Creative holiday greetings

So Parker, Wayne & Kent made this video, has anyone else done anything like this for Christmas / New Year?

Tremor's aggressive drive for European interactive video ad dominance

Tremor Media is making changes to secure its position as the dominant online video ad network in Europe. These changes follow a rapid surge in demand for social media-enabled interactive online video ad formats.

Tremor Media, creators of the ground-breaking Acudeo online ad monetization platform, have bolstered their European team with senior expertise and new hires in preparation for European market maturity. In an attempt to align the US and EU businesses, Dan Ruch, former senior US business development director, has been promoted to vice president.

Tremor Media recently ranked second only to YouTube for unique video views in the UK. With its new hires and the promotion of vChoice, a tool which allows for the integration of social media, online gaming and other interactive elements into online video ads, it is set to become a leader in the online video ad market.

“The European video market is growing at an astounding rate,” said Ruch. “Agencies are keen to exploit the most desirable online content to engage targeted audiences with ground-breaking interactive ad units, like vChoice. The momentum in the market is clear and our investment in Europe will maximise the market opportunity.”

Similar changes are also taking place at Tremor’s Munich and London offices. Alexandra Meier and Alexander Wright are coming to Tremor from Microsoft and OTP Media respectively. Tremor Media’s CEO, Jason Glickman, said, “We’ve experienced frenzied growth of the US online video landscape and Europe’s video marketplace is on the brink of exploding. We will be capitalising on the market’s momentum to become the world’s de facto industry standard for online video content monetization, advertising reach and innovation.”

Friends Reunited tackles 1 in 4 emails blocked

Friends Reunited has boosted its inbox deliverability rate by nearly 40 per cent after just one month of working with email experts Return Path.


27 per cent of around 30 million emails sent by the social network every month were going missing completely - totally undelivered, not in its subscribers’ spam folders or inboxes – and one in twenty (5.7 per cent) were ending up in subscribers’ spam folders. The number of emails going missing or being delivered to spam folders has now fallen dramatically to just 7.5 per cent.

The figures reflect Return Path’s findings that social networks’ email is marked as spam 100 per cent more often than email from other sectors. Social networking sites suffer from this comparatively poor email reputation due to high volumes of spam complaints. This often results in them becoming so-called ‘friendly fire casualties’ with many of their emails being blocked at ISP level.

Friends Reunited has engaged Return Path’s comprehensive set of monitoring tools in an effort to better understand why their emails are being marked as spam. Friends Reunited's Chief Technical Officer, Duncan Careless, has described email deliverability and reputation as ‘imperative’ to the growth of their subscriber base and to keep in touch with their users.

Friends Reunited and Return Path say they will continue to work together closely to achieve 100 per cent email inbox deliverability.

Benefits of Internet Big Brothers’ Behaviour

The internet is not anonymous. Google, Yahoo and AOL record your search information for up to eighteen months after you first click the “search” button; but whilst this may conjure up images of a Big Brother-esque state the reality is more positive. Few would object to the information being used to find terrorists or serious criminals, and there are benefits even for the average consumer. Some websites are fostering a “village store” mentality; they build up a relationship with their customers based on past shopping habits and recommend items of interest to them. The customer loves rock-music; an ad appears reminding them of their half-price sale on all rock albums. Sites suggest that, having bought a new car, useres might check out another site offering great deals on car insurance. This service, known as behavioural targeting, has come about through monitoring browsing history, sometimes from the moment you log on to the internet. It has become a contentious issue in marketing as issues of privacy war with those of profitability.

Behavioural targeting works by monitoring your internet activity across various websites and then recommending things you may be interested in through advertising. There are three different types: first-party targeting where user behaviour is tracked by means of a cookie on a specific website; "network" advertising where sites contract with each other to share the data about user journeys; and the most contentious: ISP based behavioural targeted advertising. Whilst ISP networks operate on the same principles as the previous two, the data gathered is more comprehensive. ISPs can intercept users' browsing activity, putting each user into a box that broadly and anonymously categorises them, and gives them ads based on which "box" they are in.

The benefits of this targeted marketing for companies are obvious. By focusing their advertising they ensure their message reaches their target audience, generating better responses and cost-effectiveness. Network advertising also allows them to reach audiences outside the immediate context of their website, increasing the frequency and relevance of visits to their site. It ensures relevant messages reach consumers and lessens the chance of them being bombarded with irrelevant marketing messages or “ad spam”. Estimates suggest that the average consumer receives almost 600 million marketing messages a day, and according to a 2009 Microsoft report 97% of all email sent is spam. Relevant advertising lessens the chance of customers simply consigning emails to their spam box, or ignoring online ads. As 24/7 Real Media’s Dave Hill succinctly says, “It is about giving the consumer as much relevant advertising as you can, via addressable mediums".

