Video creates better brand impact for Web ads
By Lawrence Casiraya
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 17:34:00 07/25/2008
Filed Under: Technology (general), Internet, Advertising
MANILA, Philippines -- Banner advertisement is a thing of the past and consumer surveys prove that incorporating video into "rich media" ads creates brand impact not measured in simple click-throughs.
Eyeblaster.com, a company that provides advertisers and publishers technology for managing online ads, conducted a workshop showcasing some of the latest and most innovative rich media ads on the Web.
Simply put, rich media ads are interactive in nature and deliver multimedia content without the user having to click through another site apart from where the ad is placed.
The traditional Web advertising model measures impact in terms of traffic or number of such click-throughs.
As the Web itself becomes increasingly video-oriented, attention spans tend to become shorter so that advertisers find themselves more challenged to increase click-throughs, explained Jordan Khoo, Eyeblaster.com’s managing director for unified digital marketing in Southeast Asia.
According to Khoo, advertisers are now shifting toward rich media advertising to align themselves with changing end-user habits and take advantage of huge traffic in social networking sites, for example.
Citing consumer studies, Khoo said online ads that incorporate video have the highest impact in terms of awareness and time spent by Internet users.
An example of rich media advertising on a website would be the trailer for an upcoming movie. But as digital technology becomes advanced, it allows advertisers to become more creative and, according to Khoo, this allows the creation of made-for-the-Web content.
"A TV commercial is passive while on the Web it is interactive. TV is no longer the best channel because it is already fragmented." Khoo said in an interview with INQUIRER.net.
A challenge for rich media advertising is accommodating shorter attention span. A TV commercial normally lasts 30 seconds but on the Web, the ad should get its message across in 10 to 15 seconds," Khoo said.
Khoo said financial services and fast moving consumer goods companies are most aggressive when it comes to rich media advertising and usually allocate the most budget for online.
"But the market is just at its tipping point even here (in the Philippines) and a lot of advertisers are not yet aware of available technologies," Khoo said. "Based on studies, people are spending 30 percent of their time online but only two percent or less of the budget is placed online."
Eyeblaster.com is a partner of Microsoft and provides technology for advertisers on its MSN portal.
The company is also a long-time technology provider for INQUIRER.net. Eyeblaster.com can host these ads into its platform and provide analytics to measure impact of a given campaign.
The first video ad to run on INQUIRER.net was a Sun Cellular TV commercial converted for the Web. Tesoro's, a local store selling barong tagalog (national clothing in the Philippines), also ran a successful rich media ad on INQUIRER.net that generated 600 orders after a month, from a monthly average of only 100 orders.
"More and more advertisers are looking at these rich media ads," noted Paolo Prieto, INQUIRER.net president and CEO. “The challenge now is for agencies -- how they will take advantage of the technology and the different techniques made possible because of it.”
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