I’ve spoken and written a great deal recently about the problem of Banner Blindness, which impacts advertisers and publishers alike. According to our own survey results, only 14% of consumers surveyed found ads served to them as relevant.  Half of the respondents never click on any ads, and 35% click on less than 5 ads a month. By the numbers, Banner Blindness adds up to fewer leads for advertisers and lower revenue for site owners.

A large part of the problem can be attributed to predictable placement. Display ads typically run as a leaderboard across the top of the page (728x90), embedded in content as a large rectangle (300x250) towards the top of the page.  These placements haven’t changed in a decade , so consumers have inferred that there’s nothing valuable in these regions of the page, and their eyes are trained to scan elsewhere for engaging content.

Another critical issue is relevance. Ads rarely seem targeted to the current intent of the users who encounter them. The industry is so caught up in the use of Big Data, user profiling and programmatic buying that we have accepted a high rate of targeting error, flimsy estimates of in-market frequency, and the appalling lack of relevance to the user’s task at hand. Just because people showed an interest in a product at some point in the past does not mean they want to engage in product consideration or purchasing behavior when they are engaged in another activity, even if they are still technically in-market. Stated more simply, context matters.

With respect to these issues, native advertising appears to be a solid solution. Placement directly in the newsfeed on sites like Facebook or Twitter reduces a user’s ability to predict ad placement. In Google AdWords, one of the earliest examples of native advertising, targeting is keyword-based and therefore directly relevant to the users’ real-time intent.  In the case of individual publishers who “roll their own” native solutions, they are typically customized to be relevant to their content, making the advertising real-time targeted to the user’s specific task at that moment.

While native solves many of the problems in online advertising today, there are some complications that still need to be addressed.  One of these is scale. By definition, a native ad unit is unique to a particular site or platform. For advertisers, that means the wheel must be re-invented for every site, from the ad creative, to the targeting specifications, to the buy itself. There is no standardization, so more legwork is required. On the publisher side, this means a lot more work as well – custom insertion orders, custom code, and direct sales, for starters. To be profitable, many publishers must charge premium rates for native advertising, but they must have the traffic and quality audience to justify those rates. For this reason, native will likely only be feasible for larger publishers who are likely to have the direct sales force and administrative resources to support it.

Companies doing it right address the scale issue by doing real-time contextual analysis on every page load, and their systems assess the presence of user intent and the matching desire of an advertiser to target that intent, all in real-time. Some also serve ads as overlays, which gives them two controls most ad servers don’t have: retaining the option to serve nothing if the relevance isn’t there, and delivering the ad in a non-traditional location to overcome banner blindness. Think Google Ad Sense with the flexibility to serve in unexpected locations or not serve at all (full disclosure: Infolinks offers these solutions).

Native advertising is a great solution for many advertisers and publishers, but it can’t address scale until the platforms offering it reach critical mass. To solve the problem of Banner Blindness, publishers and advertisers need to think outside the standard placement – and perhaps think more deeply about relevance.

Better recognized as the 80/20 rule, the Pareto Principle states that 80 percent of results derive from 20 percent of effort. This mathematical phenomenon may reveal a surprising secret to boosting the effectiveness of display advertising. The key to applying this principle lies in knowing which 20 percent to focus on. In other words, your advertising efforts don't necessary need to be 100 percent right, as long as the most relevant components are dead on.

Research Ad Effectiveness

These days, display advertising effectiveness data is accessible online. You can easily research brand data to distinguish between what is effective and what isn't. This isn't rocket science; it is verifiable and tangible knowledge of what consumers respond to.

Most digital advertising hosts run simple A/B tests to identify specific elements that are successful. Using both a test group and a control group, advertisers are able to compare small changes to an ad to see which has more impact. The statistical results of testing are used to tweak creative content to generate a better version.

Digital publishers and agencies often work together on optimizing advertising for a mutual benefit. While the agency tracks a publisher's success rate, the publisher must ensure performance or risk being dropped from the campaign.

The 20 Percent

Using the above mentioned tools, there are three main steps that you should be taking to leverage your effort. This represents your 20 percent. Even if you do nothing else, by following these steps you will improve your performance.

1. Test your ad copy. Know which copy works and why.
2. Test your publishing sites. Identify your top performing sites and focus your efforts on increasing the amount of creative volume you publish with clear winners.
3. Don't sacrifice profit for increased ad exposure. Pay attention to the frequency that the ad is shown and what type of response you are getting. Set the limit of how often the ad is displayed at an optimal level.

Have you run an ad campaign and been frustrated by a lack of clear effectiveness? Consider making small changes to the strategy to find the combination that works best for your business and message. Also, working with a digital agency can help make the process easier, since you benefit from the deeper experience of your agency’s operations staff.

Introducing Local Search

Having an easily found local business is important to its growth and development.  The foundation of local online marketing is being found easily when prospective customers are searching online.  Google has found that 73% of online activity is centered on local searches and content. This means that you have to make sure that your website is optimized to come up in localized searches either on search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo, or in map applications like Google Maps or Mapquest.  This process is often referred to as “local SEO.”

