Display Ads: Sound or No Sound

I got involved in a really stupid conversation yesterday about whether sound had a positive or negative impact on online advertising. I took the stance that sound in itself means nothing and it's all about how that sound is used. Obviously if you're talking about in-banner video then it's pretty essential, but beyond that, what does it do for actual engagement in non-video ads?

My point seemed to be lost on my co-conversationists so I said I'd find them examples to show my point.

Consider the following two ads. The first uses sound as its main engagement. The call to action is to engage and create sound. The second, however, is driven by a complete absence of sound. IMHO both are good, low weight, eye-catching ads. They serve there purpose and 'get the job done'. The creative is simple but hard-working. What impact does sound have? Well a great deal, but both by its presence and absence.

Augmented Reality: Business Card

I recently wrote about the Augmented reality ID that The Astonsihing Tribe are currently working on. Definitely one of my favourite AR Apps that I've seen, but I think this might be just as good.

James Alliban recently stumbled across this video and was inspired to created a really special business card. As a developer, James loves the potential that Augmented Reality offers and was dtermined to use it to enhance his business card and give people the opportunity to really learn something about himself. So James created this brilliant Augmented Reality Business Card:



James recorded his video bio and had a 3D grid of coloured planes printed on the back of his new business card. These planes then become the colour points within the video. James had his cards printed by the fabulous people at Moo.

While I was thinking of business card, I couldn't help but be reminded of perhaps the greatest business card moment in a movie!

Coraline: Stuck in Banner

As part of the online promotion for the DVD release of Henry Selick's movie, Coraline, there were a number of rich media ads run on international sites. I tried to get a copy of my favourite to pop up on Digitology but I can't find it anywhere for some reason, so you have to settle for a video of it. I like the way it takes the piss out of bad online advertising, and yet clearly takes advantage of all those, less then creative, engagement techniques.



Worth a look at the trailer if you never saw the movie, here.

Not Digital But Hilarious

Imagine yourself as a recently laid-off New York-based copywriter. You have lots of free time on your hands and need a way to put your creative talents to good use. What do you do?

Todd Norem was faced with this question, and decided to put his skills to use helping a homeless man in Minneapolis with new signs to use when he's out pandhandling.

What happened?

His new "client" Ed reported "at least a 800 percent increase in gross income on days his media ran."

Display Advertising: Click for Fun

Cheers to Brian for sending this one around the office. Perhaps a perfect example of how to drive huge interaction rates, brilliant engagement times and, ultimately, grab attention and retention within your consumers.

VW: Meet The Volkswagens (Display Ad)

I think this may be my favourite ad this year. For one it looks fantastic - extremely well designed and visually impactful. Secondly it works perfectly - no bugs or stalls. Finally, without appearing to jump on a bandwagon, it utilises a mainstream trend to pull you in and encourage engagement. Fantastic work!

The Future of Packaging

I won't spoil this by saying anything first, just watch...



Between the advent of e-paper and mag-ink technologies it's not hard to imagine this as a very realistic future of advertising. I'll admit that the photo-taking bit is probably a good deal further away and obviously forget the empty box with a camera popping out of no where, but otherwise I'm almost surprised that someone hasn't done something similar for highend products that could easily offset the cost.

Tweet to Ads, Live!

In an industry first, Nestle (US) are preparing to launch a campaign allowing users to Tweet directly into their online display ads, live. Developed by SocialMedia, the new concept, coined 'Twitter Pulse', is currently being tested as part of a drive to promote its Juicy Juice fruit drink.

The ads will carry a range of questions such as ‘How do you stimulate your child's mind?' and ‘How important are vitamin enhanced foods to you?' Users can then use Twitter to answer the questions by posting tweets directly into the ad. Through use of a #hashtag the Tweets will also appear on the campaign Twitter profile.

When users clickthrough on the ads themselves they are brought through to the Juicy Juice's YouTube channel, where they can see a number of videos with useful information for parents.

Contagious on Display Advertising

I was pretty surprised to read this article in Contagious about Display Advertising. Chris Kempt-Salt, MD and founder of Kempt, talks about the future of display advertising and how he sees the market changing.

Chris states that "display advertising online is doomed. Users don’t notice it, click-through rates are poor and I hear that even advertisers are wising up and spends are falling fast."

I understand that Chris is coming from a UK point of view but I don't see there being very much of a difference between the UK and Ireland, and I think he's completely wrong. While he does go on to clarify his position, and says that it's all a case of there being too much advertising online, I still find myself coming back to his statement that clickthrough rates are poor and spends are falling. I would say nothing is further from the truth. On at least 4 of the last 5 advertising campaigns I've worked on, the CTRs have not only exceeded industry standards but have done so by 350% to 500%. I see CTRs going up, I see conversions increasing, and I see spends growing. Display advertising isn't just alive, but it's well and truely kicking.

