Online Ad Revenues On the Rise

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers released their latest Internet advertising numbers for the third quarter. According to the organizations, Internet advertising revenues reached nearly $5.5 billion for the quarter. That is an increase of 1.7% from the second quarter.

The numbers are still significantly down from the same period last year, but any increase is a good sign of things to come. There has been a 5.4% decline from last year.

"The Internet has transformed the consumer experience of media, providing marketers with unprecedented opportunities to engage with their customers," said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB. "The advertising sector overall has been hard hit by the economy, but digital media has been a bright spot within the larger economic downturn as it is capturing an ever-increasing piece of marketers’ advertising spend."

"While all segments of the media industry have experienced declines, online advertising remains resilient and is once again showing signs of growth," said David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.

The information from the IAB/PWC is considered the most accurate measurement of interactive ad revenue, the IAB says, because its compiled directly from info supplied by companies selling advertising on the web. The IAB releases a full report twice a year to reflect half-year periods. It will be interesting to see how the second half of the year plays out in its entirety.

Have You Read This?

> Online Advertising is Having a Big Year

> Online Ad Revenue Tops $10 Billion

> IAB Releases Ad Unit Guidelines Update

AdTweets Seek to Promote Retweeting of Ads

Businesses and ad networks are increasingly finding new ways to integrate social media and advertising. This is evident with AdKnowledge's recent acquisition of SocialMedia.com's ad network, and it is also evident with TweetMeme's new AdTweets. AdTweets is a product, which TweetMeme says is designed to reward advertisers for using engaging advertisements.

"The Adtweets are a way of putting pressure on advertisers to improve the standard of adverts, and give the audience a chance to decide, and essentially vote, on what they like," says TweetMeme's Nick Halstead. "Produce a good advert that your audience likes, and you can easily tap into the viral nature of Twitter and the ‘retweet effect’, which will then dramatically increase your reach."

The TweetMeme retweet button can be integrated into any standard IAB ad size, as the company points out. Still, advertisers can choose between a compact button or the standard button. AdTweets can also utilize TweetMeme's analytics to monitor the success of a campaign.

TweetMeme has also re-launched "Featured Tweets," which help promote specific stories and encourage the sharing of content to other Twitter users.

"The potential value of the featured tweets was apparent in the first version, but there were some essential elements missing," says Halstead. "After taking on board invaluable feedback from both users and customers, the service was suspended. It was back to the drawing board, and what has emerged is a new Featured Tweet system that sponsors can use to bring relevant news and stories quickly to the attention of the TweetMeme Community, who then have the opportunity to retweet the story to their Twitter Followers and so on."

According to TweetMeme, the purpose of Featured Tweets is to give stories that have a good chance of going viral, a "helping hand." They are supposedly better targeted now, include analytics, and there are a reduced number of sponsored stories per page.


Have You Read This?

> What's Been Going on with TweetMeme?

> More to Retweeting Than Meets the Eye for Businesses?

> TweetMeme Bringing Analytics to the Retweet Table

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.

Have You Read This?

> Marketing Best Practices for Long Form Video

> 7 Behavioral Targeting Privacy Principles

> IAB Announces Guidelines for In-Game Ad Standards

> 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

 

Thinking Beyond Facebook and Twitter for Social Relevance

When you think about social media marketing or building your social media presence, you probably think about Facebook or Twitter, or perhaps YouTube or MySpace. That's good. These are some of the top places on the Internet where people are spending their time online.

What online communities do you focus on? Comment here.

That said, there are probably plenty of places that you are either overlooking or just plain ignoring. They might not have the broad user-bases of the aforementioned services, but there are people there, and the more people you can reach and engage with, the better off you may be in some cases (depending on your goals for social network use).

According to Hitwise data, the top ten social networking websites and forums by US market share of visits looked like this:

To be clear, the Hitwise data from which MarketingCharts compiled the above graph is based on US market share of visits as defined by the IAB, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from Hitwise's sample of 10 million US internet users. It's unclear exactly what all kinds of sites fall into the social networks category.

But the point is that there are a lot of places out there where people are forming communities that you may not be thinking of, but may provide plenty of opportunities for driving more engagement, brand awareness, and/or even traffic.

Are you considering things like Tagged or Yahoo Profiles/Groups? Are you considering the forums out there that pertain to your niche? Forums are relevant in social media marketing. I've discussed this in the past. Forums are basically social networks. They're communities too. You have to think about where the people are, and not just where they are, but where they are talking. Where they're communicating with others.

Forums or other more narrow communities may even prove to be more valuable tools than Facebook or Twitter in some cases. They are more likely to be focused on specific niches, than on the general public. There are certainly plenty of times where the general public - the Facebook/Twitter crowds are who you are trying to reach, but there will be other times when you may want to reach a specific group of people, which may or may not be a part of Facebook or Twitter.

Look at Ford for example. Scott Monty, who runs the social media efforts for the Ford Motor Company recently told WebProNews that they use all sorts of forms of social media, because "Let's face it, people are using all sorts of forms."

"We try to be where the mainstream are and we do it in a way that humanizes the company at every turn, so we're on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, Delicious, and upcoming as our major platforms," he said. "And we're constantly monitoring to see what the trends are and where people are going, so that we're relevant."

The key word there is relevant. Go where you're relevant.

What are some less thought about communities that you use to engage with people? Discuss here.

Have You Read This?
 

> Forums Are Relevant in Social Media Marketing

> How Big Brands Use Social Media

> Some Brands Have Good Ideas For Social Media. Do You?

> Using Facebook Traffic to Drive Brand Loyalty

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