The success of behaviourally targeted campaigns is normally measured in terms of direct response – how many people actively respond to the advert – rather than in brand awareness, meaning it’s difficult to build a subtle picture of its effectiveness. Concerns also revolve around issues of privacy; this anxiety has led to Dr. Larry Ponemon’s of the Ponemon Institute’s report that 98 percent of companies curtail investment in online behavioural targeting because of “consumers' privacy fears”.
One approach to alleviate these fears is transparency about the company’s approach to advertising. There is pressure on them to be honest about their intentions, an emphasis which has resulted in the creation of the “Power i” icon. This is a little “i” which will appear on adverts which use demographic and behavioural data to target consumers. Clicking on the icon will take consumers to a website where they can find more information about how the advertiser used their Web surfing history and demographic profile to recommend them the ad.

In Dr. Ponemon’s interviews with 90 senior marketing managers from large organisations he found 63% reported that behavioural targeting was the best “rate of investment” generator of any marketing tactic. The clear potential of this approach cements the need for corporations to work out a policy which will protect and educate users as to the method behind targeting whilst still generating good returns for the organisation. Transparency also helps the consumer trust the advertiser, improving brand-image and allowing them to see the benefits of adverts which are relevant only to their tastes. Cloud-based programmes like Spotify, which openly acknowledges that it uses users’ music tastes and basic personal information to choose which adverts they hear, provides the positive face of behavioural targeting and a model for other companies.

Pre-roll inoculates against viral risks

Kylie Minogue writhing provocatively, drumming gorillas and a man fighting a bear for salmon - the one thing they all have in common is that they are successful viral video adverts, for Cadburys, Agent Provocateur and John West respectively. These classics are instantly recognisable; but there are hundreds of viral videos which languish in the depths of the internet, never to be seen. If viral videos are the flashy, fading face of internet advertising pre-roll adverts - short, un-skippable clips which appear prior to online videos – are the ambitious rising stars. Pre-rolls have played crucial roles in campaigns for FRANK, the Metropolitan Police and T-Mobile, and Cisco’s prediction that 90% of web traffic will be video by 2013 means eyes are increasingly turning towards their marketing potential. Pre-rolls success has led to interest in developing other forms of online video advertising, and increased focus on assessing their effectiveness.


Pre-roll advertising is targeted predominantly at the younger demographic as they form the largest percentage of online video viewers. Content providers like Channel 4 capitalize on this by featuring demographically-sensitive pre-rolls before the videos hosted on their sites. The “on-demand” format of these websites means that these videos target an engaged user; accountability is also increased as viewers cannot normally skip the advert. However, the biggest benefit of online pre-rolls is their interactive component: links they provide mean ad-viewers can take direct action on the videos they watch.

There are limitations in the pre-roll format, the most obvious of which is that users may resent being forced to watch an advert. YouTube’s ‘biz blog’ says as many as 70 per cent of viewers abandoned a video when confronted with long, non-skippable pre-roll commercials. However, the majority of YouTube is user generated content, meaning there is less demand for it and thus less impetus to watch the pre-roll. Companies like Tremor Media have recognized this limitation and only include pre-rolls on high-demand premium context. To avoid the viewer becoming bored their adverts are only 15-20 seconds long, acting as a 'teaser' and offering the viewer the possibility of viewing the full-length ad or visiting the advertiser's website. Proctor & Gamble, Universal Pictures, Microsoft, and Ubisoft have all participated in Tremor Media's beta test of these new pre-roll formats.

Many companies are anxious about investing in pre-rolls. As Viral Advertising’s Matt Smith highlighted in a recent NewMediaAge article,”A lot of people in agencies still think online equals cheap as far as film is concerned,” despite advances like YouTube HD. AOL Media Network’s Janet Balis highlights the limitations of corporate imagination when it comes to pre-roll advertising, arguing "Most are looking to buy 15- or 30-second pre-roll, not because it's the most interesting thing people want to be doing, but because there are real challenges to transitioning online. A lot of people want to innovate, but it's challenging to do that on a broad scale".

There is a lack of quantifiable data on the effectiveness of online video advertising. Evaluation normally comes from “last-click” measurements – counting how many people actually clicked on the link - which only reflects people who directly reacted to the advertisements. United Internet Media’s Head of International Business Eric Urdahl says that, “[The internet] is still considered by a lot of brands to be more of a direct response medium than for branding. The problem is measurement, which has been established for performance-based campaigns... But brand advertising affects the entire purchase funnel and you can’t measure the effect of the campaign just by the last click.” Research shows that audiences respond to 10% of all rich-media ads, compared to the 0.4% they actually click on, meaning relying on clicks isn’t necessarily reliable and companies’ fears may be misplaced.

The unpredictability of what will and won’t become an internet sensation means viral videos are a risky approach to online video strategy. For every drumming Cadburys Gorilla there is something like Sony’s faked 2006 Christmas campaign for the PSP, which saw the brand condemned by as “a hideously soulless marketing company”. Pre-roll provides a far safer alternative whilst still having the potential for as much creativity and impact. One reason the potential of “pre-roll” isn’t being capitalized on, is succinctly summed up by Tremor Media UK’s Managing Director Adrian Lacey, “Creative companies are proving to be rather uncreative about the potential of online video”. His proposed solution can apply to the advertising industry as a whole: “[Companies] need to be less conservative and think about the fun they can have by creating online video ads, as well as understanding the engagement and interactivity offered by the formats”.

