Search results matching tag 'IAB'

A is for Advergame; B is for Banner...

2175094 — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:30:00 GMT

Children today are growing up in a digital society. They will never know what it was like living in a world without the internet or mobile devices. They are digital savvy and their distinction between offline and online worlds increasingly blurs by the day. But being media savvy is not the same as being media literate.

Leading child psychologist Professor Tanya Byron, in her report to the UK Government “Safer Children in a Digital World”, concluded: “We must empower our children to take ownership of their safe and responsible digital behaviour.” Her report talked of the importance of information and education for children and parents. Industry is well placed to deliver this and today sees the launch of a national programme – Digital Adwise - to raise children’s awareness of digital advertising. The not-for-profit programme, aimed at 6-11 year olds, comprises a free set of lessons allowing kids to critically evaluate digital advertising in a fun way - for example there are some interactive activities such as “tag the ad” and "ad maker" – and there’s helpful support information for teachers, such as examples from the IAB’s Creative Showcase. The initiative builds upon the successful MediaSmart programme about television, radio and print advertising, now being used by 38% of UK primary schools. The new materials will also be available to all primary schools.

At an event in London yesterday evening to mark the launch of the programme, Creative Industries Minister, Sion Simon, spoke of the importance of “topical and cutting edge media literacy that teachers want and children can relate to”. He concluded that the whole advertising industry should get behind the initiative, promote it and ensure its success. The IAB agrees and we should all help to spread the message.

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

2175094 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:40:00 GMT

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!

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Education, education, education (part two)

2175094 — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:45:00 GMT

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.

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iPhone – so should you

2419367 — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:02:00 GMT

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.

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Rio Ferdinand, media futurologist

1716484 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:09:00 GMT

In a surreal moment, the respected media analyst and futurologist Rio Ferdinand has linked the fact that the England-Ukraine match is going to be online pay-per-view to the recent claim that internet advertising has ‘overtaken’ TV advertising:

"I read that online advertising has taken over from TV”, he apparently said, “so that tells you something about where it's going in terms of the digital world…So I’m sure it'll be the way forward and in the future it'll probably be the reality. I think it's a good way to gauge how many people are interested."

If ever the IAB’s claims needed a dose of credibility, surely this is it.

But Rio is not alone, unlike how he sometimes finds himself in the box. Among others, Marketing took a deep breath and declared ‘England game heralds future of sport on web’.

On the flipside is this from Janine Gibson, Guardian.co.uk editor, who disagrees it is a prophetic moment and explained why The Guardian declined the offer to screen the match:

“You had to sign up to an enormous amount of editorial endorsement and promotion for something that we weren’t convinced was of particular value to our users and would feel like a fake endorsement of a one-off match. This isn’t heralding the beginning of a new dawn; it’ll never happen again and it feels slightly opportunistic.”

She obviously needs to have a chat with Rio.

But over and above all this is the fact that the match being delivered by the internet might be interesting and contentious now, but once TV sets are fully broadband enabled it won’t really matter. Viewers won’t care how it is getting to their screens. It is all TV and they will hopefully have the experience they want.

It is unsurprising that England football fans are in uproar over the fact that the match is being screened via an online TV service and not on broadcast TV. They can still see it if they want to, but not the way they’d like to.

Amid all the fuss, we should remember that the game was originally contracted to appear on broadcast TV (with Setanta) and, if it had been an important game with something at stake, it probably still would be. I can’t see a match England actually need to win or a World Cup Final going online only pay-per-view – although maybe a new series of Rio’s World Cup Wind-Ups would be ok. It is a fairly unique set of circumstances that have lead us here.

The fan forums I’ve looked at are less concerned with the idea of paying to watch it, though, than they are with a delivery system that means they can’t watch it in the pub or on the big screen in the living room and have to crowd round their laptops or watch it individually instead.

They demand the shared experience that only TV can give them. But having failed to agree rights with a broadcast TV company, it is understandable (or maybe greedy) that the agency responsible for this match – Kentaro – looked for an alternative buyer. The end result might not be as good as broadcast TV but it is better than nothing. Still, that is scant consolation for fans.

The fact that newspapers are so keen to become broadcasters – with the Times and Sun being among those who will show the match – is really interesting but not new. They already have various bits of video content on their websites, but this football match is one of the few pieces of roughly ‘must-have’ TV content they can get access to. TV broadcasters show appointment to view programming all day every day and newspapers clearly would like a piece of the action.

