As banner ads become more and more dynamic, one of the big requests in the Rich Media front is the ability to tie into social media content and social services.
In years past, a banner ad was exclusively a highly-critiqued, tightly-tailored advertisement. Heck, the close-eyed nature of creating banner ads is precisely why we created Bannerflow (see our launch presentation).
The basic level of advertising using social media is to provide links to your social media presences. By in large, these ads are similar to previous instances, but instead of a single, dedicated landing page, advertisers may be looking to direct their traffic to their Facebook or Twitter page.
But as brands and messaging have grown into the social sphere, we’re seeing refined banner ads that include mostly unfiltered commentary from the social web. It’s pretty cool.
As ads get more advanced through concepting and development, the actual feeds and functionality is built into the SWF.
Viewers of these ads will be able to see what the general public is saying about these brands.
I’m curious if with oAuth and, more specifically, Facebook’s new Open Graph, it won’t be long until we see ads “Liked” or “Viewed” by your friend.
Despite the severe economic global downturn, as predicted, online advertising has continued to chug along. Here’s some headlines now that we’re about halfway through 2010:
NYT—U.S. Online Ad Market Grows in Q1 “comScore reported on Thursday that impressions of display ads rose 15 percent in the first quarter, year on year, to a record $1.1 trillion.”
As we’re all keeping an eye on the banner ad space, it’s great to see the positive news regarding display advertising.
Click the link above to view a detailed chart, published in April, visualizing quarterly growth in the online advertising sector.
Online Media Daily—Study Finds ‘Transparency’ Impedes Display Ad Growth “The study found that some of the key issues related to display ad transparency include “message misalignment” (advertising message appears out-of-context from surrounding Web page content) and outright “dangerous” placements (ads appearing on pages that defy good “taste, respect and basic courtesy”).”
Economics are not the only challenges that face our industry. To continue growing and succeeding in the broader marketplace, it’s important that the industry takes note of ways to improve the offering and instill more confidence with clients/customers. This outlines the challenges regarding the common question, “So, where will my ads be shown?”.
If you don’t visit BannerBlog, you must. It is the greatest source of banner ad creative on the web. We’ve seen a couple really great ads over the past few weeks, and we threw in two we liked from back in 2007.
Check out the ads by clicking-through to BannerBlog.
BannerBlog says: Customise your Smart Brabus. This banner saves the colours and position of the car within the banner for the next person who comes along.
“My name is Fernando Ferreira, and I’m from Sao Paulo, Brasil. I recently filmed an advert for Emirates to mark the launch of their new nonstop flight from Dubai to Sao Paulo in which I have to talk about Brasil for 14 hours and 40 minutes (the duration of the flight) without stopping. No breaks, no cuts, no edits, no cheating.
At www.nonstopfernando.com you can watch me talk nonstop for 14 hours and 40 minutes about Brasilian restaurants, literature, Formula 1 drivers, museums, cities, coffee, shopping, culture, music, dancing, soap operas, sumo wrestling, food, cocktails, carnivals, dating, language, architecture, politics, banknotes, holidays, football….”
Admittedly, I’m a bit busy to truth check it, but hey - I’ll roll with that.
Do you ever submit your ads to BannerBlog? We’d love to know if some of our Bannerflow customers are getting recognized on BannerBlog! Let us know in the comments.
(By Tom on 4 January 2010 | Posted in Advertising)
Here’s a recap of several insightful forecasts and prognostications for the New Year.
AdweekMedia Forecast 2010—“As it turns out, not all traditional brands love banner advertising. There is still far too much display inventory out there. And even the red-hot video segment lacks a sure business model.”
Not exactly a great pull quote from this article, but the article emphasizes the fact that flat-out banner ads will likely not drive growth in our sector this year. Look for search and video to be the big players, but the strategic buyer and creator will need to remember how to accompany display units with both video and any advances Google/Bing/Twitter make within their always-changing positions of search/display.
Can’t be said much more simply. We hold a lot of excitement in this industry because the consumption will only grow by leaps and bounds. The media dollars spent in traditional sectors remains way out of proportion with the number of eyeballs sitting in front of digital screens. The recession will push us further into shifting more dollars to digital (59% of marketers say they’ll do just that).
Analyst: Online Display Ads Set to Surge—“The stagnant display advertising space should bounce back in 2010, but it will be up to Web publishers to undertake more drastic measures to increase the value of their ad space, including reducing inventory and eschewing ad networks.”
