This little “i” surrounded by a circle on a blue background, is the advertising industry’s answer to privacy concerns. It could be summed up as ‘interest’ based ads.

As behavioural targeting gains prominence with advertisers to increase their effectiveness online, the reactions and criticism’s from privacy advocacy groups is undoubtedly becoming louder. In an effort to self-regulate, the US industry has agreed on a standard icon that will seek to be implemented by any ad that use demographics and behavioral data in an effort to tell consumers what is happening.

Jules Polonetsky, the co-chairman and director of the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF), an advocacy group that helped create the symbol, is hoping the symbol will become as widely recognized and accepted as the little green arrows of the recycling symbol, as reported by the New York Times.
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Forget the Cupertino keynote, if you have missed GQ’s Men of the Year in the Christmas rush, then I recommend everyone download Condé Nast’s new GQ January 2010 app for the iPhone. Why? Because it’s a great example of the future of interactive design.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again; the future for magazines is not in creating browser-based web pages. We’re hopefully past the days of newsletters formatted in MS Word, or experiencing websites with terrible typography, microscopic little pictures and business-card sized videos, not to mention, those tiny little ads embarrassingly hidden in the corners, jumping up and down saying ‘click me, click me!’ It’s all more annoying than the donkey in Shrek.

Despite the amazing advances in functionality on the Internet over the last few years, design in digital channels is a long way from the offline aesthetic renaissance spurred on by desktop design programs like Quark Xpress. One only needs to browse a newsstand and marvel at the freedom of design, where bold, beautiful, creative typography are sensually entwined with stunning imagery. Even the Wall Street Journal runs color photos now! In contrast, type in the URLs of these same publications and prepare yourself for a walk through a design desert.

Yes, templates hold consistency, but like themes variations in classical music, they’re supposed to be deliberately broken to add interest or context. Good design adds value to the communication; it doesn’t just deliver information. It’s exciting and part of entertainment and we all know HTML just can’t do that. Connection speeds wouldn’t even let you send it if you could. Also, Flash is not the saviour and only a mere gimmick that doesn’t even rise to the level of commercial art.

So why am I now as excited as teenage boy who has just discovered a discarded copy of Playboy in a country lane? Well, starters being able to ‘pinch’ and ‘squeeze’ Rhianna… Ok, no that’s not it (lie, lie!).

Consider the fact newspapers close down on a daily basis as they struggle to make ends meet as advertisers abandon them. The ratio of ads to editorial in the print world is 60:40 or higher and online is shamefully a long, long way from anything like that.

Stop and observe the newsstand and notice the ever-shrinking physical magazines to pocketsize away from A4, and that many newspapers have now moved away from broadsheet formats. Next, hold up an Amazon Kindle next to one of those little mags – not too dissimilar is it? Watch how you flick through a magazine, getting to the article you want, taking in the visual fluff from all the pretty pictures including those ads that get you salivating over that latest hot hatch. Ah, so this is what all those rumors of the impending full-colour, networkable 10’ Apple iPad being launched on Joe public was all about.

Look back at the GQ app on your iPhone.

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Editor’s Note: This article by Dean Donaldson, Director of Digital Experience at Eyeblaster, originally appeared in AdvertisingAge.

The recent surge of research around creative variables like ad shape, format and video puts online creative into the hot seat, and size, it seems, doesn’t necessarily matter. We’ve been groomed to judge online display ads based on aesthetics alone as opposed to trying to match the physical elements with performance to see patterns. This has shown certain assets can positively impact campaign results, but it often overlooks one critical factor — the online environment.

Historically, we create ads in an assortment of shapes and sizes and stick them everywhere, only to find ourselves surprised when the same creative generates a range of results across many environments. It’s relatively obvious, actually: Surely the impact of a piece of creative that works effectively in one in environment will differ — sometimes radically — when placed in another.

That’s largely due to the consumer experience and level of activity found in each location. It may seem obvious that a portal homepage would differ to a social media site, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As consumers spend more and more time online, the environment in which they find themselves matters more and more to them — and not matching the right creative against the right environment can be toxic. As they say, looks will only get you so far; for advertising, it’s location, location, location.

Since the first display ad 15 years ago, a variety of environments have become amenable to online advertising. Take the mega sports homepage portal ESPN, or the opening to news sites like New York Times and Forbes where users skim headlines for few seconds before clicking on various links. Then, contrast destination pages found within these homepages, where the user explores athlete stats or reads specific news articles. Although homepages have mass reach, they also have short attention spans compared to destination pages, which are more likely to retain re users for extended periods of time as the absorb information and content.
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For those who have been following me of late on Twitter, you will know I have been wrestling for some time on the measuring of online advertising – especially heightened in relevance due to recession and demands for greater accountability. Steeped within a false notion of “display advertising is dying”, argued by the misinformed who are quoting declining click-thru rates, and materialized through falling CPMs of display media – which will undoubtedly kill off some ad networks over the coming months. We have shown that any intelligence around online advertising over the last ten years plus has been reduced by some to ‘kiss-me-quick’ instant ideologies propagated by code-junkies and barrow-boy buyers.

