Matt Champion, Digital Director, PHD Network

Your idea about the perfect working day:

Coffee with a seat on the train early in the morning (never happens).  Not to have a meeting at 9am when I arrive.  The greatest thing is when team meetings are happening.  It is nice to be celebrating work that is being done.  People on the team sending around great things that we have done, seen and even some not great things to great some balance.  The office would be quite buzzy – some laughter.  Now it is Monday morning and everyone is staring blankly at their screens.  Looking at the forecast and see that we are beating our targets, having conversations with happy clients.Â
 

Your muse best comes when:  

Definitely in the shower. 

Favorite Brand Experience: The HD for Benjamin Button.  In terms of the quality of the imagery.  I am not a photographer, but I am into clarity of images.  HD – how things look and feel.   Also with the HD creative, it is a way of getting a full screen, cinematic experience, which is what you are trying to get across.  It finally feels like a cinematic experience on-line, having spent years waiting for the quality to increase.

How has the recession impacted on your business

We had a very very good January, so the advertisers are still there, but there is a bit more caution and certain clients will have sudden budgetary decisions made.  Sometimes it makes it quite challenging.  Having to be flexible and replan.

What needs to be changed about digital advertising?

I still find irrelevant advertising annoying, particularly when I know when I am being ‘targeted’ – i.e., on Facebook, but I still get a lot of very low quality ads pushed in my direction.  I still get occasional adverts for male pattern baldness.  (Editor’s Note: Matt is not bald.)  Having said that, the ability to comment on those adverts is quite useful.

 On March 10, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) introduced three new advertising units designed to spur the creativity of online marketers.  The new formats offer a larger canvas for creative executions as well as some new functionality.

Here are the new units:

• The Fixed Panel (recommended dimension is 336 wide x 860 tall) looks naturally embedded into the page layout and scrolls to the top and bottom of the page as a user scrolls.
• The XXL Box (recommended dimension is 468 wide x 648 tall) has page-turn functionality with video capability.
• The Pushdown (recommended dimension is 970 wide x 418 tall) opens to display the advertisement and then rolls up to the top of the page.

At Eyeblaster, we have a lot of experience executing and serving premium formats, including hundreds of homepage takeovers, and are pleased to offer full support for all of these new formats to our clients.  Larger formats invite opportunities for more engaging and interactive creative executions.  We encourage agencies and advertisers to consider incorporating these new formats into your next campaign and look forward to working with you to take advantage of the new creative possibilities they offer.  Publishers should feel free to contact us about implementing these new formats in their sites.

For a witty perspective on the new OPA standards, we also recommend reading Adam Kleinberg’s blog post in iMedia Connection.

So you have yet another campaign to analyze – and your ad server puts tons of metrics at your disposal.  So many – you can get a slight dizziness just considering them all.  But how can you capture the essence of consumer experience while still presenting a simple picture that corresponds with the brand’s business objectives?

CTR is the easy choice, it is so commonly used everybody gets it… or is it?  Chances are, you know CTR doesn’t reflect much of anything. Why spend money on advertising to keep the users engaged if at the end you decide you measure success in clicks which moves users away from the ad?

So which metric should you use? There are interaction rates, video metrics, expansion metrics, etc.   Should you choose rate metrics or duration success criteria? Which one will sum it all up the best while still providing an accurate measure of success?

Things get even more complicated if you are running a campaign with two very different creatives.  One may have tons of custom interactions, the other may have a cool video with only a few interactions. If you measure the interaction rate, the first creative will look more successful, however you know that the video was great and people played it and watched quite a long portion of it.  How do you compare duration with interaction rate – a seemingly apples to oranges comparison?
 