I suppose the main concern for fans that do choose to pay to watch the match is how well the UK’s internet pipes will handle demand. The fact that the number of viewers has been capped at one million worryingly shows how unprepared the UK broadband infrastructure is for major transmission of big events. It needs upgrading, as Digital Britain pointed out, and TV companies are as anxious as anybody to get an additional digital network to digital broadcasting. How is it going to cope when the majority of people are watching TV in HD, or with the other resource-hungry innovations like 3D coming along?

Education, education, education (part one)

2175094 — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:01:00 GMT

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.

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TV eats digital dust

1713999 — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:27:00 GMT

What a week - if you work in digital media you would have had to have your head buried in the sand to have not heard about this news by about 9:05am on Wednesday this week, let along Friday afternoon. But just in case you missed it: the IAB's latest spend figures finally brought the news that we've all been waiting for - in H1 2009 online advertising spend overtook TV ad spend for the first time, (sort of) giving it a larger share of spend than any other media.

The actual figures then - online ad spend grew by 4.6% but, in the context of a market that saw an overall contraction of 16.6%, this translated into a whopping jump in market share, up from 18.7% for the same period in 2008 to 23.5%!

As soon as the news broke there was much discussion at LBi as to whether the counting was fair - should digital really be lumped all into one or should it be split into display, search, affiliates and beyond? To me this seemed a bit like the equivalent of saying DRTV, product placement and the sponsorship of X Factor should all be counted separately and I couldn't help but argue that just because tv is so one dimensional doesn't mean the rest of us deserve to get a raw deal when the money gets counted. When you look across the other categories though, it is obvious that by that logic digital still has a way to go if it wants to have the largest share of spend - in the IAB's number print is actually split into classified and display, despite the fact that no such distinction is made for digital.

At the end of the day of course none of this is particularly important - as an agency or advertiser if you are buying in traditional and digital media (I don't, thankfully!) it may mean you should reconsider the respective weighting of your team. What is important is how your channels work together and that's what advertisers need to be focused on, not which is biggest. The big takeaway though? That 16.6% decline in spend... We're still in a recession, folks, even if the sun shines on digital.

A graph that made me laugh

1368741 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:17:00 GMT

I’m supposed to be having a day off. Fat chance.

You might have noticed a story put out by our cousins at the IAB that claims online advertising has now overtaken TV to become the ‘biggest single advertising medium in the UK’ (by spend). We find the IAB’s story odd because the internet is not a single anything; it is a fantastic technology that is home to many different marketing activities that do different things. It even delivers TV. It is a pretty meaningless statistic but it has garnered plenty of headlines and no small amount of apocalyptic predictions. Journalists expect us to respond, so here I am blogging instead of planting my daffs.

As I have said many times before, I love the internet. I love the way that it complements TV – nothing else works better. I love the way people can respond instantly to TV ads via search and websites; I love the way social media helps make the buzz around TV programmes so visible and so much more fun. I’m happy for online advertising to increase - so long as it is not at TV’s expense. And so far it isn’t. (I can almost hear your eyebrows rising at this point).

That’s the depressing part of this story; the implication that online advertising is taking broadcast TV’s money is just not true. Last year broadcast TV spot advertising declined 2.9% compared to total advertising declines of 4.2% and display declines of 5%. Not the spectacular share growth of online maybe but growth nonetheless and in the horrific ad market that is 2009 the same pattern is emerging; TV and online are increasing their shares, mostly at the expense of print and DM, though print remains the biggest overall advertising medium, not online.

If the IAB can’t resist making comparisons with TV then the fairest would be to compare all forms of online display with all forms of broadcast TV - spot, sponsorship, AFP, Interactive etc. - not an easy number to get hold of because TV has never bothered to lump its own advertising revenues together. TV would never try to compare itself with any form of classified advertising, DM or search because it wouldn’t make any sense.

Anyway, Thinkbox’s thoughts on this are already out there so I won’t repeat them all here.

But I would like to draw your attention to The Guardian’s coverage of the story today. They produced a little graph that made me laugh (it isn't online though). Along the x axis we had a list of advertising sectors, each with a bar representing revenue that got a bit taller as it went along. We had cinema, radio (spot only), business magazines, consumer magazines, directories, outdoor, national newspapers, press classified, direct mail, regional newspapers, press display, television (spot only), and then…internet. Just internet. No more explanation than that.

We think these numbers would be more meaningfully represented in one of two ways, either by technology/platform or by the genuine distinctive advertising sectors . We’ve had a go, based just on the IAB’s figures. Take your pick.

Online is now number one in the UK

980161 — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:47:00 GMT

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.

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

980161 — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 11:37:00 GMT

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.

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