In today’s world, events unfold within seconds and life-changing experiences happen at a moment’s notice.  As people go online to get the latest and greatest, advertisers’ ability to react in real-time with relevant messages is becoming more and more important – as Pepsi discovered last week. 

Pepsi were already running the “Joy It Forward” campaign in Canada when the saddening news about its former pitchman, Michael Jackson, arrived.

With Eyeblaster’s Smart Versioning tool already enabled, the agency was able to quickly tweak their creative that was already running on multiple music sites, including MuchMusic Video Awards, Yahoo Canada Music, MSN Canada Music and MySpace Canada Music.  Pepsi’s online advertising in Canada is handled by OMD Canada and BBDO/Proximity.

The campaign, while already live, went from this:

To this:

Seamlessly. 

The potential for making advertising relevant is enormous.  Eyeblaster’s Smart Versioning is a creative production tool: an ad with a mini Content Management System (CMS) that allows users to dynamically swap assets.  It enables live updates, as seen here, ad versioning and localization.  Campaigns using Smart Versioning outperform static ads in Interaction, Dwell Time, Expansion and Video Started rates.

Consider trying it out on your next campaign.

Yael Avidan, Senior Manager, Product Planning

Cannes is still in full swing for some, but I have bailed out. Perhaps it’s an age thing, but I simply can’t keep the pace with the plethora of Young Lions who have descended upon Cannes this year. Parties aside, is our industry getting younger, or am I just getting older? Maybe both? And that’s to say nothing of my memory – I have decided Twitter is my new online notebook. So reading back over my notes, let me summarize my own key take-away’s from Cannes 2009 for you:

The 10,000 foot view of Cannes shows there is a complete blur across the entire media landscape. Digital has well and truly begun to permeate everything. It throws questions on the various categories when Cumminsnitro from Brisbane’s ‘Tourism Queensland’ campaign – The Best Job in the World – takes the Grand Prix sweep stake for Direct, PR & Cyber awards. Where does one discipline end and another begin? Go Viral’s Chairman, Jimmy Maymann may well have made the case early on when he suggested the ‘median age for TV users are actually now 13 years higher than the general population.’ Nigel Morris, CEO, Aegis could not have put it more succinctly when he revealed research shows that ‘67% of searches online are result of exposure to offline media – 30+% of which result in actual sales.’ The online/offline debate seems to be drawing to a close – the media landscape is truly becoming one.

This is a feeling echoed around various seminars from Jonathan Mildenhall, Vice President Global Marketing Strategy and Creative Communications, Coca-Cola who feels that from here on in, ‘we need to see a lot of consolidation across traditional and digital agencies – all focused around consumer journeys’. Stefan Olander, Global Director of Brand Connections, Nike agrees; ‘It’s time to throw the silos off a cliff and seek to embrace a more holistic partnership throughout media. We must embrace consumer content’.

The very fact that the Media person of the year is Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corporation, highlights this maturity in thinking that digital no longer represents mere rational technology, but it has reached the emotional connection sought by brands. As Olander revealed in thinking through the problem with modern brands trying to own the conversation, ‘there is now no way to own creativity then allow others to adapt it. We have to place tools in others hands and merely participate.’ It’s not just an admission that consumers are in control, but is a partnership of respect as opposed to dictatorship. Beyond the rar-rar it felt rather like a sixties woman’s movement for equal rights was being formed there in the famous Debussy theatre, but this time it was in favor of the consumer. Morris’ case study for Adidas Originals obtaining 1.4m fans on Facebook – with each person a potential sale of $200 per year per user – ‘that’s a tangible business case for Social Media, right there’ he said.

Turning to revenues and recession, Marcel Fenez, Managing Partner, Global Entertainment & Media Practice – PricewaterhouseCoopers opened with a very bleak overview ‘This recession is not cyclical – it’s structural. In 2013, ad spend will still trail 2007 levels. Advertising spending as we know it is not coming back.’ Backed up with the recession is driving many to seek a bargain online, Fenez said there is now ‘no place to hide from the digital transformation’.

So what does that mean for the advertising industry – has our illustrious budgets truly gone and a smaller Cannes the future new world order – shall we forever reminisce about the ‘golden era’ from here on forward? Steve Ballmer thinks so; “I don’t think we are in a recession. l think we’ve reset. Recession implies a recovery.”

According to research, Ferez suggests that people are prepared to accept ads, even targeted ads as trade off for privacy in exchange for great entertainment content’. Interestingly this seemed to be counter to what Steve Balmer said; who argued that creation of digital media is cheaper than other media. With special effects, and high statistical analysis costs am not convinced these truly offset the distribution of print for example as any agency would agree given struggles in day-to-day process. So should falling CPM costs and pressure on publishers be the order of the day?

Digital advertising offers a targeted message that reduces overall wastage afforded by traditional means of delivery. This means that better ROI will be achieved with less overall spends as there will be less redundancy. Volume and associated cost of distribution will indeed be less, but that in no way should devalue the media content in which it sits. Good quality content which advertising needs to sit against costs money. To take a short-term view of making a quick buck on reduced CPM will kill content creation and hamper the entertainment content of the future. Will brands really want to become content providers and all associated costs of doing so? There needs to be a balance.

Yes, brands are engaging more with their customers. But walking around the print and outdoor or TV showcases shows that advertising has always been about good content in its own right. It’s an incredibly powerful form of art, and truly beautiful to behold. It offers information and education, not just intrusion. Long may we protect this craft and seek to embrace this thinking in an ever increasingly digital world. Log on to http://work.canneslions.com/ and take a look for yourself.

