Behind the Buzz - digital and interactive advertising and marketing

FOOA and Trends

by Rachel on June 8th, 2007

Heather Luttrell (Indieclick) ‘Deciphering online advertising trends’

Indieclick provides publisher representation to selected audiences, with sites that we identify as being important to the users. We work with over 500 record lables, etc. We have a waiting list of over 5000 websites; we want to serve beautiful advertising that targets our audience.

In terms of the future, we want to say that great advertising deserves a receptive audience. In tv, great advertising needs popular content…on the web there is a tremendous amount of excellent content. So how does this content get seen? usability, great promotions and marketing, you out and get links, viral effects, cult of personality, engagement, cult of personality and new forms of distribution, So advertisers need to stay in top of trends to find best ways to advertise/

We putt sites into 3 categories, bleeding edge, leading edge and arrive (cutting edge). So at the bleeding edge - vox, blip, spout, twitter, foundmagazine, iminlikewithyou, flickrvision etc. Sites move across categories. A lot of artists are opening up their sites for advertising.

Online advertising trends can be assessed in same framework. We looked at the trends and how advertising is happening, On the arrived sites we have search, ugc, buzz, richmedia, remnant, interstitials, homepage takeovers. Leading edge -featured content, integrated with editorial, behavioural profiling, widgets, interaction ads, in-game ads, virtual worlds, intellitxt niche media. Bleeding edge - ad technologies replacing media planners (an advertiser can directly participate in media planning online) , digital production of assets overseas, record labels monetising artist properties (very desirable demographics) , monetisation of online film distribution, mobile advertising, exclusive content, experimental video ad delivery (there’s a lot going on and a lot of experimentation, I liked the ideas from the Brightcove presentation, Videoegg is doing a lot of good stuff), multiple custom niche communities (you have to promote and build these communities), RSS publishing (with the separation of content and container, how do you advertiser) product placement (extreme makeover home edition is the end game in product placement).

What are the influences on the trends?

DRM, IP management tools and watermarketing. if anyone really succeeds in true DRM then it will really change the landscape
Disintegration of content from platform - you need to tailor content to where it ends up
Consolidation of major players
Remnant players expanding into major markets - certain remnant players are actually premium…as remnant companies who have excellent technology for delivery..as they move up to premium it will change the landscape and have an impact on pricing (down)
New forms of media (IM, mobile, twittervision, flickrvision)
new hardware and devices - changes the way we consume media
audience acceptance of new forms of advertising,. audience rejection is huge, extremely strident. the first thing they do is go to the press..a critical thing to keep in mind.
advances in ad-serving technology. we have media that is primarily measured on the click, none of the other metrics are really captured
Flight of talent form print and tc leads to new perspectives; they are just beginning to work in the internet and challenge why things are being done.

What’s important in the future?

According to AdAge the key to building buzz is advertising. clients are positive that viral is free but viral is expensive and not predictable.
be everywhere your audience lives with the right message. you cannot focus on anyone destination, consider what all the other destinations mean
Pair the message and creative with content
Push the envelope but no more than 20% to experiments.
Seek to improve metrics and client understanding of importance. we look at impressions, CTR, site performance, campaign comparison, client site performance, we only have half the story, the client has the other.

Audience Q&A

Q: sites are increasingly more about engagement, what is the most promising metric for charging for ads in these situations? (Ajax etc)
A: we join sites and use them, try and understand the site and work out about the advertising. there are different kinds of sites and different relevance. A site that is community orientated you will see lower CTR, so you may wnat to use expandable banners, interact on the site. On others, you focus on CTR, where people just pass through.

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