Ad Networks See Increased Adoption

The majority (69%) of media planners and agencies now use online advertising networks as part of their digital ad buys, representing a 24 percent increase in the past 18 months, according to a new study by Adify Media.

"Especially in light of the Dynamic Logic study that found that creative quality is 50 to 75 percent responsible for campaign success or failure, agencies must start evaluating the creative capabilities of networks," said Russ Fradin, president of Adify.

"As the industry looks for better ways to engage, not just reach, their audience, brands need to focus on compelling creative that builds an ongoing conversation with consumers and placing it where consumers spend time."

Other key findings from the survey include:

-- More money is being allocated online each quarter:
   - 56 percent of respondents' budgets were more than $500k in 2008.
     73 percent were over $500k in 2009.
   - In 2009, 37.9 percent of the respondents spend between $1-5 million
     per quarter on online advertising, 15.2 percent of respondents spend
     $5-20 million per quarter, and 5.9 percent spend more than $20 million
     per quarter on online advertising.

Branding is a major focus for online ad campaigns:
   - 83 percent of respondents allocate 50 percent or more of their budget
     to branding vs. direct response.

Awareness of vertical ad networks (VANs) continues to grow as a way to
   reach niche audiences:
   - 72 percent are familiar with VANs versus 56 percent in 2008.
 

Have You Read This?

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IAB Releases Ad Unit Guidelines Update

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released the 2009 update to its ad unit guidelines today. For the first time, the IAB is bringing in creative agencies for input on ad unit recommendations. Historically, these have only come from media agencies and publishers.

"By bringing agencies into the process of developing standard ad units, we have taken a step towards improving the creative output and branding potential for interactive media," says Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. "Our next order of business is to drive towards adoption of revised standards that we believe will spur increased investment in interactive advertising—we’ve already proven that there is no medium more accountable—now we have to bring all of its capabilities together to tell great stories to consumers—that’s what advertising is all about."

"Being a part of this process gave voice to the creative challenges that agencies faced with the existing standards, ad units, and technologies, and I believe we’ve found a solid way forward in overcoming those challenges," said Jim Russell, Partner, EVP, Director of Digital Strategy, McKinney. "Our goal was to simplify the existing list and I think we’ve developed a long-term strategy for doing this on behalf of the industry."

The working group created by the combination of creative agencies, media agencies, and publishers is called the Reimagining Interactive Advertising Task Force. The group has updated the criteria for standard ad units. It did so by looking at industry-wide impression count reports, ad unit availability, agency-side effectiveness reviews, and creative preferences. Two recommendations they made are:

- In order to be considered a standard, an ad unit must be commonly bought and offered throughout the marketplace; only seven of the eighteen ad units currently on the list meet the new criteria.

- Ad units will not be removed from the standard list in 2009, but must meet the criteria by the end of 2010

The whole IAB Ad Unit Guidelines update can be found here. Next year, the Task Force will release the first list of ad units.

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> IAB Releases Social Advertising Best Practices

> IAB Rolls Out Click Measurement Guidelines

> IAB Releases Definitions for Social Media Ad Metrics

> IAB Releases Video Ad Guidelines

 

iPhone Most Popular Touchscreen Device

Touchscreen mobile phone adoption in the U.S. showed a significant 159 percent growth rate during the past year to 23.8 million users, according to a new report from comScore.

The growth in touchscreen device adoption outpaced the already strong 63 percent growth in U.S. adoption of smartphones.

"Touchscreen phones have quickly gained adoption as new devices have flooded the mobile marketplace," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of Mobile. "It's clear that consumers are embracing touchscreen interfaces that allow them to easily navigate the increasingly powerful and complex services afforded by new phones.

"This is a trend that should continue to pick up as additional touchscreen devices, many of them running the Android operating system, arrive in the market before the holiday shopping season."