Clicks originally seemed to afford us an innate intelligence into the future of media, but that was yesterday – and that was all we had. To limit advertising to such simple gratification is to grossly miss the systematic behaviour that results in perception changes and heightening desire afforded by greater stimulation of senses – the nature of true engagement.

Youth take note, you are out of touch with reality seen within a bigger holistic media picture formed through the fires over time, yet we welcome your continued challenge of the status quo. Grandparents your esteemed intellect and knowledge is admirable, yet under question as your reasoning for resistance and reluctance to ask why is being superseded by a tsunami of consumer change that will leave many swept away.

Yet the desire of all of us on both sides of the media fence is to hone our craft and perfect our art form; something we once termed ‘commercial art’ as it was not merely aesthetics alone, but with a duty to inform and educate – and as such had a price-tag of value. It is this pursuit which we try to measure in some kind of simple an tangible way – and offer touch points of an indication of intent – in a manner that is transparent, scalable and portable across all media.

Between the no-mans-land of GRPs and laborious but insightful web funneling there may well be an indication of exposure that seeks to satisfy just that. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you “Dwell” – a measurement for modern media.

Eyeblaster Analytics Bulletin Issue 4 | Trends of Time and Attention in Online Advertising

Download, digest and dispute. We welcome the debate.
And I hope you too will come to Dwell in the land of opportunity.Dean Donaldson | Director of Digital Experience

P.S. Knowing that for some, surface statistics are not sufficient, I have also recently submitted a thesis on Dwell to the Academia world. So feel free to peruse if you want the whole nine yards.

Online Display: The demise of Click, the rise of Dwell
A study into measuring the intrinsic value of online display media and investigation to the nature of advertising and consumer engagement in general. The document is based around a calculated argument for shifting away from historic response-based metrics into a more natural measurement of consumer stimulation.

“For the last ten years, the start of every year I have heard someone, somewhere say ‘this is the year for mobile’. It’s become a standing joke in our industry – from SMS to Wap – seems everything has tried and failed. Well, now it’s my turn – and at the risk of being laughed at, I am going to tell you ‘this is the year for mobile!’ This is why.

Currently 1 billon people in the world are online – that’s about a sixth of the world’s population. However 4 billion people – that’s two-thirds of the population – have a mobile phone. It reaches into some of the most remotest parts of our planet, areas where there is only a cyber-café or internet access and a TV between a street – even here mobile phones exist. No roads to dig up and put in wires, a fashion accessory that demands upgrade at least 3 times as often as your PC, we are talking one of the fastest growing and widest reaching technologies known to man. In Japan, all mobile phones are connected to online, in fact all mobile phones let you watch TV on the move – it’s just a matter of time before they are here. With iPhones and Google Android, we have seen the demand for mobile internet escalate to the point where 1MM new iPhones were sold within the first three days of release. That is some uptake. From mail to music to maps – and a myriad of applications, all interfacing into your favourite online services. This is just the start. Even personally speaking, I think at least 10% of my ‘online’ time now is done via my iPhone – my Twitter and Facebook updates die when my mobile battery runs out or I am out of range.

Mobile Internet is now quickly becoming a fact of life. Yep, looks like we are catching Japan up.

So what does that mean for advertisers? Several things; new reach to remote markets, enabling investigation and comparison of products whilst out shopping, grabbing content from posters via QR codes or even SMS interaction with TV programs – this is a device that is creating a personal link between all media and interactivity with brands without wires, as well as true personalization of content. But despite huge benefits of gaining new market share or motivating existing audiences, what is the real problem with mobile adoption?

Mobile advertising  is currently where internet was ten years ago, both in terms of revenue share and technology implementation. Each publisher runs its own system, but these do not share data fluidly with agencies. There is no creative interface. No unified planning, delivery, reporting… the practicalities of checking each creative per publisher or trafficking each one is one thing – and publishers soon learn its a headache they are not geared up for – but pulling data? The time taken by agencies to collate multiple sources is prohibitive in its own right, but also to de-duplicate sources and analyze is another, let alone compare it against web reach. All in all it’s preventing any kind of scalability for the medium desperately needed to promote agency adoption. This is what agency focused ad serving brought to bear prior to the turn of the millennium, and the fortuitous growth we have all enjoyed in the medium since is testament to that. Now as we are about to turn yet another decade, a new device needs the same boost. Digital already is getting far too complicated, with an agency split between social media on one direction, content creation for an advertiser on another and new interface platforms like mobile pulling them in yet another direction - any kind of simplification of this process is a welcome addition indeed.

What is needed is an agency focused mobile ad serving platform to mimic the way online works. It is only then that the headaches that have been seen within mobile to date have any chance of wiped away. There are benefits for publishers too, releasing the creating and data analysis pain points to the respective agencies to assist their focus on buying and targeting, whilst publishers can focus their attention on selling media and developing their offering. What is needed is a simple work flow solution that is easy to adopt and fits in with existing processes to set a solid foundation for the growth of mobile. Eyeblaster is currently testing such a solution with leading agencies.

One thing is for sure, it won’t take 10 years for mobile to reach the same point as the internet is now – and with quadruple the reach – expect an overtake in penetration even sooner than that. Yes this is year for mobile – and it’s very, very exciting!

Dean Donaldson, Director of Digital Experience Strategy

This article originally appeared here for DM EXCO.