Video Ads and Contextual Placement

Interesting research from VideoEgg came out on MediaPost. They've indicated that Video Ads are (duh) much more engaging than Traditional Online Ads. The more interesting bit comes at the end, where they discuss that Contextual Ad Placement did not make material difference whether it was placed in a relevant or non-relevant site.

I think there's a lot of promise in the idea of Contextual and Behavioral Advertisement Placement -- but the article does emphasize that the quality of the ad is still paramount in activating that relationship between Environment/Context and Ad Recall.

Study: Engagement Key for Rich Media Video Ads
March 16, 2010

-By Mike Shields

When it comes to rich media ads on the Internet that employ video, engagement really matters. Environment, not so much.

That’s the major, and perhaps, surprising takeaway from a new research study conducted by VideoEgg and comScore. The two companies surveyed the opinions of 14,000 Web users, who were presented with ad campaigns of various types of Web sites from six top brands: Doritos, GE, Hyundai, Telus, Toshiba and Alliance Releasing.

Specifically, the study examined the effectiveness of rich media video ads versus traditional banner ads. The idea was to prove the theory that banner ads which contain video are more engaging. And the more engaging a Web ad is the more it can impact brand metrics such as aided and unaided awareness.

In addition, the study looked to gauge whether site environment—particularly contextual relevance—played a role in how well such ads performed.

Overall, video ads proved to be more engaging, found the study—and engaging ads move the needle better than standard ads. Not surprising was that VideoEgg’s own AdFrame units, expandable placements that take over a portion of a Web page, were roughly twice as impactful as standard IAB banners when it comes to driving awareness.

“What we saw was the overwhelming power of engagement to change metrics,” said VideoEgg president Troy Young. “Online advertising is really easy to ignore. Knowing you have someone’s attention really matters. The takeaway here if you want your propaganda to work [is] get people to engage with it.”

But more eye-opening was the study’s findings on the importance of environment, or lack thereof. When conducting the survey, VideoEgg and comScore classified sites running video rich media banners into three groups: branded sites, smaller but still contextually relevant sites and noncontextually relevant sites. According to Young, while users responded to branded sites more favorably, ads on those sites were not any more engaging than they were on non-contextually relevant sites.

“There was not a significant difference in performance across environments,” said Young. “There is a relationship between environment and ad for some brands, but a great ad transcends environment.”

That will surely rile up some big brand publishers, who make their living on selling the importance of context. And many won’t love the idea that the study was commissioned by VideoEgg, itself a leading ad network.

But Young says the study proves context isn’t always worth paying extra for: “The implication here is, for a lot of media plans, premium environments may not be worth a three-times or five-times premium price.”

Webisode Links

Just checked out the webisodes... They are pretty fun to watch...


Great Bertoli Webisode site. conjures up memories of great al dente meals in the towns of Tuscany.... Makes me want to go back to Italy:

http://intotheheartofitaly.yahoo.com/#18448076

Breyer's Smooth and Dreamy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBc_pFcwCbE

Turn the Tub Around from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Bo5DhUxtTw

Branded Entertainment

Here's a great article from Ad Age rouching on the current state of the branded entertainment (particularly webisodes) market. Ad Agencies really are turning more and more into Media companies as they get involved in creating branded entertainment content for Marketers.

How Madison & Vine Moved to Silicon Valley

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- If you're looking for the intersection of Madison Avenue and Vine today, you're more likely to find yourself somewhere in Silicon Valley.

When Madison & Vine made its debut in Ad Age in 2004, branded entertainment was still somewhat of a novelty to many sectors of Hollywood and the ad community. Cut to 2010, and the connection between brands and entertainment is cemented, and a robust ecosystem has flourished.



BIG SCREEN HITS THE WEB: Breyer's 'Smooth & Dreamy.' Today, brands are increasingly seeking to develop proprietary content and in some cases are becoming media producers on their own. This innovation is taking place on the web, and the key players producing original branded content come largely from outside of Hollywood's circle of A-Listers.

Efforts from stalwarts such as ABC Studios, Turner and United Talent Artists have folded, and a crop of mostly digital branded-entertainment shops has grown in their place. The web has emerged as the biggest breeding ground for branded entertainment, as sponsored web series crop up by the dozen.