See how the Grand Prix Outdoor winner, the Zimbabwean’s ‘Trillion Dollar Billboard’, seeks to usurp a fascist regime. Contrast that with the Jewish Council for Education and Research ‘the Great Schlep’ for motivating votes for Obama, a truly cross media campaign. See the use of mobile in ‘Let it Ring’ for Road Safety Awareness in Belgium and tell me that advertising is dead, in which ever form. Then check out ‘Banner Concerts’ from Boondoggle, or even one of my personal favorite’s ‘Atrápalo’ from DoubleYou for how to push the humble banner ad way out into the stratosphere. If you are still taking this all too seriously, Warner Bros’ ‘Why So Serious’ will certainly bring a smile to your face.

So whilst I digest all this and try and get my head around it all, my gut reaction is ‘no advertising is not dead, it just hasn’t become all it can be quite yet.’ Andy Berndt, Global Creative Director, Google nailed it when he admitted the ‘role of advertising as an interrupt model is a challenge for Google; who will search for something they don’t know about?’ Thanks Andy, I wholeheartedly agree, content and advertising flowing seamlessly around the consumer, causing them to stop and take note, discuss and then investigate more information.

Meanwhile the only searching I will be doing tonight is to ‘search’ the cupboards for an aspirin…

Reproduced as appeared on iMedia Connection

Dean Donaldson | Digital Experience Strategist

Pre-roll ads are 8-25 time more effective than in-banner ads, according to BBE which released a study that compared in-banner and pre-roll ads based on CTR. “Finding average click-through rates of 1.44% draws a real distinction between in-stream and in-banner ads,” said Matt Wasserlauf, CEO of BBE. This quote by itself summarizes one of the biggest problems we have in our industry today – we measure everything based on clicks and CTR. Big mistake…

Forget about the click…

First, in-stream ads and especially pre-rolls should not be measured based on CTR. Pre-rolls weren’t designed to draw clicks. A user who has just clicked to watch some video content and then prompted to see a 15 or 30 seconds pre-roll ad shouldn’t be expected to click to be taken to the advertiser site (if at all he or she can be expected to click to skip the ad). Pre-roll ads were designed to deliver a marketing message that will stick with user through rich experience delivered by video. Ideally, pre-roll ads should be measured using brand metrics (such as brand favorability, brand awareness etc.) or at least video completion rate (if a skip option is provided to the user). 

Second, even if CTR was the correct success metric to use for pre-roll ads, does a CTR of 1.44% really prove a good performance? Sure, a CTR of 1.44% sounds great when it’s compared to the insignificant CTR of 0.11% for standard banners or slightly higher for rich media units. But 1.44% CTR is still very low and more than anything else, a 1.44% CTR for pre-roll ads just highlights the low CTR of banner ads. But, again, forget about the click…

Unfortunately, even after more than a decade of online advertising we are still heavily focused on CTR. We still see different research papers focusing on CTR, agencies buy media based on CPC and advertisers measuring success by clicks. A better way would be to focus on more meaningful success metrics such as sales, leads, brand engagement (dwell time) and viral elements  such as sharing with friends and buzz. Did I say forget about the click already? …

And stop comparing…

Why does one need to compare pre-roll ads to banner ads (or any other ad format)? A well planned campaign should include many different creative formats to match and create different user experiences. Banner ads are designed to deliver a marketing message on web pages while the consumer reads some content. Pre-roll ads, on the other hand, are designed to deliver the same message inside video players while the consumer watches some video content. Banner ads create a magazine or newspaper-like experience while pre-roll ads create a TV-like experience. Hence, comparing between them is wrong, irrelevant and defeats the purpose of using different creative formats in first place.

The correct way to analyze creative and media would be to look at the campaign in holistic manner across all creative formats, sites and channels and then measure the synergy stemming from the diversified media and creative mix. Each ad, site and channel contributes something to the end result (whether it’s a sale, lead, brand awareness, etc.) as a standalone part of the campaign. However, the main objective should be proving that the whole campaign equals more than the sum of its standalone parts – ads, sites and channels. Showing that type of synergy would prove a successful campaign planning and execution.
Ronnie Lavi | Manager, Product Planning and Business Development

Campaign to Watch: This ad just out for VW analyzes the user’s twitter name and based on feed content suggests the VW model that is most ’suited’ to the customer.  The potential for making ads relevant and engaging is staggering.  Check it out on the Creative Zone and see what others are saying about it already:

http://digital-conversation.blogspot.com/2009/06/imedia-first-twitter-in-ads.html

http://digital-examples.blogspot.com/2009/06/vw-interactive-twitter-ad.html

A new study from TNS and Eyeblaster reveals cross channel campaigns constitute almost one quarter of total campaigns, showing a major move to integrate cross channel performance data – across TV, outdoor, mobile, print and online.

The survey polled 400 senior marketing executives across the globe citing that marketers are indeed looking for cross channel data and reporting. Evidence also points out that marketers expect total digital market spending to grow by 30% over the next two years with a third of the market experiencing growth over 50%. Highlights include:

- Nearly 67% of respondents cite that they already are running cross channel campaigns; yet only 12% are actually integrating cross channel performance data
- Marketers note the following as the barriers to cross channel adoption: 44% blame lack of suitable metrics to measure impact and ROI, 37% note lack of case studies to prove cross channel effectiveness & 34% cite lack of technology
- 51% of marketers are currently analyzing display with search on a PC – 38% would like to
- 22% are currently analyzing TV with PC or PC with mobile – 61% would like to
- 7-8% currently analyze TV to mobile and outdoor to mobile – 65% would like to

Looking ahead, respondents expect mobile and TV to be the top channels for branding and response as well as the go to channels for brands response synergy. To download the complete TNS/Eyeblaster white paper, click here.