One thing that I do agree with Chris on is his analysis of display advertising density. Chris takes the example of FHM.com and how display advertising features on a typical page. On a typical page there could be three different ad positions: banner, skyscraper and an MPU sitting around a 300 to 400 word article. This translates to the following:

• Above the fold on a 1024x768 screen, the content takes up 195930 pixels while the ad positions take up 143340 pixels
• That equals 42% of the combined area being used for ads
• Consider that TV advertising in the UK is restricted to seven minutes of advertising per hour (11%)
• In the US, television uses 27% of airtime for advertising

Those are crazy stats. 42% is a huge amount of space. However, I don't think that it's correct to compare online display advertising to tv. They're not the same, at all. If instead you consider press advertising, the figures are an awful lot more similar. I just picked up a glossy film magazine and at least 35%/40% of the entire thing is advertising.

So what does it all mean?

My experience is that display advertising is not dead or dying, and as for the amount of space used - I don't have a majot issue at all. The death of online display ads will only come through a lack of creativity and innovation from advertisers. Push boundries, use AR, incorporate games and interactive engagements, or simply create stunning visuals. Advertising is built on innovation and creativity, when they die, advertising will die.

Live Display Ads

A really interesting advertising campaign from SOL in Norway. Essentially copywriters monitor site content within a live environment and create comments and illustrations in real time. To give the whole thing a personal touch, everything is presented in a handwritten style, copy and drawings.



Thanks to Claire for passing this on.

Interactive Display Ads

Spotted these two ads from Burger King advertising thei new late night opening. Fun and engaging for a fastfood chain. Worth a look.

Pix.ie Photo Upload Record

Pix.ie is one of those services that works in every way. With a clean, fast and easy to operate interface, combined with an excellent backend system, Pix.ie proves that not only are there alternatives to Flickr, ImageShack and Photobucket, but they're Irish! To cement their position as the best photo hosting service around, Pix.ie recently set itself the daunting task of achieving the fastest upload of any amount of photos to a single website. The event was developed in conjunction with the WDC-sponsored (Western Development Commission) competition being run on the site. The competition called for users to upload photos taken during the Galway Volvo Ocean Race Festival.

Although the competition doesn't close until this Thursday, 11th June, Pix.ie have already smashed the record for uploads with 10,140 photos from the Volvo Ocean Race Festival already uploaded to the site. The overall photo competition offers users the chance to win a host of prizes, including top-of-the-range digital camera equipment worth €1,500.

Pix.ie has run the record attempt in conjunction with the WDC to promote the West of Ireland internationally.

Dutch Display Ads

For Some Reason Facebook thinks I'm Dutch and keeps showing me Dutch ads. Funny thing is I kinda like them.

These two Heineken ads are stupidly simple but extremely eye-catching.

Then on the other hand, you have these two Vodafone ads. A lot more going on, with a huge amount of interactivity, but all of it geared towards a direct response online sale. Brilliant work - take the website and bring it to the customer.

Display Ads: All About the Font

I spotted these two display ads earlier and they really caught my attention. It's nice when you see something really simple yet extremely eye-catching. The two ads were sitting on the same page (with a 468x60 banner that I declined to include as the size would mess with my page structure) and were definitely part of a network-buy (the page was an online media converter that I use and definitely not a site you'd single out for inventory).

The ads clickthrough to www.visitlondon.com - unfortunately a site decidedly less attractive then the ads.

No 'Call To Action' Display Ad

This is a first for me. Sprint ran the below ad for an extended 8 week campaign. It does not feature a 'Call To Action' - there's no clickthrough. I have never seen anyone do this before. Is it the stupidest idea ever or perhaps brilliant. It certainly has the potential for massive engagement times and huge amounts of offline and online conversation, but could it achieve real results?

Let me know what you think.

Google News

Seems google has come to my attention on several fronts in the last week, so rather then write about them too much, I'm going to give an overview of the three developments that I think are most interesting.

Google Supports Newspapers
In a recent letter to the Office of Fair Trading (in the UK), Google has called for a relaxation of the rules governing newspaper mergers. Quoted as saying, "the present laws do not reflect the increased competition publishers face from search engines and internet companies". The letter went on to say that Google would be completely supportive of publishers such as Trinity Mirror or Johnston Press, were they to investigate merging their operations with local or regional newspapers.

Google's call has been seconded by senior executives at the Local Media Alliance, who are also asking for a relaxation of merger rules. Their own opinion being that present laws do not take account the large impact the internet has had on newspapers. Ultimately, they have said, a relaxation of the merger rules would allow newspapers to diversify their offering, increase their reach, enhance their content and reduce their overall costs.

Google's stance is understandable considering that it currently provides one of the largest news services in the world, through search listings, that it pays nothing for and receives advertising revenue (in the form of PPC ads appearing alongside the listings). Only a month ago Rupert Murdoch publicly asked, "Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?". In an extremely harsher statement, Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson recently said, "Google devalues everything it touches" and "it divides content quantitatively rather than qualitatively".

The Office of Fair Trading currently has these rules under review as part of the Digital Britain report. An announcement is expected in June.