What killed off some of the first entrants into the space was the belief that the web could be like TV, at least economically, and that eyeballs would naturally follow. But producing TV-like projects with six- and seven-figure TV-like budgets without sponsors or a network to offset the costs upfront quickly became unsustainable. Now, brands and producers are partnering earlier and more extensively than ever, with marketing budgets often replacing the thumbs-up from a network executive as the new greenlight.

New class
Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the influx of production companies and branded-entertainment divisions at media agencies and the TV networks that have cropped up to develop and distribute these new webisodes -- from the MSNs, Yahoos and MySpaces of the web-portal world to indie production companies such as Jordan Levin's Generate, "Lizzie Maguire" creator Stan Rogow's Electric Farm, Michael Eisner's Vuguru or Ashton Kutcher's Katalyst to recent online forays from established TV producers such as Reveille, Endemol, Fremantle and Magical Elves.

Even PR firm Edelman recognized the web as an emerging destination for branded storytelling -- in 2006, it acquired production company Matter Entertainment to develop projects for its marketing clients that could accomplish more than any press release.

Nathan Coyle, who leads the branded-entertainment practice at Creative Artists Agency and helped kick-start the next wave of sponsored web video by introducing brands into YouTube's "LonelyGirl15" series, credits the 2008 Writers Guild of America strike as a point of motivation for these new players.

"When you can't do your job, it accelerates your creativity and the metaphorical and actual bandwidth to create these new projects," he said. "We learned with shows like 'Quarter Life' [on MySpace] that the publishers aggregating the eyeballs aren't equipped to manage talent, so if you're going to find the money to make these shows, you have to go straight to the advertisers."


Keeping up with Madison & Vine online
Madison & Vine, Ad Age's original cross-section of the New York ad community and Hollywood, will be taking a broad look during the next year at the key players, projects and platforms in the digital branded-entertainment arena. Whether it's keeping tabs on established players, checking in with the media agencies and marketing firms that continue to staff up their branded-content divisions or profiling the newest studios and media companies entering the space, check in with M&V on AdAge.com for reporting from the frontlines of the friendly war between content and commerce.
It's difficult to quantify the exact figure spent on such deals. PQ Media estimates branded webisodes and in-game advertising, or advergaming, grew 15.1% to $306 million in 2009, with the web accounting for a small, additional chunk of the $3.95 billion spent on product placements last year. If Madison & Vine was about collaboration between marketers and media companies, then this new digital stage is about control. "Five years ago, the content creators were reluctant to collaborate; they didn't see the brands had any place in the conversation with networks," said Scott Donaton, who launched Madison & Vine and wrote a book of the same name in 2004 while editor of Ad Age. "[On TV], there's a lot of objectives the brand has no control over. In the digital space, you can work the other way to develop and design the content and control the audience. Now you have a chance, as a brand, to meet your objectives and find your audience."

Overwhelmingly digital
In his new role as CEO of Ensemble, a division of Interpublic Group of Cos., Mr. Donaton oversees branded-entertainment projects for media agencies Universal McCann and Initiative, and estimates 60% of the new-business pitches he receives from clients are for digital projects, while 35% are for TV and the remaining 5% for music and film.

For some, investing in digital content is a post-recession efficiency play. It's possible to delve into digital content for the same or often less cost of 30-second TV commercials. One branded-entertainment veteran said productions can cost as little as $20,000 or as much as several million dollars, depending on the number of locations, the quality of the video production and the cost of the talent. Although A-list stars aren't paid TV-level fees for their web work just yet, they're often earning paychecks "well into the six figures," said the executive.

Pepsi is leading the charge of marketers investing heavily in web video as an alternative to TV. That's Pepsi behind the sponsored "Blue Room" in the just-launched "If I Can Dream," a live-streaming talent competition from 19 Entertainment, producers of "American Idol" and "So You Think You Can Dance," and Mtn Dew behind the MySpace/Paramount digital series "Circle of Eight." Up next: an animated series for Sierra Mist and collaborations with IAC's CollegeHumor and Electus, the production company created by former Reveille producer and NBC entertainment chief Ben Silverman.

As Frank Cooper, Pepsi's chief consumer engagement officer, put it, "Yes, more money is moving into digital and should move into digital, but we have to maintain a healthy budget on TV. However, you should push that TV button at the right time in the process for communicating to consumers -- it should not be your default switch."

