Want to Save Display? Cut Supply
Many of us in this industry have been fighting the good fight for a long time now to make display advertising a better outlet for brand dollars. And, if we get it right, everyone wins. But up to this point, the focus has almost entirely been on better technology. That’s not going to cut it.
From my rough calculations, the vast majority of venture-capitalist dollars, roughly $2.5 billion of $5.7 billion in the first half of 2011 alone, and strategic exits have focused on the automation of the sales and buying process, targeting and optimization.
Improving technology obviously has its benefits, but as an industry we have a bigger problem to fix: the essence of display advertising itself. We are all so caught up on acronyms and technology that we sometimes forget what it is that we are doing: We are in the business of advertising. The problem? A lot of display ads are not noticed. Beyond click-through rates hovering at fractions of fractions of a percent, 43 percent of users say they ignore and disregard banner advertising. To fix this, we need to change the economics: fewer and bigger ads. Not just bigger ads, but fewer.
Read More: Digiday
Meet Your Audience (for the Second Time)
These days, advertising and data platforms are giving marketers a wealth of information that can be used to validate their strategies and optimize their digital campaigns for better performance. There’s a lot of data to sort through – some more useful than others. Sometimes, good campaign optimization comes down to the basics: understanding who your audience is, and why they are doing what they are doing.
Let’s look at a real-life example of a digital display campaign, run through the digital ad agency of a popular mattress retailer. The agency wanted to test new inventory sources for the campaign by running broadly on general interest sites, evaluating the demography of audiences that showed purchase intent, and optimizing over the course of the campaign to maximize impact.
A theory being tested was that older audiences, who report more difficulty sleeping than younger demographic groups, would respond more favorably to the retailer’s online display ads. Campaigns were initially skewed to sites that over-indexed against an audience composed of ages 50 and older.
Read More: ClickZ
Unruly Adds $25M In Effort To Scale Social Video Campaigns
Anxious to scale its social video advertising platform, Unruly just secured a $25 million Series A investment from Amadeus Capital Partners, Van den Ende & Deitmer and Business Growth Fund. Since its debut in 2006, the London-based company claims to have executed over 1,400 social video campaigns, while delivering, tracking, and auditing 1.34 billion user-intended video views.
“We set out to help brands capture the massive opportunity in social video,” said Unruly founder and Group CEO Scott Button.
Unruly’s proprietary technology, RAMP (Real-time Amplification and Measurement Platform) powers social video campaigns for Old Spice, Electronic Arts, adidas, Unilever, T-Mobile and Coca-Cola.
It also had a hand in spreading Evian’s “Roller Babies,” T-Mobile’s “Life’s for Sharing,” Coca Cola’s “Happiness Factory” series, and Old Spice’s “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaigns.
Profitable since 2009, Unruly reported full-year revenue of $25 million in 2011, and a current revenue run-rate nearing $50 million.
Industrywide, social video campaigns generated 2.7 billion views in 2010 and more than 8 billion views in 2011, and are predicted to generate 20 billion views in 2012, according to Unruly.
Read More: MediaPost
Brands Challenged To Create Persona To Keep Customers
Just as marketers decide to push more of their budget from direct response and into brand campaigns, it could become more difficult to sway consumers in 2012 through loyalty. Consumers seemed easily influenced this year by advertised specials and daily deal coupons, but research suggests the online ad industry may need to rethink strategies and get to work on new technologies.
Target, for example, created a persona of stocking chic, yet inexpensive products, according to Stacy DeBroff, CEO and founder of Mom Central Consulting. “Michael Graves could create a teapot, but it’s only $11,” she said. “They designed coolness into better prices. That’s a persona.”
Ad media is great at generating awareness, but it doesn’t necessarily convert to purchases, DeBroff said. Mobile applications on the smartphone that most consumers keep close to them can create brand loyalty through continual use. Those that offer discounts on goods and services provide incentives to keep consmers using tham.
Read More: MediaPost
The Future Of Display: What’s Ahead For 2012
It’s the oldest format in online advertising, but it’s not stodgy by any stretch. Display Advertising is still changing rapidly as new technologies and innovations come along and are put to the test. That may be why display been gaining as a percentage of overall online advertising revenues, commanding 37% of the total dollars in the first half of 2011 according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s latest report (PDF).
But what’s ahead in 2012 for this space? One area that’s seen a lot of growth is performance-oriented display, often fueled by behavioral data from search or from a company’s website. To get some insight into what we might expect from this sector in the future, we tapped three experts to give us their predictions.
Read More: Marketing Land
comScore Releases November 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings
Machinima YouTube Channel Attracts Nearly 20 Million Viewers in November
RESTON, VA, December 15, 2011 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 183 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in November for an average of 20.5 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience viewed 40.9 billion videos.
Top 10 Video Content Properties by Unique Viewers
Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top online video content property in November with 151.6 million unique viewers, while VEVO ranked second with 55.4 million. Facebook.com ranked third with 50.8 million viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 50.4 million and Viacom Digital with 47.4 million. More than 40 billion videos views occurred during the month, with Google Sites generating the highest number at 20.5 billion. The average viewer watched 20.5 hours of online video content, with Google Sites (7.4 hours) and Hulu (3.3 hours) demonstrating the highest engagement among the top ten properties.
Top 10 Video Ad Properties by Video Ads Viewed
Americans viewed 7.2 billion video ads in November, with Hulu generating the highest number of video ad impressions at more than 1.3 billion, followed by Tremor Video in second with 1.1 billion. Adap.tv crossed the 1 billion mark for the first time earning the #3 spot, followed by BrightRoll Video Network with 722 million and Specific Media with 513 million. Time spent watching video ads totaled more than 3 billion minutes during the month, with Tremor Video delivering the highest duration of video ads at 594 million minutes. Video ads reached 53 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 45 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 44.
Read More: comScore
Microsoft Accelerates Rollout In Yahoo, AOL Display Deal
Data has become one of the most important pieces in the recently announced Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo display ad alliance. Microsoft ad executives have found that data-rich markets tend to have the greatest success for bidders and buyers tapping the exchange, according to Mary Ann Benack, director of scale enablement at Microsoft Advertising.
The alliance is intended to give Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo a fighting chance to compete against rival Google in the display ad space. eMarketer estimates that Microsoft’s share of the overall U.S. display market would fall to 4.9% this year, down from 5.1% in 2010.
AOL’s share will fall to 4.2% — down from 4.8% — and Yahoo’s share would slide to 13.1%, down from 14.4%, respectively. Conversely, Google’s share of display revenue will grow to 9.3% this year, eMarketer estimates, up from an 8.6% share in 2010. Facebook has also become a rival. By 2012, eMarketer expects Facebook will hold 19.5% of the display ad share market, up from 12.2% in 2010.
Perhaps that is one reason for the accelerated rollout. It will provide Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo with the ability to compete with Facebook too. “We only expected to roll out in six markete this calendar year,” Benack said, but the alliance now supports buying and selling in 15 markets, from the Americas to Europe to Asia-Pacific.
Read More: MediaPost
