got online and got a job that would result in a saving of £675 million. Lane Fox then pointed out that it cost £44,000 per person to deal with the “bottom 20%” of the UK’s socio-demographic make up and argued that getting this group online, “I’m sure would cut that cost”.

 

This may sound like wishful thinking on the part of Lane Fox, but with the meat and veg of the research due out next week, we shall have to wait and see how much evidence there is for her arguments.

 

Lane Fox concluded her speech by outlining her concept for “a race online for 2012.” As part of her vision she aims to halve the number of people who don’t have online access by 2012. “It would be a disaster to allow a digital sub class to develop”, argued Lane Fox. It’s a bold plan, but Lane Fox believes it will help to make Britain a “digital leader”. Surely this can only be a good thing.

 

Follow the IAB on Twitter

 

Education, education, education (part one)

by Nick Stringer, Oct 07 2009, 12:01 PM

It's official: us Brits love shopping online. According to research by price comparison service, Uswitch, 93% of the UK population now shop on the internet (I think that’s 93% of the 2,500 adults they surveyed!). And, as consumers continue to ‘connect’ so advertisers increasingly look to the internet as a platform to get their messages across and sell their wares. The two are mutually beneficial. Some of us just can’t get enough of all this (it’s empowering and addictive). For others the tide of change is uncomfortable and some need help getting connected in the first place (and there’s no one better than digital entrepreneur and Government Digital Inclusion Champion, Martha Lane Fox, to make this happen).

 

So, it’s important to inform and educate people about the internet. This is not a new message: government, Ofcom and others, including industry, have spearheaded campaigns to help people – particularly parents and children - better understand online and its significant benefits but also the challenges it throws up in our everyday lives. Understanding how to keep safe and secure is lesson number one and many schools build this into their curricula activities as they integrate the use of the internet into children’s learning.

 

This week the IAB has revamped its consumer website dedicated to explaining behavioural advertising: www.youronlinechoices.co.uk. We launched this site when we published our Good Practice Principles earlier this year to govern the practice. One of the three key commitments is education and many of the businesses involved continually go to great lengths to provide consumers with helpful information. Our website builds on these: providing easy-to-understand information on behavioural advertising, how it works and the role it plays in helping make online content, services and applications available at little or no cost. This is backed up by the other commitments: transparency about what information is collected and used to deliver more relevant advertising as well as the opportunity to opt out or switch it off. So the new website includes a centralised page for consumers to visit to opt out of behavioural advertising by the businesses that are complying with the IAB’s Good Practice Principles. Our future aim is to make this even more user friendly.

 

 

The launch of the website marks the point that those businesses that have signed up to the Good Practice Principles and have live commercial UK operations are complying with the commitments. To complement this, each of these businesses’ compliance will be independently verified by auditor ABCe to provide greater assurance in this practice. This is key but its only by explaining clearly what this is all about and how it all works that we can really expect consumers – heavy or light internet users – to accept and understand why we’re taking this approach.

  

Follow the IAB on Twitter.

 

 

5 Killer Online Video Stats

by Jack Wallington, Oct 05 2009, 08:40 AM

Massive, HD video is now a reality


Over the last two years I’ve been lucky to head up the IAB Video Council and while there’s always been a buzz around online video it’s never been greater than now. There may be some teething problems to overcome in this new channel - such as increasing research - but every single senior marketer I’ve spoken to about it (and there have been hundreds) see its huge potential and want to use it. I predict - and I checked that it’s therefore ok to say that the IAB is predicting - that 2010 will be the year that online video makes its mark on the advertising world. Here are five stats to help convince you:

  1. 82% of people in the US watched an average of 9.7 hours of online video in August 2009 with consumption in the UK equally high - both markets growing for the past few years now (ComScore).

  2. People are more accepting of online video ads than many other forms of advertising because they are seen as more relevant and therefore less intrusive. 70% of people in a survey of 5,000 Europeans found it acceptable for a video ad to be shown before an online video (Tremor Media).

  3. Online video advertising spend for pre/mid/post-roll has grown in the UK to almost £11.7 million for the first half of 2009, close to 200% growth in 12 months (PwC/IAB AdSpend Study, members only).



  4. 97% of UK media buyers in a survey of over 100 expect this growth to continue over the next 12 months too, with over half (54%) of the media buyers expecting this growth to be over 50% (Web TV Enterprises).

  5. 92% of broadband users have connections of 2MB or far higher, which is almost every internet user in the UK, making video bigger and better quality, the same with your adverts (BMRB Internet Monitor).
IAB members can share more online video stats and information by joining our online video advertising community.

 

Online is now number one in the UK

by NICKI LYNAS, Sep 30 2009, 11:47 AM

Online commands respect : Another IAB Ad Spend report, another milestone for online – this time the big one

 

We released the IAB Ad Spend results today, with the record breaking news that not only has Ad Spend grown again – as it has every half year since we launched the survey in 1998 – but we have finally done what media pundits have been guessing and betting on for years.  That is we are now the largest medium in the UK, with 23.5% share of all media spend now being spent on online display, classifieds and search. We are larger than TV not by a fraction, but by £113.6 million. We are also now larger than press display by £369 million.

 

We know that this is happening in a strange market however, with rumours that TV prices are back to 1980s levels (so it’s not just fashion that’s harking back to the good old days of Dynasty-style shoulder pads and studs, but TV prices too) and constant press stories decrying the fall of print circulations, all too often ignoring some of the success stories bucking the trend in both of these media.  But the important thing for us here at the IAB, and the reason why we are very proud of our industry, is the proof that when the going gets tough, online can more than hold its own against other media. Budgets are being cut and prices are falling, but online is maintaining and growing its importance in the media budget.