Breakthrough hits
Unilever, along with media agency MindShare Entertainment, has produced what have arguably become web video's biggest branded success stories. It started in 2007 with "In the Motherhood," an MSN series created for Suave and Sprint starring Chelsea Handler and Leah Remini that eventually became an ABC sitcom, or "The Rookie," a "24"-themed series for Degree that also aired during the Fox series, both produced with Santa Monica, Calif.-based Science & Fiction.

More recently, its projects have become 30-second spot/webisode hybrids, pairing celebs such as "30 Rock"'s Jane Krakowski with Breyer's Ice Cream ("Smooth & Dreamy"), Megan Mullally with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter ("Turn The Tub Around") and Marisa Tomei with Bertolli Pasta ("Into the Heart of Italy"), all in the name of using TV as a push to original content on the web.



Suave and Sprint's 'In the Motherhood' "The wonderful component of digital is that there's an unbelievable amount of tracking and monitoring of consumer engagement," said Rob Master, director of media for Unilever North America, which has been active in the digital space since 2007, when it launched "In the Motherhood." "We're looking at everything from time spent to where users are viewing the content on our site, our partner sites and the rich-media units themselves, to length of time of these webisodes or entertainment shorts. There's really no clear-cut answer, yet other than it depends on the brand, objective and target. But we're starting to understand how much time a guy wants to spend with short-form content vs. a woman, and that insight is helping us."

There have been casualties along the way. Many web shows are sitting on the shelves of digital studios waiting for an advertiser to rescue them. Meanwhile, sponsor budgets and renewals for existing projects came in later and smaller than most companies could afford -- if they came at all. Startups such as Mania TV and Ripe Digital drained their venture funding while waiting for advertisers.

"If you think about the videos that do well online, it takes time to develop that audience," said Albert Cheng, ABC's exec VP-digital media, of Stage 9, which distributed two series, "Squeegees" and "Voicemail," before folding. "It could also very well be the nature of the content we were putting on. People weren't ready for that type of production quality."

Keeping at it
That doesn't mean they're not ready for TV talent on the web. The web's few major success stories -- Joss Whedon's "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog," Marshall Herskowitz and Edward Zwick's "Quarter Life" and MSN's "In the Motherhood," directed by "30 Rock" and "Roseanne" veteran Gail Mancuso -- were all the direct results of having proven storytellers.

ABC.com, for its part, took its learnings from Stage 9 to focus on creating web spinoffs of popular on-air shows such as "Ugly Betty" ("Mode After Hours"), "Lost" ("Dharma") and "Grey's Anatomy" ("Seattle Grace On Call").

And not all the big networks and studios have given up. NBC, meanwhile, has been leading the charge of TV networks fully invested in creating original digital content, recently attracting sponsors such as Hidden Valley Ranch ("Garden Party"), American Family Insurance ("In Gayle We Trust") and Nestea ("CTRL") and name talent such as Jennie Garth and "Arrested Development's" Tony Hale.

Fox recently hired comic-book veteran Roger Mincheff to run its branded-entertainment division and develop projects for News Corp.'s digital entity. CBS is expected to put a larger stake in the game in the near term, and Viacom's Atom.com has been doubling as an in-house studio to develop branded content for Comedy Central, Spike and GameTrailers.com for brands such as Ford, Sony, Intel and Trojan condoms. Even young-male-targeted Break.com planted a bigger stake in the game last year when it acquired HBO's digital studio after the pay-cable network struggled to find sponsors for its digital series.

"Four years ago, clients were dipping their toe in branded entertainment. Now we're at the lessons-learned stage," said David Lang, president of MindShare, the WPP agency that produced many of Unilever's webisodes, and created 14 projects in 2009 alone. "It's very important to not just have the touchy-feely soft data points but verified proof that we're meeting our clients' goals and objectives."

Help Flo

I just found an amusing website that Progressive Insurance has been airing. The HelpFlo campaign (http://www.helpflo.com/) has people creating and uploading videos to explain to Progressive why they would make a great companion to Flo, Progressive's quintessentially cheery advertising personality. A set of winners will be chosen and flown to tryouts in LA to appear in an ad, and, if they're any good, become part of the running set of Flo-based Progressive Insurance commercials.

Great way to save money on nationwide tryouts!