As the publishers–whether news organizations or TV networks–face more and more the daily revelation that we’re all online, they’ll start to invest and strategically utilize their web properties more effectively. This includes adding some energy behind their ad offering. Clearly the days of just placing some banner ads on a page are coming to an end. Great article here.
We believe that the vast majority of impressions that comScore is reporting are banner ads made with Flash.
In fact, MySpace is still the top social network in terms of impressions per the report. (Kind of odd, actually, that people are still buying MySpace IMPs.)
But this article was timely to us because Bannerflow has recently ran an advertising test on Facebook, using their CPC ad product. It is fantastic. The targeting is unbelievably effective and after our test, we’ve decided to continue advertising on Facebook.
The only thing that bums us out is that we can’t create a miniature Flash ad for a little additional creativity :(
Here’s our current ad, what do you think?
Do you think that the emergence of well-targeted, effective CPC advertising will affect our business of traditionally Flash-based, broad-reaching online banner ads? We think ‘no’, especially in agreement with our last post — but let us know what you think.
Online advertising’s count-on-it growth even came to a halt.
So we were a bit surprised (even relieved) to see this week’s comScore release extoling the effectiveness of online advertising vis a vis TV commercials.
In short, the study’s early results show that online advertising grew sales +9% in supermarket CPGsversus TV ads’ +8%.
The fact that this study focuses on CPG sales is a huge boon for online advertising. Consumer Packaged Goods have long been textbook examples of the power of branding and advertising. After all, what differentiates Froot Loops from the off-brand Fruit Rings, or Tide from the myriad other deturgents in the aisle?
Branding and advertising, of course!
Not to mention, these products cannot be purchased via a click. Like all of you, we’re sick of CTR-as-measure-of-success. And this report seems to show the power of brand-building-advertising in the online space.
Now, a bit of the other side of the coin. I personally don’t take comScore as the word and think often times they cherry-pick data to tell the best story–who doesn’t, but comScore even moreso. Is this just another example of cherry-picking? Undoubtedly they have vested interests in the health of online advertising, so a little wariness is warranted.
What do you think? How does this news affect your role in the world of banner ads and online advertising? Will it help you sell through more campaigns or great ideas for your online ads? We hope so.
Not that anyone polled has ever said they like ads, here’s a poll TechCrunch has running:
Their coverage is concerned with the fact that the industry’s response to falling revenue is simply to make ads larger. That’s a valid concern.
But we’ve stated before that publishers need to step up in strategically designing their properties for advertising. This is a step in the right direction. Advertisers want more than some derelict banner 1200px below the fold placed on some obscure website…
TechCrunch author Robin Wauters makes another point that we would like to echo:
Is it just me or does anyone else think that display advertising units on websites should become more relevant to them instead of just bigger? What’s next, 1200×600 ads?
In addition to our saber rattling for publisher’s to improve their ad units, it is vital that ad networks and media buyers focus on targeting to make the message relevant.
What do you think? Are you excited to develop for some new ad formats? I always like toying with new sizes and capabilities.
The Wall Street Journal (subscription) wrote today that there are differing reports on the health of online advertising’s growth.
TNS is saying that “online display advertising, which includes banners, was up 8.2%” and the only medium seeing ad revenue growth. Obviously this is great news for online advertisers and marketers.
Not so fast, says PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is reporting online advertising revenue fell 5% in Q1 2009. Ouch.
So what gives? Is our industry growing, stagnant, contracting?
We have some ideas.*
1. Online advertising is not recession-proof
The current economic crisis is mercilessly weeding out the slagging elements of the world economy. This certainly includes historically huge online advertisers, like the auto industry and finance. Naturally, online advertising’s revenue, and growth, will slow with those big players hurting so much.
This aligns with PWC’s analysis.
2. Long-term is still bright
We actually feel a bit silly using the term recession when we’re actually amidst something much more serious — there are myriad depression comparisons these days.
But this depressing news is cause for optimism in our industry. While we’re not recession-proof, the new media is poised to really benefit once the economy turns around. This economy is revealing a lot about the ailments of print, radio and television industries. We’ve really hit a breaking point where the Internet is fragmenting all media types.
If you haven’t seen the below clip, you’ll be amazed by it’s prescience:
What do you think? How is our industry fairing? Where will it go?
*We’re neither economists, nor analysts — or even that smart, really. So, we’d really like to start a conversation with your input. Please comment below!