 

Just to put the sceptics point of view across, we do present the data splitting press display and classified, so press combined is still the largest media. And we do include search in our figures, which some commentators are quick to point out is maybe not fair when comparing this to display media in particular. But the rise of search agencies with large blue chip clients spending their large blue chip client marketing budgets shows that this is not just an online directory service, it is a core part of the total media and brand marketing mix, not just the online bit. And even though online display did fall a bit on this time last year, though only by 5.2%, it remains the most successful display media in growth terms, with all other display media falling dramatically in this recession, with only cinema at 7.8% decline also getting away with single figures declining growth rates.

 

At £317 million for the half year to June 2009, online display is showing its strength and we expect it to ride out the rest of the recession well against other display formats. This is an exciting time to be selling online display, as new methods of targeting, behavioural advertising and reach measurements are becoming mainstream and the introduction of UKOM, the online industry’s answer to calls for one source of planning data, is being launched to build further confidence and growth in online display.

 

Classifieds are growing but are having a mixed time of it, with recruitment classifieds falling from this time last year, but growing from the last six months of 2008. All other classifieds are performing very well online showing growth from the same period last year, and in total classifieds makes up 22% of the online marketing mix, showing the effectiveness of and belief in this medium.

 

Search is by no means the be all and end all of online, though it has been a medium worth over £1 billion every six months for the last year. And it shows no signs of declining from this. As new offerings such as Bing bring innovation and choice to the market, and new product launches from Google such as FastFlip means this medium keeps being relevant and effective for advertisers.

 

We at the IAB are very excited for the next six months to see where ad spend will end up for the whole of 2009, even if sadly I won’t be here to announce it as I am leaving to start my own business. However I am very happy that my last week at the IAB sees the announcement of the big news that, perhaps earlier than most of us expected, online is now number 1 in the UK.  And I was there at the heart of the industry when it happened.

 

Follow the IAB on Twitter

 

 

The one where M&S advertise me clothes they already know I’m interested in

by NICKI LYNAS, Sep 10 2009, 12:37 PM

I’m getting used to behavioural advertising. It makes me amused when I’ve read an article about a Maserati to then be served an ad for one on another website (note to advertisers – interest does not equal income). But at the weekend something new happened. I was browsing the M&S website, looked at a couple of items and then put them in my shopping basket, then realised that payday was not for ages so shut down the website and carried on surfing the net when twenty minutes later on the news of the world site (I’m fascinated by Katie & Peter, please forgive me my bad taste) I was served an ad for M&S that showcased exactly the two pieces of clothing I had been looking at on their site. Clever, and kind of cool when you think about it. For a demo of how this works visit http://www.struq.com/demo/.

This kind of advertising is yet another example of how technology is allowing advertisers to reach interested consumers online. Behavioural advertising is driving value in our industry and is helping advertisers to understand how to get more bang for their budget out of what can sometimes be a confusing market in terms of planning for audience reach online. It is helping advertisers buy target audiences for brand awareness campaigns, and not just being used for direct response as was traditionally the case. It is not surprising that advertisers are taking advantage of the technology on offer to buy audiences that through behavioural advertising technology they know are already interested in their products and have visited your website. It is not difficult to see the attraction in buying an audience that though you don’t know who they are, you know that they like reading about cars, or holidays, and therefore that might make them more interested in what you are selling than if you knew absolutely nothing about what they liked. Behavioural advertising has always been popular among direct response advertisers, but more sophisticated tools and alliances online with retailers and ad serving companies will help to drive the use of targeted ad buys for branded advertisers, not just those looking for clicks and acquisitions.

There are also a host of new formats out there that are giving advertisers even more choice for their media budgets. Innovations in formats are driving renewed interest and are building the internet’s reputation as a serious branding medium, such as the widespread use of rich media, pre and post roll, media player skins and the exciting new billboard format (written about previously on the IAB blog
).

This innovation is happening alongside the development of UKOM, the online industry’s answer to calls for a common planning tool, which will give even more information to advertisers and media planners on online audiences and how best to reach them. All of this adds up to a fantastic year for online, with strong foundations being laid for digital media when we come out of the recession.

Follow the IAB on Twitter

 

1 2 3 4 5  next

About this blog

IAB blog

Five of the key players at the Internet Advertising Bureau keep us abreast of the big issues and developments in online advertising
 

CONTRIBUTORS

Kieron Matthews

Blogging for:

IAB blog

Member since: 03 Jun 2008

Last login: 04 Aug 2009

Total Posts: 12

AMY KEAN

Blogging for:

IAB blog

Member since: 11 Jun 2008

Last login: 19 Nov 2009

Total Posts: 19

Jack Wallington

Blogging for:

IAB blog

Member since: 03 Jun 2008

Last login: 20 Nov 2009

Total Posts: 76

Nick Stringer

Blogging for:

IAB blog

Member since: 13 Oct 2008

Last login: 19 Nov 2009

Total Posts: 4

Jonathan Mew

Blogging for:

IAB blog

Member since: 06 Nov 2008

Last login: 31 Jul 2009

Total Posts: 5

Stuart Aitken

Blogging for:

IAB blog

Member since: 07 Nov 2008

Last login: 19 Nov 2009

Total Posts: 13

julia smith

Blogging for:

IAB blog

Member since: 20 Apr 2009

Last login: 19 Nov 2009

Total Posts: 2

NICKI LYNAS

Blogging for:

IAB blog

Member since: 11 Jun 2008

Last login: 30 Sep 2009

Total Posts: 15

 
 
 
 

Tags

 

Syndication