The campaign's been going on since January 24th, and there are about 1,350 video entries to date, so competition's fierce. And Progressive doesn't have to pay a cent to YouTube for this.

Automating Campaign Management

Interesting perspective into the operational problems within agencies around search marketing and digital campaign management... Automating campaign management -- could this be another industry on the verge of disrupting the status quo at Digital Agences?

Razorfish Finds Efficiencies Automating Ad Processes
by Laurie Sullivan, 11 hours ago

Agencies looking to grow business need to search for ways to shave time off buying media and other processes to reduce operating costs. Companies ready to rebuild and recover from a downturn often look to software automation after cutting expenses to the bone to survive. Following the latest downturn, it appears that advertising and marketing execs are ready to give it a try.

Susan Wojcicki, vice president of product management at Google, recently pointed to technology from the Mountain View, Calif. search engine that would assist the transition to this emerging business models aimed at automating processes. The assertion was made during the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting 2010 in Carlsbad, Calif. late last month.

Agencies with in-house technology departments looked to keep up with APIs distributed by companies willing to share software and services, but now some find it more efficient to rely on help from the third-party companies, such as Marin Software.

When the electronics industry went through this automation surge, executives sang the mantra "focus on what we do best and outsource the rest." Razorfish took that advice and shaved hours from each search marketers' day, of which more than 100 support the agency.

"Everyone knows it needs to be done, but no one has put true numbers behind the automation," says Matt Lawson, director of marketing at Marin.

Razorfish has reduced the time spent on daily bidding, reporting, and campaign management by up to 50% for many of its brand-name SEM accounts, driving gains from efficiencies for its clients' large-scale paid-search marketing campaigns.

The search marketing team in the U.S. manages hundreds of accounts for more than 50 large brands, including Victoria's Secret, J. Crew, Shutterfly, Starwood, Weight Watchers, Disney, Polo Ralph Lauren, and CapitalOne.

Razorfish needed an application that could efficiently handle the paid-search programs of diverse clients. Those needs range from automating reporting for analysis and trend spotting to geographic targeting features for large accounts. It also requires an easy-to-use optimization and creative testing features for smaller accounts.

The ability to automate processes enabled Razorfish account managers and account executives to squeeze costs from bid management and reporting to campaign analysis and optimization, while managers use the dashboard to get a view of program performance.

Razorfish also managed to squeeze efficiencies from mobile campaigns. Experiments with mobile and local targeting drove higher click-through rates and conversions at a lower cost for the advertiser. Generated conversions on mobile devices were 7.5% more cost-efficient than conversions on desktop computers. With Marin technology, the agency also tested ad copy to increase conversion rates by 9.3% on mobile ads.

Marin supports 20 agencies. In aggregate, the group spends hundreds of millions of dollars in paid-search advertising.

Olympics and Yahoo!

The numbers are in... Yahoo! emerged as the website winner of the Olympics (at least in terms of Unique Visitor metrics) ahead of NBC. Interesting how new media aggregators can usurp the stage from traditional media carriers, especially considering how much NBC paid to cover the Olympics. Another example of disruption... Shouldn't the networks be worried?

I wonder if this "aggregator" disruption can start siphoning off significant shares from TV's non-live events? Instead of going to ABC's Lost site, what if they are able to get richer and more engaging information from an aggregator's site?

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=123786

Yahoo Wins Olympics Gold, Curling Drives Search
by Mark Walsh, Yesterday, 10:10 PM

Yahoo took gold in the online Olympics ratings, beating out NBC handily in total audience. The Web portal's Olympic site drew 32 million unique visitors during the 17 days of the Winter Games, compared to 19 million each for NBCOlympics.com and ESPN.com, according to comScore.

Yahoo Sports as a whole benefited from the Olympics-driven traffic surge, attracting 40 million users during the event. Because of its larger audience, Yahoo was also tops in overall time spent, at 314 million minutes to NBC's 218 million.

But the Peacock Network, which again broadcast the Games on TV and offered exclusive content on its Olympics site, claimed some engagement-related victories of its own. NBC averaged 11.5 minutes per visitor during the event compared to 9.7 for Yahoo, and 17.8 pages per visitor to 7.3 for Yahoo.

