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Coke has had to defend the statement they made in March about how social doesn’t help them much but display is where it’s at.  Of course, we in media love this kind of article.  The study Coke performed showed that social buzz has “no measurable impact on short-term sales, but online display ads work about as well as TV”.  The company found that for short-term sales impact digital display was nearly as effective as TV (90%).  This is obviously a very different industry to, say, a completely online retailer for instance, however with such an impactful brand making that kind of statement people have stood up to take notice.

Posted on April 18th, 2013 in Display, Media with no comments

Last month there was a lot of chatter about Facebook serving retargeting ads in people’s newsfeed.  After they made the announcement the main concern is, of course, privacy.  Many of us have been retargeted with a very specific product ad after visiting the same product page on a retailer’s site.  Certainly we have all raised our eyebrows at the obviousness of it.  However in its most simplistic terms, retargeting exists to serve relevant ads – it’s just advertisers taking their best guess at what you want.  And this is yet another tool to get there.

Posted on April 18th, 2013 in Display, Media with no comments

There’s no doubt that Programmatic Buying has caught on with “nearly one in five display ad dollars this year to go to RTB”.  It is thought this will increase to almost a third of digital display budgets by 2017.  How to make the most of it?  Incorporate video buys into your RTB plan and give video’s already higher CTR an extra boost.  Clearly this is catching on with RTB video spending projected to “grow at nearly three times the rate of overall video spending”.  If you have video assets to hand then RTB would be a good, safe place to trial.

Posted on April 18th, 2013 in Display, Media with no comments

We see articles and advice all the time about the importance of optimising your website; articles about how tweaking very small things from a usability standpoint will help increase your conversion rate by 10, 50, or 200%. (more…)

Posted on August 11th, 2011 in Display with no comments

Yes, it is a US article with American brands, but the point it makes is the same: online – or any – advertising is less about a direct response and more about branding:

The Geico Gecko meets The AOL Way: Are display advertisers too obsessed with click-through rates? (more…)

Posted on August 11th, 2011 in Display with no comments

In media, we always see articles like, Brand Values Impacted Significantly by Blended Online Ad Channels, which talk about all the ways that media influences all the other online channels, reducing their CPA and overall making everyone happy.  Here at Equator, we have a really joined-up approach, and we are always thinking about the impact that media spend can have on all the other online channels. To demonstrate, we have looked at actual examples from real-life campaigns to see how media impacted online search.  (more…)

Posted on August 11th, 2011 in Display with no comments

The lines between online marketing channels continue to get more and more blurry.  Regarding ads alone, you can buy display ads on Google, you can buy display ads or affiliate ads (or both!) on affiliate sites, and you can buy ads within your social strategy publishers.  Now, just imagine what’s happening within the channels themselves.

Here’s a great case in point: sponsored stories on Facebook.  You take the social action of a friend and apply it as a paid ad.  For example, if a friend checks-in at Beanscene, an ad for Beanscene will pop up on your Facebook page. Does this cross-over pay off?

Yes. TBG Digital’s study, http://www.readwriteweb.com/biz/2011/05/facebook-sponsored-stories-are-more-effective.php found that Sponsored Stories have a CTR that’s much better than a standard ad, 46% better. Nothing mind-blowing here as you would assume that a link that’s been, in effect, recommended by a friend would be more clickable. Can anyone say Google +1?

Posted on July 25th, 2011 in Display with no comments

This is not really a commentary on an article – it’s just a truly great old ad which proves you don’t need to click through to the site to be effective. The interaction and engagement rates on this must’ve been through the roof: http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/pringles-banner-ad-worth-few-dozen-clicks-13661

The ad won an award in 2009. It’s simple, with one frame in which only the copy changes, it’s conversational, and it takes on a truly real tone. I actually want to be friends with the Pringles ad and I think you will too. I certainly remember it and isn’t that the point?

Posted on July 25th, 2011 in Display with no comments

Over in North America, which has several time zones, everyone loves time shifting.  It means that if, for some reason, you are up at 3:30am, then you can still watch Oprah.  Now time shifting has been applied to ads: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/business/media/28adco.html?_r=1.

Something we always argue as media planners is that people actually do want to see relevant ads. AdKeeper agrees so strongly, that they are offering a page where viewers can save ads they want to see for later. They say that once an ad is saved to AdKeeper, the click through rate goes up to 3.4% – what they neglect to say is the percentage of ads saved in the first place.

This seems to defeat something else media planners keep arguing: that people see ads, ads are subtle and ads are remembered.  By offering time shifting, we’re trying to apply a different tactic that says, we know you don’t want to look now, but we’re sure you’ll be all over this later.  Consider this: when was the last time you ripped out an ad in a magazine and put it aside in a folder so that you could review it later?

A study by the Online Publishers Association found that 96% of participants paid attention to their ad units, 67% within the first 10 seconds and returned their eyes again to the ad. Who knows if it will work, as even the test advertisers seem doubtful, but offering time shifting slams the brakes on what we’ve been trying to argue for years and puts online advertising firmly in reverse. Boo.

Posted on July 25th, 2011 in Display with no comments

One of the most challenging aspects of online marketing is demonstrating offline impact from online activity. It has a range of names but whether you label it Research Online Purchase Offline (ROPO), Online-to-Store or something else, this halo effect is a metric most marketers are keen to make tangible. (more…)

Posted on June 30th, 2011 in Display with no comments