Keyword Research

Keyword research is the foundation of local SEO, and it can be easily done with Google's keyword tool. The tool can show search data about local search phrases accurately and it is constantly updated. A business owner can use this tool to get a good idea about the search habits of the locals and can focus efforts on those keywords. For example, a dentist in Denver can see how many people search on the keyword “dentist” compared to “dentist denver.” While there are fewer searches for the latter, you can be sure that those are much better prospects to go after.

Keyword Optimization

Once the keywords are found, pages on the website have to be optimized for those keywords. The most common place to change is the title and the descriptive tags of the pages. These descriptive tags, called meta description tags, are what people see when they search for the website in search engines. The tags should include the target keywords and a description of the page. It may also be a good idea to have multiple service pages for the different areas around them to reach a wider audience. Another important step is to add the physical address and the phone number of the business at the footer of all the pages located in the website as it will help search engines find information associated with the business while someone is searching for key words.

Local Directories

Once the keyword research and optimization is completed, the next logical step is to submit the website to various local directories and Google. Many people still use local directories to find information, and that combined with Google+ Local (which replaced Google Places last year) service means that you have just created a website that can reach as many people as possible. Some directories are nationwide, while others are for local businesses.  Your local chamber of commerce may also maintain online listings.  There are also directories specific to particular industries. Some research is necessary to find all the potential options, but it is worth it to go after them all. Even if you do not pay for premium listings, it is important to check them to make sure they have the correct, most up-to-date information about your business.

Local Display

Once your online presence is set up to be easily found online, you can earn even more attention from online customers through local display advertising.  These are high-quality banner ads, run them on well-known relevant websites to viewers in your target geographic area. In some ways this strategy is similar to advertising in magazines or newspapers, but because of the targeting capabilities with online display it is much more cost effective as there is less waste on audiences that are not relevant to the message. Studies have shown that running display ads provides significant lift to the effects of PPC campaigns as well, since the brand awareness generated by display ads can prompt more people to search for a brand by name later.

Together, these the essential steps that local business owners can use to make online advertising work within their local area. Remember, the Internet has the ability to pull customers away.  Even offline businesses must get online to be able to pull those customers back.

Sales teams for web advertising that have concentrated almost solely on click-through rates as the most authoritative measurement of achievement in online display advertising have caused grievous damage to the industry of digital publishing. Agencies, advertisers and publishers should consider a broader scope of options than just click-through methods when striving for online marketing campaign success.

For more than a decade, advertisers have believed the Internet to be highly measurable. Because of this, many marketers have become attached to the idea of performance-based metrics while neglecting other success benchmarks. Unfortunately, it prevents companies from getting the most out of their ROI.

Click-through information has long been considered a silver bullet by web marketers, who typically wish to measure the returns they get on advertising in order to justify how much they spend on their ad campaigns. Because of this, many of them have disregarded how other metrics could benefit them.

Although money spent on media is measurable, more traditional forms of media are tedious to keep track of. For a long time, marketers made use of certain data to condone their overall costs.

In the world of online business, most of these methods have been abandoned in favor of click-through advertising. This is because many online display publishers and representatives aren't capable of determining the metrics of their brand awareness to advertisers, but they have no problems keeping track of participation.

Display advertising is underestimated as a means of brand-building. Therefore, many advertisers don't end up using the correct measurement techniques to keep track of the effects of their brand awareness.

Nearly everyone demands data, but not many marketers want to pay for it or start the process that will make them an example. As a result, people continue to be obsessed with performance metrics and struggle with a poor understanding of the true impact of display ads.

Some tools available from Effective Measure or Nielsen are able to measure the success of display inventory campaigns, but like all useful research, they're costly. This means that smaller, local brands miss the opportunity to learn how their online display can affect consumer awareness.

But even local business owners have resources to monitor how their customers are receiving their display advertising.  The big advantage they have over national brands is they tend to have closer, more personal relationships with their customer base.  This can be used to probe for campaign awareness by consistently including questions of how the customer found them, have they seen the ads, etc.

There are other metrics that are important to display advertising. These include view-throughs, conversions, and engagement. As pointed out by Vantage Local, specialists in display advertising for local businesses, understanding what these mean is important but keeping it simple is also key to monitoring success.

Do you have additional ideas on how small advertisers can keep their finger on the pulse of their brand?

The way I see it, there are three big problems with display and three ways publishers can address them. After laying it all out, I’ll call out a publisher who is blazing a trail in best practices for addressing all of this.

Problem1: Expect Irrelevance. Good display ads are being crushed under the weight of tonnage. Take a look at premium publishing sites, or even some of the better special interest digital publishers, and you will see a lot of ads -- too many ads. Some are relevant to the reader. Most are not. And the most relevant ads are capped out after the first few impressions of the day. After that, a steady stream of online universities, dating sites and subscription services are sadistically repeated to an uninterested audience. This creates a situation in which consumers have come to expect irrelevance from advertising, and consequently have learned to avoid even looking at standard IAB units.

Solution 1: Ramp up Relevance: The solution is three-fold. First, clamp down on the proliferation of standard units. A good rule of thumb is to introduce only one unit of each size on a page. Second, introduce innovative ad units that appear in non-traditional places. Examples include sliders, ads in the browser margins, or affiliate links tied to site content. Third, only serve new placements when the relevance is strong enough. Set a high minimum eCPM floor, so only the best, most relevant ads get served. The low eCPM ads are the ones mostly responsible for the irrelevant tonnage and are least likely to be missed in a publisher’s monthly revenue.

Problem 2: Real-time Intent. Search advertising changed the game by targeting user intent at a granular level, but also doing so when users are on task. Intent, in real time. The rise of display has been predicated almost entirely upon user targeting, but only after the fact, when users have moved on to other things. Intent, but too late. While better late than never, it’s too late for relevance. That’s another reason why click through rates have plummeted from 2% in 1998 to .1% today

Solution 2: Contextual Targeting. Let’s go back to basics here. It is as if the entire display advertising industry has collective amnesia. Contextual targeting works. After all, what is search advertising but high-powered contextual targeting?  Use a contextual engine to identify intent based on the content of a web page, and serve ads when that intent matches an advertiser offer. When the intent doesn’t match an advertiser offer well enough, don’t serve an ad. This isn’t hard, people.

Problem 3: Fight Banner Blindness. Heatmap studies show that consumers skip over ads without even seeing them. It’s no surprise that response rates have fallen dramatically over time. That first AT&T ad had a 78% click rate. Now tonnage, standard placement and irrelevance have all deadened engagement. The result is banner blindness.

Solution 3: Native Advertising at Scale: The solution is to integrate new advertising units that work within the flow of content. But how can we do that at scale?  Display advertisers have under-utilized a form of targeting that their search division has been spending a decade optimizing: keywords. Any search advertiser worth their salt can tell you the keywords that drive conversions. Go back to that contextual engine and get it to boil intent by page down to keywords, and use those keywords to enable advertisers to target display. Again, don’t serve the ads without ensuring a match between intent and offer. Presto, you now have ad units that render only when the intent of the user matches the advertiser’s offering. As Ross Perot once said, “America, problem solved.”

Who’s doing this now?  I can point to many forward thinking publishers that are incorporating these principles into their advertising strategies. ChaCha, a leading question and answer site, for example, deploys an ad unit powered Infolinks’ new In³ platform. It slides up from the bottom of the page only when someone arrives at ChaCha through a search. Advertisers bid in real time to serve an ad based on the keyword that the user searched on. By using this approach, ChaCha delivers ads only when there is high relevance for users based on the task they are currently performing. When the relevance isn’t there, they don’t serve the unit.

Revenue pressure can lead to short-term decisions that disrupt rather than enhance the customer experience. Each site, on its own, decides that it can earn incrementally more by placing more standard units on their pages. Collectively, we end up with tonnage. But banner blindness and declining engagement metrics must be overcome to accelerate the migration of dollars from traditional media to digital. New publishing platforms and products that make context and intent more accessible take the focus off traditional banners, and place them squarely within the most relevant content. Only updated and creative solutions will address the digital advertising and publishing market as both sides of the equation look to solve the revenue issue.

Will 2013 be the year in which streaming digital TV goes mainstream? The numbers are in, and it doesn't look good for traditional cable TV.

A 2012 study by the ISI Group confirmed that American viewers continued to ditch their cable TV subscriptions in favor of accessing high-speed streaming services. Instead of flipping through “whatever's on TV” every night, these cord-cutters are hooking up their smartphones, laptops and tablets to traditional TV screens or gaming devices and accessing their programming via the Internet.

Cutting the Cable Cord

If you peruse cable.TV, you'll see an average cable package that includes 100-plus channels runs about $70-100 a month. Experience shows that most viewers regularly watch only four or five. What streaming digital TV offers is the ability for viewers to watch the content they want, when they want it, using much-cheaper (starting at about $8 a month) services like Netflix, Hulu Plus, Apple TV, Roku and Slingbox. This may spell doom for cable operators, who are coming up with their own initiatives to prove their worth to current and potential subscribers.

They'd better hurry up. According to businessinsider.com, three of the nation's major cable TV players lost a total of 621,000 subscribers from 2011 to 2012. The ISI Group study projects that cable will decline into just one in three homes by 2017.

Younger Viewers Change the Tide

Not only are subscribers jumping ship from cable TV, but many of today's young Americans never had it in the first place. As Credit Suisse analyst Stefen Anniger told hollywoodreporter.com, the numbers for new cable subscribers are down, while the number of occupied homes in the U.S. is increasing.

Anniger called these viewers “cord-avoiders” and "cord-nevers," adding they may be the downfall of cable television. "

With younger viewers having grown up with alternatives to paid television, they are accustomed to beating the cable system with online streaming, DVDs, YouTube and other content enticements,” he said. “They are growing up in an Internet-based video culture, in which the mantra of 'Why pay for TV?' and 'Pay TV is a rip-off,' develop."

In Cable's Corner

One thing cable TV has going for it is its ability to bring live sports and local news to American living rooms. For sports fanatics and average Joes and Josephines who want their local nightly news, cable is still their best bet, and cable providers are the first to point out that streaming television lacks these two elements.

Some streaming services offer select national news programming such as CNN International, CBS News and BBC International, but cable companies know Americans like their local news via cable TV. Plus, hardcore sports viewers will likely opt for a providers' premium sport packages, which streaming services can't complete with, at least not yet.

Another way cable operators are boosting their numbers is with Internet broadband packages. Online streaming services require consumers to have a broadband Internet connection to access to their services, and these connections are provided by local cable companies. As a matter of fact, while pay TV numbers are down any which way you look at it, BusinessInsider.com reported that Time Warner Cable saw an increase of 59,000 Internet broadband subscribers in 2012.

Cable Fights Back

To prevent viewers from jumping ship, premium pay networks like HBO and Showtime are insisting on exclusive content. By refusing to offer their mega-hit shows to streaming services, fans of their shows must continue to subscribing with their local cable company. Access to hit shows like “Game of Thrones,” “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “Homeland” are reason enough for some viewers to stick with cable TV.

In addition, cable operators have stepped up to the challenge by offering on-demand services to supplement live television offerings. Comcast starter packages include most cable networks (think Bravo, ESPN, FX, HGTV and TNT), but the company now offers Xfinity On-Demand to subscribers through a premium subscription. Xfinity On-Demand offers programming outside their allotted networks, such as DIY and OWN.

More Trouble Ahead

While it may be too soon to label cable obsolete, there's a battle brewing between content creators and cable companies on costs and access for programming that doesn't bode well for the old guard.

Last year, a well known satellite company dropped network programing by AMC. This was followed by another major company dropping 26 Viacom channels. The dropped channels included fan favorites like Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon. Again, this was a battle over costs, due to AMC and Viacom’s demand for increased rates to access their channels.

Time Warner Cable dropped the low-performing and pricey network Ovation, and recently warned subscribers that there's no guarantee it will continue to carry channels whose contracts expire soon. That means mainstays E!, Lifetime and Starz are candidates for the chopping block. This action is part of Time Warner Cable's CEO Glenn Britt’s platform to rationalize the company’s bloated channel offerings, according to The Wall Street Journal.

What's Next?

Is this the end for cable TV? It's too early in the game to call it quite yet – remember when they thought video would kill the radio star? – but it is obvious they'll have to evolve to survive. Stay tuned.

Mobile Marketing

While 2012 was a dynamic year for mobile marketing and the multi-screen user, 2013 will be the year that advertisers will embrace this medium.  Less focus will be placed on the existence of the multi-screen user and more attention will be placed on the different options that the multi-screen user presents to marketers.

Brands should be able to gain more insight into mobile devices users in 2013 as mobile device users will become more comfortable allowing brands to recognize their location, intent and preferences.  As a result push-pull mobile marketing will take place as the best brand apps and experiences will tie this information into their marketing campaigns in order to optimize conversions and connect with consumers.

Prospect Email

With more than half of all email opens occurring on mobile devices, I believe that Prospect Email will continue its rapid growth in 2013.  One change that we see for 2013 is the growth in the number of emails that will be designed using a responsive design or will be sent out using a mobile decision engine.  Responsive designs allow for optimal viewing experience across a wide range of devices by using fluid proportion-based grids and flexible images.  A mobile decision engine is able to detect the device the recipient is using and will then deliver and display device specific creative that best targets the end user.  By doing so, advertisers will better be able to target and optimize their campaigns to customers no matter what device the consumer is accessing their email on.

Search Marketing and Display Advertising

Search and display will still remain two of the cornerstones of online marketing campaigns in 2013 however there will be a shift as advertisers will be spending more money in the mobile space.  Currently, the mobile search and mobile display space remains relative uncluttered and in 2013 I expect that  several brands will look to invest top dollars in this space in order to own the mobile consumer and differentiate themselves from their slow- to- adapt competitors.

As local advertising continues to explode with the rise in smartphone users, search and display will take center stage with their hyper-targeting abilities.  New tools will emerge to support these micro-targeted program and marketers will increasingly take a systematic approach adding coordinated multi-channel efforts including local mobile search marketing and display retargeting.

If one thing rings true for 2013, the mobile and digital marketing era continues.  With cross-channel marketing plans at the forefront, marketers will need to pay close attention to analytics, targeting and optimization this year as online campaigns remain a very effective marketing medium in 2013.

Product: What Do You Want To Feature In Your Ad Campaign?

Determining what you want to feature in your ads will shape how you develop your campaigns, which makes it important to determine this upfront. For example, a realtor selling luxury multi-million dollar homes in Palo Alto, California would not use the same campaign as a realtor selling midrange priced homes who is trying to build her brand as a local expert in that neighborhood.

Price: How Much Value Do You Offer Customers?

You have probably already set prices for your products or services. Nevertheless, planning a marketing campaign is a good time to revisit your pricing strategy since price information can have a strong influence on the effectiveness of your ads. At its most basic level, your ad needs to tell viewers what they can get from your business, along with how and why.

Price promotions, such as a limited time price discount, can be strong offers for new customers, because they create a sense of urgency for your call to action, making it more compelling for viewers to want to follow up.  Display ads are very effective for promoting things like storewide sale events.

Even for a campaign that focuses on brand building, it is important to be aware of how your customers perceive your offer compared to your competitors, so spend time brainstorming different ways that you offer additional value beyond just price discounts.  Do you have a particular offer that is much stronger than those of your competitors? Consider making this the centerpiece of your ad campaign.

