Simple Solutions for Online Branding
Posted: February 27th, 2009 | Author: vlad | Filed under: Link, Random, Rant |Videogg’s Troy Young writes about what’s next in display advertising. What a great post! You even get a bonus deck, agency-style.
I agree with most of what Troy says, I would add this:
- We’re very, very far from have reached anything significant in terms of efficiency, even after 10 years. It’s not a joke, in 2009 even geotargeting is still a big problem. I covered this in a previous post here.
- Nice, slick, beautiful formats with creative that tells stories does have great value. Check out the top placement on imeem.com. It’s amazing. Even as a consumer I love it, let alone when I put on my marketer’s dumb hat.
- Measurement needs to change, but the engagement metric means nothing anymore. You can blame it on “social media experts” (a.k.a. twitter follower collectors) or IAB and ARF’s lack of leadership, but whoever is selling engagement has no chance of catching my attention.
- I do believe that ads should become more like content, where curation is important and where interactions are more predictable. Clicks on ads are some of the most unpredictable interactions online. At Bloom we’re working on a pilot project that puts those ideas in action.
Bottom line: advertising exists and will continue to exist. Twitter accounts and blogs will not replace it. You can’t expect people to consult information or even care about all products they consume. And marketers will continue to sell their products. And brands will continue to exist. And so it is.
Troy - love the deck, man. Love the deck.
Hey vlad, though I found Troy’s article interesting, there’s a part of it that makes me feel like he’s simply pushing to make ad placements bigger (take up more space and spaces) and more intrusive. Get it in front of people and they will click. Although, I agree there’s a truth to this, it doesn’t seem like a very sophisticated development model. I think the kind of stuff (I assume) you’re thinking about at bloom if probably much more interesting.
As to the placement on imeem, are you talking about the apple ad? I mean its big and bold, but its just a direct translation of the tv spot. Consistent I guess, and visually arresting, but where’s the interactivity.
Which begs the question, do we need interactivity at all? heh…
hi kevin,
I think one of the points that Troy was trying to make is that these branding placements needs to be *nice* — they need to be well executed, feel right. So it’s not just more space, but I do feel that it’s part of it.
Just from my personal experience placements like the one on imeem definitely attract attention and have a positive effect because of how well they run. They have the Apple and Banana Republic ads in rotation now, from what I’ve seen.
As for interactivity, it has its time and place, but in Apple’s case I’m not even sure it’s necessary. The unit communicates quite a lot already. Sometimes adding interactivity is a cop-out for lack of other tangible results, the declining CTR, etc. But it would be interesting to compare the effect of a unit like this with and without interactivity, for sure.
BTW, as a consumer, if I had to choose between one big placement on imeem and 10 bigboxes on one page, offering free credit reports and telling me what Will Smith’s IQ is — I choose big video, hands down.
Hey Vlad, I agree with what you’re saying. I think we overcomplexify sometimes, just playing the devil’s advocate.
I think the idea of ads being more like content is really interesting, but also potentially very dangerous (advertorial). I prefer to think of it as using content to “advertise” (add value), rather than ads mimicking content, if that makes any sense.