Now you might be thinking – “I wish my server tracked viewer brain activity or otherwise read people’s mind to tell which creative was more engaging, captured more attention for longer?”  Although at Eyeblaster we’re still working on getting inside people’s brain and examining it – for the time being, consider Dwell. Dwell Rate allows you to see which percentage of your impressions had some sort of engagement.  Couple that metric with the length of time people were engaged – Average Dwell Duration – and you get the closest reading into people’s thoughts.  At the most basic level, you want to answer the question – did they see it.  The answer is defined in terms of reach, frequency and dwell.

Dwell allows you to capture the depth of the engagement and the length of it all – allowing for comparison between very different creatives and even allowing you to compare your digital campaign to your TV campaign – giving you one success metric to be used across it all.

Yael Tolub, Director of Product Planning and Analytics

In a new study by Eyeblaster based on data representing more than 2,000 campaigns and 29 billion impressions, research reveals what’s behind the ‘viewer to converter’ funnel.  Findings from Eyeblaster’s Analytics Bulletin, “Trends in Conversions” shows the process at which there is a drop off at every step within the consumer’s mindset, how the elimination of steps will drive higher direct response rates and why delayed reactions in the funnel are key to boosting conversions. From rich media, standard advertising to search, the ‘viewer to converter’ funnel tells the full story, giving marketers and advertisers insight on how to utilize the consumer’s path across search and display to capture response rates and effectively boost direct response performance through data capture within banners vs. on-site traditional conversions.Â
 

 

Highlights from the report:
- By removing a number of required steps within the consumer funnel, data capture within a banner (1.06%) vs. that of on-site (.20% and .51%), shows that conversion rates are 5x that of standard display and double that as rich media
- Global data shows that the inclusion of data capture within a banner is just shy of 8x more effective at addressing conversions than CTR, revealing that consumers are more likely to fill in a banner then click on it

- An analysis of a health campaign showed a jump from CTR (.10%) to in-banner submissions (.50%), showing a quadruple rise of in-banner submission vs. CTR.

- Consumers most often convert in a delayed response time, showing a delay between display exposure and the performance of search by as much as 3 weeks. A clicks decline, search is maintained over time.
For the full analysis and a multitude of insights, Download the Eyeblaster Analytics Bulletin.

Charles Lam

DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION  I  MAMMOTH ADVERTISING

Your idea about the perfect working day: 

My perfect working day allows for a balance between my creative work (animation, storyboards and prototypes)  and management of our banner deliverables. Doing the latter sometimes allows for ideas to stew in my head. Other times it totally takes over my day. =(

Your muse best comes when: 

My muse comes when I’m free to do some associative thinking–quite often, that’s during my commute. When it comes, you can zone out even if you’re listening to something or checking out defaced subway posters. It’s a pretty cool feeling when you’re itching to get in to try an idea out. But sometimes it’s a more gradual thing and you just need to let your thoughts sit for a night.

What needs to be changed/improved in order to achieve ultimate engagement with users:

I think we all need to keep trying new things. Not just preach it or when it’s convenient. I always attempt something new in my projects. It can be something technical or visual. I’m not sure if everyone else has that mindset. So I think it starts with the clients down through the publishers. I like how there are more viral efforts now. But I’m not sure there’s a magical format that will snag engagement. It has to be a progression because we’re earning the user’s trust in the online space and that will be a slow progress. 

Favorite Brand Experience:

I still remember the HP Touchsmart expandable mainly due to its design.  But also because I had been looking for some good examples from different verticals to show the team and stumbled upon the ad while it was getting accolades. It’s a good example of layering the experience so you don’t bombard the user and you can get them to interact with it some more.  We also have upcoming campaigns with Showtime that should be similar in philosophy. Look for it!

The impact the recession will have on online advertising:

What I’ve already seen so far are smaller media plans, where it’s more focused on a few units. And in a way, that’s good. It’s a more focused approach where you’re trying to do more with less. Plus, sometimes an expandable shouldn’t be in every dimension available. It’s okay to leave a few crayons in the box. I think media plans will continue to be lean but hopefully it’ll spur more experimentation too.