Placement - Where You Sell Your Products or Services

In marketing, placement refers to where you sell your products or services.  Think about the geographic area where your customers are located. For a brick-and-mortar business, this often means a radius around your location.  A retail store might draw from a 5-mile radius, while a private high school may draw from a wider range. For some businesses, the customers may not be located near your location.

For example, more than a dozen Major League Baseball teams have their spring training camps in Arizona, so a resort hotel in Arizona might advertise to baseball fans in Chicago or Cincinnati that might like to go watch their home team at spring training.

Similarly, a ski resort in Tahoe might focus ads on people in the San Francisco Bay area because Tahoe is a destination resort town and San Francisco is a large metropolitan area with high-income residents who live just a few hours away.

Promotion – How You Reach Potential Customers

Promotion refers to the method of advertising you want to use to reach customers. It is helpful to think of prospective customers as moving through a funnel. Those at the top are the least aware of your business or offering, and those near the bottom are closest to being ready to make a purchase. Display advertising is useful in reaching prospective customers at the top parts of the funnel, since the ads go where they are. Making repeated impressions with these prospective customers is called brand awareness, or brand building. The benefit is that you can get them to recognize your name once they are ready to buy, making them more likely to choose you over a competitor.

Many business owners start implementing marketing tactics before they have developed a strategy, which can be a big mistake. Strategy is concerned with the big picture, while tactics focus on specific, individual actions that support the strategy.

Strategy Before Tactics

A simple example of how all this comes into play in your business is in building brand awareness. A company may have a strategy to become the number one brand in its product category; however, there are many different tactics to get you there. Without the strategy defined, though, you may choose tactics that are not in alignment with your strategy. At Vantage Local, where we deal with a great many small businesses, we see it every day. A business owner hears about a new way of increasing CTRs on their web pages, so they jump at implementing the new method. Meanwhile, they have not thought about how getting more people to click through to another page on their site will help them reach their big picture goal of increasing sales or profitability.  Consider the big picture before you get down into the details.

For more insights on how to make digital marketing a key factor in the success of your small business, check out the blog at VantageLocal.com/blog.

Preparation

There is a saying my Dad used all the time, “Proper planning prevents poor performance.  This couldn’t be more valuable during this time of year.  In our industry, this means using previous holiday data to forecast projections, diligent preparation of keyword and publisher selection, and promotional calendar planning.  What was the phone tree, or process to alert the team of issues should they arrive?  For example, our research this year leads us to do additional keyword research adding nearly 200 thousand keywords to our account to support the promotion.  Without planning properly we could have easily missed this large opportunity by scrambling during the promotion, or worse not recognizing the opportunity at all.

Agility

Agility refers to the changes that occur during the promotion period.  Black Friday creates a situation where brands are spending a typical month’s budget in 24 hours.  This means that each hour or minute of the day has an amplified meaning.  Our team was able to find opportunities in mobile, or various conversion rates by publisher, that enabled us to raise bids due to higher conversion rates (we actually saw CTRs, and conversion rates, triple within 2 hours for some brands).  If we had waited until the next hour conversion rates the opportunity would have passed.

People

Nothing is possible without great people. You can have the best planning or the greatest tools, but nothing is possible without talent.  I know team members who worked throughout the holiday weekend, with many taking their laptops out shopping with them on Black Friday so they could check results. These personal sacrifices are certainly not ideal, but part of what turns typical result into spectacular results.  It’s important to promote a family first atmosphere around the office; after all, in retail holidays season many times your co-workers become your family.

At this point I’m not longer surprised at the continued growth of the channel, but it never ceases to amaze me the value of a PAP strategy. I can’t wait for the plans of the rest of the season to be carried out, and the New Year to begin.  Happy Holidays to everyone!

Here is a look at five of them:

Brand awareness

With a 63% increase in brand awareness, marketers recognize the importance of the contributions that display advertising makes to a company’s unaided brand awareness. It is crucial to marketers as this contributes to future sales when viewers remember an ad they’ve seen while surfing – even if they’ve never clicked on it. They will also recognize it again after seeing it again and after seeing your display ad online, they will recognize your brand when they come across it elsewhere, even offline.

A study by the Jumpstart Automotive Group found that contextual and behavioral targeting in tandem prove more effective as far as impacting the purchase funnel from awareness to purchase intent. Despite a low click through rate, display ads do ultimately have a positive impact on sales. You are building familiarity with the consumer.

Display advertising is arguably the most cost-effective way to market your brand as well as to create brand awareness to people browsing and surfing the Internet. What makes it so effective is the booming targeted capabilities that are available to the advertiser, building brand awareness and generating leads which can ultimately increases sales – paying off big in the long run.

Basically what this means is that consumers will see your brand, become more familiar with it and as a result, have a higher chance of connecting and feeling loyal to your brand.

Greatly increased site visitation

In 2010, comScore, Inc., released a study that showed a 300% increase in site visitation through display advertising. The company is a leader in measuring the digital world and after analyzing 103 campaigns from 39 different advertisers covering seven industries, proved the effectiveness of display advertising.

Display advertising can generate increased site visitation, online and offline sales and trademark search. One reason for this is that people remember what they see, even if they never clicked on the ad. Display advertising does not require any action on the part of the user, so it is a preferred method of advertising for those who want to cultivate brand identification and name recognition. It’s not about simply making quick sales but instead about increasing awareness to your site and your brand.

An increase in offline sales

According to a report by Neustar, display enhances awareness and even drives search. Perhaps surprisingly, it can even boost offline sales as people often search for what they see in banners when they are shopping in retail stores. Their research found that in-store visits increase as much as 43% through use of display advertising. When you see some online (especially repeatedly), you are much more likely to recognize it when you see it again offline and in person. There is an automatic familiarity there that is very helpful.

“Brand advertising and digital,” an IAB Europe White Paper states that studies analyzing online and offline retailers found that the exposure to an online ad increased awareness by 16% and was able to average an increase of 27% for online sales. Could you benefit from 27% more increases sales?

An increase in brand recall

“Brand awareness and digital: An IAB Europe White Paper,” from June 2010 found that display advertising has a major impact on consumers’ awareness. Their study found a significant increase of aided brand recall of 26% due to online campaigns and across several different industries found a rather impressive increase in the recall of online ads in the health, retail and automotive sectors – as much as 63% in some cases.

Display ad repetition also increases the chances of brand recall and awareness in your customers. The more they see it, the more they will recognize it, even if they never click on the ads themselves.

Increased conversion rates

In a study by Media Mind on Financial Services Research produced in 2011, a .016 conversion rate was found which means that for every 100,000 impressions, there were 160 conversions. Media Mind found that display advertising is a strategic marketing channel after analyzing over 28 billion online ads to uncover best practices and what works for financial campaigns.

The company believes that as users are becoming accustomed to managing their financial affairs and buying insurance online, advertisers respond “in-kind, making online display advertising the most important marketing channel in terms of investment for the industry.”

It’s important to reach consumers where they are today and the Internet is one great place to do that. These are just some of the top reasons to use display advertising. If you have questions about how display ads can help you, contact Vantage Local today.

With geo-targeting campaigns and new techniques to raise branding, the new media planning is something all can benefit from learning. Geo-targeting allows firms to use media campaigns to pinpoint clients and customers during their busy and travel-filled days. A successful media-planning firm knows how to place ads in the precise locations the chosen demographic is most likely to frequent. There is a chronology to the process that when done properly helps ensure a successful media campaign.

When a media-planning firm is hired by a local business there are several criteria it goes about researching and compiling. These include: geography (where is the most logical place for the ads), demographic numbers (size of demographic population within the targeted geographic zone), Internet presence (what the appropriate websites for advertising to the demographic are) and performance estimates for the ads - this includes "reach" and "frequency" estimates.

Once these criteria are thoroughly vetted and sussed out a strategic set of plans, blueprints if you will, are drawn up to begin the start of the media campaign. The entire process works using sets of demographic data as indicators of what is best for placement (examples include such things as eating preferences, reading choices, entertainment and work). By using this information of the demographic a picture begins to form of the effective areas for advertising. For example, a demographic that sees the members between 35 and 55, educated (post-secondary) and living a healthy lifestyle, the target ad areas may include organic food stores and websites, booksellers and local cafes.

Getting the right information is the start of any successful media planning strategy. The subtle aspect comes in after the information is gathered. Local knowledge, patterns of weather and even a little "hunch" play a role in the full professional media planning campaign.

Social Media and Search Both Important

One of the key points eMarketer makes in their article is that integration of display ads with other marketing efforts is one of the biggest trends impacting marketers. In one of their surveys, they found increased integration with social media had the highest response for the significance of select trends to the future of display advertising. The surveys show that 70% of respondents said that integrating search and display advertising had the most favorable impact on their display advertising, making that the second most important area of integration.

Market for Display is a Factor

While integration of display ads with search was second in importance in the survey, the similarity of how search and display advertising work is striking. Search and display advertising used to be more different than they now are, but the changes in how display ad space is bought and sold have allowed for tighter targeting of display ads, increasing the common threads between the two media. This similarity makes the integration of the two even more important than ever before, and more challenging than managing the integration of social media with display advertising. Having a good understanding of how each strategy fits into your overall marketing plan is a key piece of the puzzle for most marketers and keeping up with changes in how each technology works is a big part of that.

Marketers are increasingly looking for ways to reach their target audience in the most effective and efficient manner and as ad networks, as just one example, continue to refine the way they serve up ads it is more important to have access to as many sources of quality ad space as possible. This is where working with an agency that specializes in this area of online marketing can be extremely valuable. The right agency will help you access more, and higher quality ad space that will help you target your messages more effectively than you could do on your own. Very few business owners have the time to keep up with all the changes in technology that are taking place in this rapidly developing area of online marketing. Where our specialists excel is in understanding business owners' needs and matching the available technology to each need to get the best result.

Integrated Marketing - the Holy Grail of Advertising?

However search and display advertising continue to develop, understanding how each works with the other to help you reach your marketing goals is important to the effectiveness of your overall marketing plan. Continue to educate yourself about your marketing options and make sure you stay focused on the 20% of the activities that bring you 80% of your results. That is one of the key factors that helps separate the very successful marketers from the rest.

So what’s caused the epidemic of banner blindness, and how can we fix it?

To start, the root causes of the problem are threefold:

Tonnage: This is the most obvious problem, and one that’s been identified time and time again – but it persists still. Frequently, publishers just put too many ads on a page in an effort to generate more revenue. Ultimately, it’s counterproductive. The more ads on a page, the less we notice them, and the less likely we are to click. It doesn’t serve anyone – least of all the online advertising industry.

Irrelevance:  It’s rare that display ads are relevant to your current online activities. There may be some useful retargeting and behaviorally targeted ads, but they’re often quickly capped out and likely to be buried under an avalanche of ads for dating sites, online universities and “one weird secret.”  Consumers aren’t likely to click on ads that aren’t useful or relevant to them.

Lack of Intent:  Beyond irrelevance, display ads typically don’t correlate to a user’s current intent – what someone is doing at that moment.  Search advertising changed the game by introducing real-time intent to the advertising landscape.  The targeting we use for display advertising may accurately identify intent, but it is often the intent from yesterday or last week. Even in the case of the retargeted ad, the intent is not close to real time. I may have been looking at power washer reviews yesterday, but several things could have changed since I saw the ad.  I might have bought a power washer already, or I might have decided I don’t have the cash to buy one right now.  I also might be on a personal finance site now, trying to figure out what a diversified portfolio looks like and I’m no longer willing to indulge the power washer advertiser.  Address my intent today and show me a Schwab ad, please!

So how can we cure banner blindness and raise engagement metrics? Relevance is the obvious answer. When we can bring greater relevance to advertising, surely we’ll have solved the problem.  Unfortunately, while that’s the easy answer, it isn’t enough.

Real time intent: If we can target intent in display with the accuracy and immediacy of search engine marketing, we’ll be onto something.  Well, guess what: We can. Contextual targeting, somewhat forgotten in the rush to apply Big Data to vast pools of standard ad units, can work amazingly well. A contextual engine can discover intent based on the content of a page, and serve ads only when that intent and matches an advertiser offer.  If the intent signal isn’t strong or the offer doesn’t match, then the ad isn’t served. It’s just that simple!

Cut the Chaff: Yes, relevance does factor in in a big way. Obviously a contextual engine will support relevance, but there’s more to the story. Publishers really need to do their part to combat irrelevancy. If publishers set a high minimum eCPM floor to screen out irrelevant, low value ads, only the best, most pertinent placements will surface.  Let’s face it, low eCPM ads are primarily responsible for irrelevant tonnage, anyway.  And they certainly don’t contribute greatly to the bottom line.  If publishers keep the junk ads off their sites, they also raise their own image.  When I was VP & GM of Display for Yahoo! in North America, we eliminated provocative dating site ads and distasteful teeth whitening ads.  The short term revenue impact was negative, but we did it because we believed that it would improve our user experience.

Think beyond the banner: While the better targeting is necessary, it’s not sufficient.  Banner blindness will continue as long as we rely so heavily on traditional IAB display placements.  It’s time to put greater emphasis on finding non-traditional placement that breaks the blindness cycle.  We can get creative leveraging logical but perhaps unexpected areas on the page.  We can integrate ads into content. There are so many possibilities.  And when the intent is so clear and the offer so relevant, the advertising should be more interruptive.  If the match isn’t as strong, then diminish the role of advertising on the page.

There’s enough technology available to target intent and develop creative new ad units that will help publishers monetize, help advertisers drive measurable results, and enhance the consumer experience.  New publishing and advertising platforms will allow us to zoom in on context and ensure ads are really relevant to users – in the moment, based on their current intent.  If we can focus a little more on relevance and a little less on standard IAB units, we can cure banner blindness.

Websites like Groupon or Living Social are two of the most important examples of flash sale services in this debate. These websites offer consumers up to fifty percent off a product or service. In turn, the flash sale is intended to drive sales and increase traffic to a brand in hopes of a providing a new satisfied and loyal consumer.

However, when companies subtract lost profits and website fees (as much as a 75% hit on top-line revenue!), does the cost outweigh the benefits? A flash sale can pay off when companies need to liquidate surplus stock or boost traffic during otherwise dead times. The truth is that many customers who claim these deals may not be the typical customer that the business has in mind. These are bargain shoppers who expect big discounts on valuable goods and services. The question is, will they be willing to pay full price as a returning customer?

Companies can also improve their revenues by communicating to customers that they are getting something very valuable in return for their money.  I consider this selling on value, as opposed to selling on price.  Companies need to prove to the consumer that they are the best and worth every penny. They can accomplish this because research shows that in the long run, clients will pay more money for items or services they believe to be worth it.  But selling at a steep discount for even a brief time can undermine the value proposition.

A business should do a thorough internal inspection of its consumer base and finances before deciding to go try a daily deal. This will allow them to do a cost analysis of the potential sale versus potential client increase. Sometimes investing in straightforward advertising (like online display ads!) can actually be a better deal. Daily deals can be exciting, but negative effects can outlast any sales bump.

