AgVoice | The Hunger For A Better Canvas

Search has shown advertisers the importance of science in digital marketing by emphasising the importance of targeting, measurability and a return on investment amongst other things. While search is a dominant segment in digital marketing, publishers have learnt how they can combine the art of display advertising with the sophistication of science to deliver great results for their advertisers.

Search is great for text-based keyword advertising. However, marketers are increasingly looking for a more creative canvas to carry their messages. By combining the science they have learnt from search marketing with the creativity that display advertising provides, marketers can now access the best of both worlds. Bringing art and science together means marketers can serve targeted ads to users that are visually impactful, highly creative and drive greater brand awareness and engagement.

This desire for a better canvas has driven publishers like Yahoo to offer more innovative ad formats that utilise the full potential of rich media. Rich media ads are designed to deliver greater brand visibility and studies by Yahoo! have found that rich media executions perform better on brand awareness metrics when compared with non-rich media ads with a 1.25x greater interaction rate.

New rich media ad formats are opening up a digital canvas to marketers in a way like never before and this will deliver a new wave of creativity to online advertising. For example, ads are no longer constrained by size with page takeovers providing a rich tapestry for creative agencies to work with. Advertisers are also increasingly using video ads just like a television commercial. These ad units offer an added advantage by allowing marketers to build a campaign that integrates a company's offline and online advertising initiatives.

The effectiveness of good display advertising is driving advertisers to look for more engaging ad formats and this has created a segment of experimental marketers who are willing to test new ad formats in their quest for more interactive and outstanding online canvases. With a range of rich media canvases at their disposal, marketers are turning to visually impactful formats such as video, page takeovers and wallpapers to achieve more immersive advertising experiences.

This demand for more creative ad units has driven publishers like Yahoo! to develop and deliver more innovative new ad formats. Most recently, Yahoo! introduced a push down ad format on OMG Indonesia. This push down format allows marketers to create a more interactive, brand-friendly creative unit by temporarily pushing down the content on a webpage.

Yahoo! has matched advanced targeting capabilities with the interest of consumers to deliver fully dynamic ads that are served according to an individual's profile such as behaviour, geography or lifestyle. These "Smart Ads' allow for an unlimited variety of creative executions to be created and served at a large scale and by combining science and creativity. Besides creating more targeted campaigns, marketers are assured of a stronger return on investment as these customised ads can deliver a more targeted message when compared with traditional campaigns.

Yahoo! has pushed the creative boundaries of display advertising further by offering its entire Login Page to advertisers. This bold format provide advertisers exposure to one of Yahoo!'s most trafficked online property, Yahoo! Mail, which is ranked in the top two categories by comScore across Asia Pacific. This unique opportunity allows advertisers to create an ad unit that fills the entire page making the experience more engaging for users.

Social advertising is another trend in digital advertising where marketers can engage and interact with users and create a sense of community. Yahoo's newly launched social ads are a powerful digital advertising solution that can generate word-of-mouth brand impact, exponential reach and increased engagement. Social ads enable viewers to comment on and share an ad with their friends on social networking platforms including Facebook, Twitter and Y!Buzz directly from the ad format.

Some of these rich ad formats are examples of how Yahoo! is changing the digital advertising landscape by offering immersive consumer experiences that marry advertising and premium content. However, research has shown that providing innovative ad formats alone isn't the only way to an attentive audience -- the creative itself plays an important role in a campaign's success.

A comScore ARS Study on the quality of online advertising and its relationship to sales have shown that 52% of all online advertising campaigns evaluated resulted in a shift in brand sales or market share in direct correlation to the quality of a creative. The success of a rich media campaign is highly dependent on a good creative concept. Having the right creative agency and producer partners will contribute significantly to a campaign's buzz and visibility.

While marketers and publishers attempt to rollout rich canvases, a user's experience on the Internet should never be compromised. Bandwidth considerations for Internet access in some Asian countries need to be taken into consideration when deciding whether rich media campaigns should be rolled out. While full HD video may provide a great creative canvas in high-bandwidth countries like Korea and Taiwan, it may not bode well for users in countries where Internet access speeds are not as fast and this may create a barrier towards a campaign's success.

Keeping the user's experience in mind, publishers and marketers need to strike a balance between being innovative and at the same time, being respectful of users needs. Ad units that are too intrusive, annoying or "noisy' may risk hurting a user's experience with the brand. It is important for creative agencies to design ads that meet a publishers' creative guidelines to ensure no negative user experiences occur.

Creative digital ad formats will continue to evolve and consumers will always be drawn to creative concepts they can connect with emotionally and are compelling. Marketers are only limited by their imagination and the hunger for a better canvas will always exist in a world where rich media is riding the wave. | By Paul Whiteway, Head of Custom Solutions, Yahoo! Asia Pacific.

About the writer:

Paul holds an Executive MBA from London Business School and is currently an Entrepreneur In Residence at INSEAD Singapore, where he coaches aspiring entrepreneurs. He enjoys cooking, travel and water sports.

Media
@adgully

News in the domain of Advertising, Marketing, Media and Business of Entertainment

More in Media