Google Search Options
Google recently announced the addition of search options to your Google search results. This is their way of allowing users to refine their search results through an easy to use interface, without any knowledge of the standard Google search definitions. Google describe the new options as "a collection of tools that let you slice and dice your results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier. Search Options helps solve a problem that can be vexing: what query should I ask?"

The easiest way to understand what Google Options has added is with this nice video:



For the general public I think these are great additions, but beyond the novice user I'm not sure they've add anything that I haven't already been able to do. Though I do like to write my blog posts directly in HTML so maybe this was never aimed at me.

Interactive Display Ads Hit Target Market Perfectly

To promote the New Zealand tv show Girl Racers, Tribal DDB created the following two ads. I'll be honest I was very much in two minds as to whether they were a bit too much to post, but when it comes down to it I considered the target audience that the tv show probably attracts and realised that these may be some of the most suited ads I've ever seen.

Seriously.

Think about who watches a tv show about girls who wear tight spandex onesies and drive really, really fast cars. In my opinion these ads hit the target market nail firmly on the head. I hope you agree....

Wolfram Alpha Unveiled

Back at the end of March I posted about Wolfram Alpha. Last week Dr. Stephen Wolfram, the inventor and creator of Wolfram Alpha, unveiled the first working demo of what is being heralded as possibly the most important technological invention of the the last decade.

At the Harvard University showcase, the renowned Particle Physicist showed the scientific community what is refereed to as an "answer engine" or "knowledge engine", rather than a search engine. It provides users with the function of typing a question and being given an answer. Bare in mind, that's an answer and not a list of websites. As such Wolfram Alpha is not what is being termed a Google-killer. It really isn't in direct competition with Google at all.

Part of the demonstration saw Dr. Wolfram enter various questions or queries, each to complete success. For example, when he entered 'Weather Oakland, California' the knowledge engine immediately came back with a full breakdown of weather patterns for the region over the previous 10 years.



After the showcase Tom Simpson, noted Digital Marketer, said: "What are the wider implications exactly? A new paradigm for using computers and the web? Probably. Emerging artificial intelligence and a step towards a self-organising internet? Possibly... I think this could be big."

Wolfram Alpha is perched on the crest of a wave with the potential to wash across the world changing the way we access and search information. Foremost the system's potential is its ability to compute answers "on the fly" (according to Dr. Wolfram), giving it the ability to tackle new questions that it has never seen before. This in turn gives it the ability to 'learn', producing faster results the next time that question, or one similar, is asked. The knock-on effect of how Wolfram Alpha 'learns' could be the first real steps towards artificial intelligence.

A key differentiator between the way in which Wolfram Alpha accesses information, how Google does it and how Wikipedia does it, is in the way the information is managed. Wikipedia is based on a user generated system that is moderated, edited and compiled by the public itself. In theory the information is correct due to collective input, however on niche topics it is not always the most reliable source. Google on the other hand uses bots and spiders to crawl the web and determine what it is that is on a webpage. This system is limited in that any information stored in exotic formats or within images is inaccessible to Google and it relies heavily on what the creator has 'tagged' the information as. Wolfram Alpha on the other hand will operate as a 'curated' system. It will rely on a team of up to 1,000 experts to assess if the information Wolfram Alpha is drawing on is indeed correct. Beyond this, the system is heavily based on Dr. Wolfram's award-winning Mathematica software, which is used everyday by scientists, engineers and mathematicians around the world.

Interestingly, Dr. Wolfram hasn't however ruled out any strategic alliances with these or other internet businesses, saying, "We're working to partner with all possible organisations that make sense; Search, narrative, news are complementary to what we have. Hopefully there will be some great synergies." He also confirmed that the system will utilise Wikipedia's popularity index to determine what users are likely to be referring to, when it comes to pop culture based questions.

Digital Round-Up

Congratulations to the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) who took second place at Elsevier Grand Challenge. The international competition pushes the development of new and innovative tools to deal with the increasing amounts of life sciences information online. Competing against over 65 groups from research companies and universities, from around the world, DERI's project, 'CORAAL - Dive into Publications, Bathe in the Knowledge', is a prototype system to bring together information representation and artificial reasoning technologies in life science publications to allow better integration, search and retrieval of life sciences information. DERI is a research organisation based at NUI Galway who focus on developing semantic web technologies.

During the week Facebook was hit by a major phishing scam. Through the use of a very convincing fake log-in page, users were tricked into revealing their facebook passwords. The people behind the scam then used this information to access profuiles and trick further numbers of people to the fake log-in page. Facebook has said that the link at the center of the scam is now blocked and that there will be an increase of the security services provided by MarkMonitor to prevent future scams of this nature.

Twitter announced that every public update sent to Twitter is now instantly indexed and made searchable through their new real-time search. Further to this, if you search for the same word or phrase regularly, you can now save your search with the "save this search" tickbox. This will then place those keywords as links into your home page just under the search box, giving you one-click access to your regular searches.

Lambient Marketing - Are Ewe Serious?

The guys over at Seventy Seven have done some really unique work for thetrainline.com with their new Lambient Marketing campaign, using sheep to advertise. Seriously. Check out this video for all the details: