Search results matching tag 'internet advertising'

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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Action TV stations

1716484 — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 12:10:00 GMT

It is important to respond, to act. Ask Gordon Brown about biscuits and he’d better respond with something – anything – or else there will be trouble. Deafening silence rarely suggests success.

Advertising doesn’t always expect an instant response; often it is trying to change the way people feel or think about a brand. But if advertising doesn’t eventually lead to a response (ideally a purchase or a change in behaviour), then it is difficult to see its point.

But the issue of attribution is a tricky one; how can you identify everything that has contributed to a response? This is just as true in online media, despite their supposed easy accountability. The online world is trying to ditch the ‘last click wins’ model in order to assign value to other online ad exposures that precede the final response. Fair enough, but once the online world has opened that particular can of worms they must acknowledge the contribution of the radio ad, the PR coverage in the paper and, most significantly, the TV campaign that is running, or has previously run. Is, in fact, the supposed accountability of online more misleading than enlightening? This question of credit going where it is due is crucial if advertisers are to gain a better understanding of how advertising works.

So it is rather handy that a new econometric study from MediaCom, commissioned by Thinkbox, has measured TV advertising’s ability to send people online. It is the first time that the instant effect TV ads have on web response has been measured and made publically available.

Over a period of three months MediaCom analysed over 175,000 TV spots and the activity they caused on different advertisers’ websites in 10 minute intervals for seven leading brands across six different markets. Sounds like fun doesn’t it?

Two of the headline findings from their analysis are:

* When TV’s correct share of online responses is added to phone responses, TV accounts for 30% of all short term advertising responses, and even more when TV’s contribution to the long term is considered
* Of that 30%, a third occurs within just 10 minutes of seeing the TV ad - 15% by phone and 20% via the internet

We knew anecdotally that TV advertising has a massive impact on internet traffic, sending people to brand websites, either directly or via search, retailer or comparison sites. Google have confirmed it themselves and they have kindly provided us with some fancy graphs showing the dramatic effect of TV on search. But to be able to put some robust headline numbers to it is a big step forward.

The study concludes that TV advertising has been undervalued because its ability to generate viewer response online is generally not accounted for. Until now, DRTV optimisation at spot level has been based largely on the patterns of telephone response, which has been declining as a response channel. Across the seven brands, phone response had declined from over 85% to less than 40% of responses in the last 8 years.

The wider context to the research is that the take-up of home broadband and increasing laptop ownership has effectively brought the High Street into the living room. There is so little now to stop people from shopping for a product immediately after seeing a TV ad. TV ads are now at the point of sale.

It is another example of TV and online media’s ‘special relationship’, as Google recently put it. TV advertising provokes both emotion and action; and internet media enable people to act on their emotions immediately.

Effects of social media on search

1919324 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:10:00 GMT

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:

Search = a website where the primary function is to search content including video, image, blog articles etc (e.g. Bing, Google, Yahoo!)
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)
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.

Explanation of the effects

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! :)
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.

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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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Digital creativity dead?

1919324 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:29:00 GMT

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!

No one's an expert

1919324 — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:48:00 GMT

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?

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Celebrity

1919324 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 12:51:00 GMT

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.

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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Anyone know the ad agency looking after Oriflame at the moment?

2546287 — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:40:45 GMT

Desperatley need to find this out soon...please help me lots!!