Report: Online Advertising Directors Dinner
- Added:
- Feb 26, 2007
The main trend was by far, video advertising, and our guest speaker, Carla Cotterell, Strategic Sales Director of Advertising.com was our guide. With 11 years experience in online advertising the most recent 3.5 years of which have been with Advertising.com in a role where her job is to develop longer term relationships and strategies for future client recruitment, she is well placed to know what's hot!
There are two types of video advertising, Pre-roll and In-banner. In-banner is where the ad appears during in a standard MPU placement. The ad will start playing automatically, but the user has to initiate the sound and can replay the ads at any time. All user interactions with in-banner ads can be tracked.
The pre-roll ads are played in front of content such as video news, movies, games. The sound plays automatically and the user has to watch the ad or else they can't view the content they've selected, meaning the advertiser has a captive audience.
Research shows that the optimum average watch time is 22 seconds and even if someone does click off the pre-roll video ad there is a related banner running on the web page next to the show box.
You do, of course, need to be careful about placement as popping in an FMCG ad just prior to the latest news update on the war on terrorism may not be the best idea. However this is your agencies job and they are experienced in placement on other media so should translate the skills to this new format.
Results-wise video ads perform 40% better than other rich media ads and as there is a correlation between this format and TV the hope is that the big brand dollars will be attracted to this format.
Ahhh but how much does it cost, you say?
Well its sold on a cpm (cost per thousand) basis and can be a high as a £135cpm but Advertising.com offer a standard cpm rate of £25 which is equivalent to rich media cpms.
The hope is that because its more comparable with TV and cinema that this form of online advertising could become very popular and its estimated that the £30 million euros currently spent across Europe on rich media advertising will quadruple by 2010.
All sounds good, doesn't it but there has been one major objection and that is that ads that have been produced for TV and could be repurposed for video ads may not always be available to do so. Apparently somewhere along the line someone forgot to get permission from the actors to run it online. This should be easily surmountable though as video advertising is planned into integrated campaigns from the off.
There are still many marketers who are not using online media to promote their brands and many of these hail from the FMCG sector but the familiarity of video advertising combined with further education on the bigger bang for your marketing buck that online can provide should encourage a few more into our way of thinking.
The online advertising dinner took place on Wednesday February 21st 2007.
If you would like to attend future Directors Dinners please email events@netimperative.com with your details and we'll add you to the list.
The next dinner takes place on Wednesday March 21st on user experience and is being hosted by Catriona Campbell, Chairman of Foviance. Click here for more details
by
Davina Lines
Managing Director
Netimperative