Guest comment: Safety vs. Creativity – what 2010 has in store for online advertising

There’s no doubt that even in a growth medium such as digital, 2009 has been a tough year for advertising budgets; whether they’ve been reduced, pulled completely or are facing ever increased pressures to ‘deliver value’.

To satisfy this, the overall trend we’ve seen has been the reduction in perceived risk on media schedules, with many plans sticking to broad-reach display space buys. The measure of success has also often reverted to the easy statistic of the click-through rate, even for many brand led advertisers with little call-to-action in their creative executions.

You would think that this increase in demand for space would push up CPMs (cost per thousand) but, with such incredible amounts of ad-inventory becoming increasingly available - particularly in social spaces or on sites with low-dwell times - overall yields are in a rapid downward spiral. At first glance, this achieves some of the goals highlighted above, as advertisers are without doubt buying a lot more space for a lot less money.

However, we must analyse the value that campaigns of this nature generate depending on a client’s overall goals. If you simply need to elicit clicks, then ads-as-commodities absolutely need to be bought as cheaply / targeted as possible in order to generate volume. Yet if the advertiser wants to engage with or inspire a user to consider their products, display ads exposed briefly to users skipping through pages will have massive wastage; they’ll hardly be seen let alone clicked on.

There are far better ways to make every touch-point with a possible customer count. Perhaps in part looking forward to a more optimistic 2010 (and almost as a direct backlash to the ‘safety first’ approach deemed necessary in recent months), the past few weeks have seen a definite trend toward creative solutions being requested once again in response to briefs. Once we stray beyond the safe-zone of display space though, generating this missing impact can require additional creativity and resource in both planning and execution. This can raise a few alarms; the media-buy alternatives to display space such as sponsorships, takeovers and content partnerships are generally seen as much more expensive, time-consuming and risky routes to take.

Yet this absolutely shouldn’t be the case. We’re lucky that digital offers fast moving and almost infinite creativity, with new solutions being developed daily. Helping achieve clients’ goals should be possible without resorting to stratospheric pricing to compensate for the aforementioned collapse in CPM rates.

Many of our publishers routinely run targeted sponsorships, takeovers and ad-supported content that we know will absolutely outperform display formats. For example, a recent campaign for a major phone network had a fun message and strong call to action in both the display formats and in the bespoke takeover we ran. Our takeover generated an incredible 4100%+ increase in interactions vs. the display space. It’s not an isolated example either. In supporting past advertisers, a wide spectrum of our publishers have created one-off campaigns such as animated series, gaming tournaments or unique editorial aimed at specific interest groups or audiences.

All of the above elicited huge interaction rates and dwell times vs. the companion standard ad format campaigns and I’m positive many other media-owners can lay claim to similar success stories as well. The common factor across all the examples quoted is that they were constructed and priced to deliver creative solutions at minimal risk to the client, such as guaranteed exposure, plays or user visits. Being able to deliver such guarantees is only achieved by understanding what the user finds intriguing and supporting the campaign fully, not just running ‘traffic-driving’ display ads as a way to bulk out the media cost.

The creativity that digital allows means that it’s possible for media owners to shape their beyond-banner ad solutions to have the most chance of stand-out, success and user engagement. Of course, while this needs to be married to a client’s campaign message, when you price and execute bespoke campaigns correctly the results can be hugely impressive and generate far greater results than a banner ad.

So, which is the really safe option to go with?

By Dan McDevitt

Director

w00t!media

www.w00tmedia.net

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