Based on internal reporting from Omniture, NBC last week said it served more than 45 million video streams from the Olympics and doubled its page views over the 2006 Winter Games to 710 million. Four years ago, the network said it had only 310 million page views and served only 8.4 million streams.

NBC's internal figures also showed a total online Olympics audience of 46 million -- more than double the comScore number. "Internal numbers, as you can imagine, can be wildly inflated," said a Yahoo spokesperson of the higher NBC estimate.

Taking the broader view, content delivery network Akamai said it provided more than 5,000 hours of live and on-demand video during the Games to a dozen broadcast partners, including NBC and Yahoo. At its peak, on Feb. 28, when the U.S. played Canada for the hockey gold medal, Akamai served 2.4 million pages per second. Not surprisingly, the bulk of that traffic came from North America and Europe, the regions that dominate winter sports.

Who were the online Olympics stars? Telegenic U.S. skier Lindsey Vonn was the most searched-for athlete on Yahoo -- and curling, the unlikely hit of the Vancouver Games, was the most-searched sport. Searches on esoteric queries like, "how heavy is a curling stone" and "why does Apolo Ohno yawn" were also very popular, according to Yahoo. Who doesn't know how much a curling stone weighs?

Repo Men and Bar Codes

More on mobile interactive barcodes!

Of course, if no standards are established for this service, someone's going to eventually reap the lion's share, collecting high rents for anyone who wants to use barcodes with the most number of "compatible" viewers. Good position to be in, but I'm sure Apple will take a good chunk of that value chain too!

Universal Uses Barcodes To Capture 'Repo Men' Fans
by Mark Walsh, 5 hours ago

Movie studios are often at the leading edge in digital advertising and Universal Pictures is no exception in its cross-media campaign for "Repo Men," the futuristic thriller starring Jude Law that opens Mar. 19.

Capitalizing on the growing popularity of mobile barcodes and tying into the movie's plot, the effort makes UPC barcodes a key element of its promotional push. Since Feb. 1, Universal has placed barcodes from startup Occipital, in 30,000 outdoor movie posters in 15 cities including New York and Los Angeles.

When the codes -- also embedded in online ads -- are scanned by iPhone owners using Occipital's Red Laser application, they get access to content including video teasers for "Repo Men." The film takes place in the near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit, but also repossessed when users fall behind in their payments.

In that vein, the barcodes also include fictional movie-themed ads showing synthetic organs with snarky taglines, such as an artificial heart beneath copy reading: "Go ahead. Have The Cheeseburger." Another pushes a liver upgrade with: "We Encourage You To Drink Irresponsibly."

Barcodes also feature prominently in the film as a way for the organ repo men, including Law and co-star Forest Whitaker, to track transplant recipients.

Ben Blatt, manager of digital marketing for Universal Pictures, said the campaign developed with digital agency 360i and creative shop Visionaire marked the first time the studio has deployed barcodes in movie advertising.

Media companies and marketers from Hearst magazine to Sprint are increasingly using mobile barcodes to deliver coupons, product information and other content to cell phone users instantly. So it's hardly surprising that a major movie studio would deploy barcodes to help sell movie tickets.

While Blatt wouldn't discuss results of the effort so far, he said the studio was pleased with the approach appealing to the young male, tech-savvy demographic that can help build buzz for a sci-fi film like "Repo Men." "It's not a mass market reach, but a complementary mobile extension for the campaign," he said.

To that end, the promotion also includes a nationwide contest in which participants are challenged to find four "Runners" -- mysterious figures trying to evade capture. A Runner that lasts a month without getting caught will win $10,000. But contestants who can catch one will win $7,500.

To help spread word of the game virally, Universal partnered with Lone Shark Games and Wired, where writer Evan Ratliff last year went on the lam and was tracked by a horde of techno-hunters as part of the magazine's Vanish contest. For the Repo Men treasure hunt, players follow clues dropped online and via barcodes.

But the movie isn't aimed only at geeks. To reach a broader audience, Blatt said Universal begin making a bigger promotional push online and on TV in the next two weeks, including a YouTube home page takeover on Wednesday. The Red Laser barcode will appear in the large masthead ad for "Repo Men" on YouTube.

"We're definitely going after a wider audience," said Blatt. "For us, this was just kind of an interesting thing to try, and we're always trying to do new things -- and whenever we get the chance to tie in to creative ad elements with film, it works better."