The Apple iPhone ranked as the top touchscreen device with 32.9 percent of touchscreen users age 13 and older, nearly four times larger than the market share of the next largest device, the LG Dare (8.7%). LG Voyager ranked third with 7.8 percent of the market, followed by the Blackberry Storm (7%) and Palm Treo (6.5%).

"The iPhone clearly set the trend in the industry for touchscreen devices, so it's no surprise that it has the largest share of the market," said Donovan.

"But as other players have entered the touchscreen market with compelling devices, competition is clearly heating up."

Unsurprisingly, smartphones in general and touchscreen devices specifically tend to be more popular among younger users. While 38.8 percent of all mobile subscribers are under the age of 35, 51.4 percent of smartphone users are in the same age group, as are 57.7 percent of touchscreen device users.

 

Related Articles:

> Bing Gets More Mobile Features In The US

> Apple Fans Respond To The "Droid Does"Advertising Campaign

> UPS Launches App For iPhone Users

 

Email Marketing in a Mobile, Social Media World

It is an interesting time for email marketing right now. Though it is still a quite effective medium for marketers, there are many challenges to deal with. This was the subject of a session moderated by David Daniels of Forrester Research at the Shop.org summit in Las Vegas this week.

What do you see as the biggest challenges for email marketing campaigns? Comment here.

Email contributes to the overload of information that Internet users face on a daily basis. The web is not as simple as it used to be. People have more information coming at them than ever before, be it from social networks, RSS feeds, email, or whatever. Spam continues to plague inboxes (not that these other channels are immune), and that complicates things even more. Now add to that, the increasing use of the mobile web. One may assume that social networks are taking over or even replacing email, but one would be wrong.

Email is not dying because of social media. "Email is still a key tool in social communication," says Daniels. "Understanding audience engagement is key."

Email portability adoption is increasing. For example, just this week Google launched email syncing for Gmail to smartphones (meaning iPhone users can get their gmail accounts synced between their iPhone and their PC). This will make it easier for iPhone users to keep up with their accounts on the go.

Daniels suggests using SMS (text messaging) as an opt-in point for email subscriptions, as well as rendering and supporting the call to action.

Considering that people have their phones with them pretty much at all times, email marketers shouldn't be overlooking mobile. Consider these stats that Daniels provides:

- 25% of email subscribers provide website recommendations
- 20% online buyers post on average 9 product reviews a year
- 77% of the online population find those reviews more useful than the info the company provides

While social media may not be replacing email, it's obviously still growing rapidly. You may have heard that Facebook alone just surpassed the 300 million-user milestone a couple weeks ago. That's close to the same amount of people that make up the entire population of the United States, to put that into perspective.

Many companies are utilizing social media and integrating it into their email marketing campaigns. There's no reason why you shouldn't be doing the same. Incorporate Facebook pages, Twitter, and/or MySpace accounts into campaigns. You can further engage with customers, and in turn keep interest in your emails going.

The key is to stay relevant to users. According to Daniels, "relevance empowered" mailings deliver more top and bottom line improvement than broadcast. He gave a few recommendations for implementation:

- For one, become an advocate for change, and address your organization's readiness to embrace it.

- Secondly, understand the value of subscribers, and focus on their behaviors.

- He says to make it easy for consumers to share info with a lot of people quickly, but to learn about specific social behaviors of customers before creating your social strategy.

- And last, but not least, to "test, test, test."

I'll add a couple of my own cents, and suggest that once your email campaign is integrated into social media, it becomes fair game for going viral and for being found in real-time searches. Essentially, your campaign can be taken from the inboxes of subscribers and expanded out onto the real-time web.

Email marketers shouldn't fear social media. They should embrace it. Of course, campaigns will need to be compelling enough to get people to want to share them.

WebProNews reporter Abby Johnson contributed to this article from Shop.org in Las Vegas.

Do you integrate social media into your email marketing campaigns? Talk to ArisYulianta and Friends... about your results.

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