Tag archives: online advertising

All gear and no idea - the “DSLR Clueless”

Lets face it, most of the DSLR cameras out there in the consumer/prosumer market are used in auto or program mode.  Sony has jumped on this insight to create a dedicated youtube channel celebrating the “DSLR clueless”.

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Don’t click it, just pin it

There are banners you can click, there are banners you can like, there are banners you can buy from. And, now, there are also the banners you can “pin”. This new idea comes from Gucci that has recently created an online media unit with the call to action to “pin” the campaign image on Pinterest. The idea is quite interesting, and it’s probably a media first, but I’m not sure it’s delivering good results in terms of generating awareness of the luxury brand presence on the visual social network. Read more…

Do your layouts deserve better than Lorem Ipsum?

That’s the question Jung Von Matt asked many of the 50,000 creatives that use Lorem Ipsum each day to fill layouts with dummy text.  A clever way to catch the eye and attention of art directors and invite them to join an agency where they will be teamed up with a great copy partner.

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Ostracism 2.0: stop parking jerks

Privacy laws in Russia show no mercy for jerks. If you park in the wrong spot, if you park without giving a damn about other people this is what you get: ostracism 2.0. Russian magazine The Village has created a free app that allows to take pictures of wrongly parked cars, recognize car number plates, the car model and color. The data is streamed live to banner ads that are targeted through IP addresses to locations where these cars were parked, exposing the owners to the public shame. Read more…

Space Invasion on Yahoo!

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Space Invaders, Taito has invaded Yahoo! Japan for one day (on April 1st). The page was extremely well done, and fortunately is still available here.

From a media point of view, I like the “domination” of a portal’s homepage for a day. No doubt it might result quite intrusive, but I think it offers great opportunities of creating something really outstanding and engaging. The goal must be to create an experience for the user, not just a bigger, enhanced version of a banner. And this, of course, takes time to develop, and definitely a different approach to online advertising. via Imprint TALK.

When banners become “alive”…

From Norway, a campaign that takes online advertising a step further, introducing the concept (a)live banners. Media couldn’t be richer than this, since the message in the banner is updated live by a copywriter that adapts it to the news on the page where the ad is appearing.

Created by Mediafront the campaign had the goal of building interest and awareness in a news/entertainment site called Sol. Three copywriters have taken turns in the commentary chair, producing 150 hours of content for the front pages Norway’s largest websites. So far, around 1000 unique ads have been created, using a Pen Tablet and a custom publishing tool via Flash Media Server.

Mediafront’s idea has been extremely cool, and I add a further (impossible?) point: can you imagine if users could have been able to reply to the copywriters custom comments? To learn more about Sol’s campaign, check out the recap put live by the agency.

Web-video spots, yes or not?

Putting or not putting a 20-seconds spot before a web video is one of the big dilemmas advertisers are currently facing in the online world. The Wall Street Journal published a (free) article last week investigating the topic. The article quotes, among the others the opinion of a Google’s executive who believes users will prefer video sites advertising free. Of course this is very much in line with Google’s overall approach to the Web, and if you “translate” it, it means “don’t put a 20-seconds spot before the spot, but place a contextual text-advertising link below the video”.

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Online ads grow in Germany and UK

In the first nine months of 2005 online advertising has reached a 279 million value in Germany. According to the numbers released last week by Nielsen Media Research, there has been a 36,3% increase since September 2004, with online and financial services as well as the automotive industry leading the expenditures. Despite the growth, Internet advertising is still very small if compared to traditional media. Since the beginning of the year, the investments in print, TV, radio and outdoor advertising have been worth over 13.3 billion euro. In the United Kingdom Internet advertising expenditure for the first half of 2005 reached £490.8 million, with a 5.8% market share which actually surpasses the outdoor’s (5.1%). According to a study by IAB/PwC online revenues increased by 62.3% on a like-for-like basis when compared to the same period in 2004.

Banner trends in France

Le Journal du Net (in Frech) has a good article on the “trendy” online advertising formats in France. The traditional banner popularity is declining (-9,3 points in 2005) but this is still the most used format. The 468×60 banner is still alive because it’s a complentary ad format, which works good when associated to the emerging rich media (skyscrapers in particular). Generally speaking, intrusive ads such as pop-ups and pop-unders are disappearing from the French scene, with advertisers rather preferring ads which fit into the editorial content. (see also Static banners aren’t dead)

Static banners aren’t dead

Rich media dominate the scene of online advertising, but don’t think static banners are dead. They might be less attractive but their conservative appearance is still appreciated by certain audiences. On blogs, in particular, static ads get better results than the animated ones. As Tessa Wegert writes on ClickZ, “Static banners are also useful in contextual and behavioral advertising, where grabbing consumers’ attention is more about being relevant than conspicuous“. Keeping in mind that creating a positive user experience is priority number one, both for publishers and advertisers, the combination of rich media and static ads appears to be the best solution.