Pre-roll Continues to Prosper as Companies Catch On

MTV Networks recently declared pre-roll as the ‘most effective and consumer-friendly’ advertising method within today’s entertainment and media industry. Their general belief is that companies should ultimately exploit online advertising or face falling behind their competitors. Jason Witt, Senior Vice President and General Manager of MTV's digital advertising unit certainly seems to think so and urges others to follow suit.


Pre-roll is an advertising technique that has proved to be worth investing in. Companies that have the capability and readiness to exploit new advertising areas seem to reap bounteous rewards. For example, Southern Comfort, having previously spent $6 million on late-night cable TV and a further $1.5 million on magazines announced a change of direction. It has now increased its online advertising spending by 25 per cent, including on online video advertising on Hulu and other websites of NBC, CBS, Fox and FX. Online video advertising is essentially able to reach a wider range of consumers in a more cost-efficient way. Lena DerOhannessian, Southern Comfort’s U.S. Marketing Director said, ‘As we’ve focused more on 21 to 29 [year olds], TV becomes less and less effective at reaching that audience.’ More and more opportunities are to be found elsewhere, namely online.


The online community is continuously expanding with it estimated to grow 85 per cent by 2013. This growth provides the perfect chance to exploit pre-roll to the full. Research shows that out of the 87 per cent of UK Internet users watching online videos, 52 per cent have taken action after seeing a pre-roll ad. Thus far, it appears that short pre-roll ads are the most effective form of online advertising. The web video company, BBE, asserts that pre-roll ads are 8-25 times more effective than other types of online advertising since viewers are more likely to sit through a short ad that is played 10-20 seconds before their desired content. Shorter online advertising, therefore, is able to promote companies in a way that does not ruin viewers’ enjoyment, especially since any pre-roll longer than 20 seconds threatens to send frustrated viewers elsewhere. Compared to TV, where 3 minute long adverts are tolerated by audiences, a pre-roll that lasts even 30 seconds seems like an eternity.


Pre-roll essentially enables the relationship between brands and consumers to develop in an efficient and cost-effective manner. Kent J. Krizik, President of NewsProNet, declared that ‘online media publishers and local and national advertisers know there's no better way to reach consumers than through the compelling format of online video’. Moreover, after positive results from MTV’s study of over 50 million video streams across the US, Sharb Farjami, Vice President of Ad Sales within MTV Networks Australia & New Zealand, praised this form of online advertising as an ‘exciting area that is gaining popularity in this marketplace because it delivers rich user interaction’.


Online video advertising may in fact help companies stay afloat in the current economic climate. Tod Sacerdoti, Founder-CEO of the online advertising network BrightRoll remarks that general advertising revenues for online video are ‘up 217 per cent between the first and second quarters of this year’. He argues that it will ‘rise 50 per cent to 100 per cent for the entire year based on increased volume, even though prices may continue to fluctuate during a down economy’. Of course, the advertising industry has, on the whole, been in a slump for quite a long time which further emphasises the importance of online video advertising.


So, online video advertising is undoubtedly the preferred and wisest advertising method of today.

WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR EMAILS?

You don’t have to be spam to get blocked. One in five legitimate marketing emails fails to get to the receiver’s inbox. That is what Return Path reveals in their new research into European marketers’ knowledge about their own emails. In most cases marketers are ‘emailing in the dark’ not knowing what happens to their sent messages.

Two in five interviewed people still think an email gets delivered if it is sent or doesn’t bounce back. But twenty per cent of messages are being blocked or directed to the junk folder, according to Return Path – the company that helps marketers get their emails into the inbox and read. Email is the cheapest way to distribute your messages but it’s got to be done properly. No matter how many hours you spend creating a really great message, the effort is wasted if it doesn’t get delivered and read.

Many people think that reaching the inbox is the sole responsibility of Email Service Providers (ESPs). But it is ultimately in the hands of the senders themselves to make sure their messages are read. Demanding all-encompassing deliverability reports from your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is an excellent way to find out the destiny of your marketing messages. However, very few people do this at the moment, according to Return Path. This report must contain detailed metrics – the percentage of emails being placed to ‘inbox’, ‘junk’ or ‘missed’. Once you have that knowledge you can act upon it, but Return Path warns not to trust unrealistically high metrics. A delivered email is one that not only was sent and didn’t bounce back, but that actually reached the inbox. So why do some emails get blocked?

They either look like spam or are not wanted by the reader. The first one is relatively easy to correct. You might need to change the email’s format and rewrite some of the content. The second one is almost as easy. Readers often mark emails as spam because they don’t want to go through a complicated procedure of unsubscribing. You need to make it easy for people to stop receiving your messages because too many spam complaints will affect your company’s reputation. Putting an ‘unsubscribe’ option at the top of the page should help. To keep your subscribers, try and make sure your emails are relevant and targeted to each individual customer. Special offers personalised with a customer’s name or the like usually work well.
If you follow this advice, you stand a much better chance of getting your message to the customer.