We recently engaged in a meaningful in-person dialogue with a financial services company, specifically working in the mortgage industry.  Having worked with advertisers in the financial sector before, the comparison of this new relationship against those previous experiences compelled me to write this piece.

In the past, as a “vendor,” I received very limited information from the client and, as such, was unable to truly illuminate the value our technology and services could provide.  We were pitted against other companies and were not given the means to truly succeed.  The notion was that we had to prove ourselves before moving to the next level.  Then walls were intentionally erected to make sure that couldn’t happen.  It doesn’t make any sense.

In this recent case, we are working as partners.  Through the development of a deep relationship with the client, we are able to glean information that will truly make a difference.  We are uniquely working with both the CIO and the marketing folks.  Everyone involved understands the objectives and the means to achieve them.  By engaging in a conversation at this level, we have been able to truly dig into the exchange of data/information that is already proving highly valuable for them.

We now know the absolute value of a customer we helped bring in the door for this client.  There is no positioning or mock acquisition value.  We know the customer’s absolute lifetime value, as well as mission critical information such as their true internal costs to close, etc.  With this information, we can layer in what we know about acquiring that customer— the true cost of media, responsiveness to creative/messaging, site and channel performance, etc. From there we can mutually determine value.  As the relationship grows, we are building true reach, efficiency and maximum effectiveness by working together to find and nurture the right customers at the right price.

This is not just about display advertising.  It’s not even about advertising in general.  It’s certainly not just about technology or programmatic buying. It’s Marketing 101 and class is in session!  Now, talk amongst yourselves.

  My advice: Don't bother. This too shall pass. Unless, you're interested in blinding your clients with new bright, shiny objects, don't even consider these new tactics. Because they are just another severe case of the emperor's new clothes. Victorian Style thinking intermixed with 21st technology and dot-com-bubble hubris. Where does this lead to? Nowhere. (Or better: To a minor peak in the beginning to be followed by an extremely steep valley.)  Sure, Twitter and Facebook will make some money. Clients will be blinded for a while, agencies will drag on for another quarter ("This is it. This is what we need to get our clients excited.") and by the end of the year this will feel worse than a Tequila hangover. 

  It continues to amaze me that we put so much faith into these technology companies (adding Foursquare and Gowalla to the mix), hoping they will finally end the demise of display advertising. We should be able to find the answer somewhere in Silicon Valley. Trust me, they have no answer. If they had one, why would they go back to the old Madison Avenue toolbox of display advertising? (Well, this time it's more relevant. And cooler. And just so 2.0)

  Unfortunately, nobody has the answer. The last time anybody invented anything in advertising was Google. (Or GoTo.com.) Whatever else you see is just replicating the old model and applying it to new formats. Giving people more relevant advertising messages while they're conversing with their social friends is still a disruption. It shows a complete disregard from Twitter and Facebook for the actual user experience and a pure focus on making short-term money. I have nothing against monetizing your platform: You built it, you can do whatever you want with it. But why do these companies, with enough time and investment on their hand, not take the time to develop innovative advertising tactics? Because of their user base, Twitter and Facebook still have the opportunity to take the baton from Google and change the landscape of advertising. Given their track record, I wouldn't bet on it. My guess: very soon both of these platforms will end up in the purgatory of display advertising aka MySpace 2.0.

  There are teeny-tiny rays of hope and they are emitted by Apple. Ads living within an app experience could be an intriguing idea. Valuable content added to the app? Content within content? This could be interesting. And I'm sure we're going to see a few exciting executions that will lead us down the lemmings path of replicating ideas of other advertisers. The iAd problem (well, the overall advertising challenge) is scale. If most advertisers can't create web-specific videos (Ah, the commercial is fine.) or platform specific experiences (Just slap the website on Facebook), why would anyone believe advertisers will be able to create app-specific experiences? Maybe a few. Does it scale? No. Does it change the face of advertising? Definitely not. Is it a good step in the right direction? Absolutely.

  For my impatience, these steps are too small and don't make too much of a difference. We need to change the face of advertising or advertising is doomed. Let's not wait longer for the wisdom of the Zuckerberg's and Sorrells' of the world. They're just guessing. I would love to see a real collaboration between agencies, brands, user experience shops, consumers, anthropologists, psychologists, behavioral economists and technology innovators. Call it the New Advertising Think Tank. Invest money. Invest resources. Invest creativity.

The future of advertising should be worth that effort, don't you think?

In all seriousness he does bring up an interesting point.  The value that we get from the social web really comes down to two things, content and underlying technology or the ability to share the content.  Social networks and the tools they inspire in many ways rely on not just the mundane conversations of life to exist but also the whimsical trends that spread like wildfire from cubicle to cubicle and dorm room to dorm room.  If we accept that premise then it begs the question of how much of Facebook's 9.5 billion with a "B" valuation is due to phenomenon like the generals?

Much like the college athlete at a big school it seems everyone is making money except the person we're all looking at.  I realize that might be a stretch, without Facebook, Twitter, et. al. there wouldn't be a meme in the first place right?  Well maybe, at the risk of dating myself I do remember a certain dancing baby that entertained millions during Web 1.0 so even without social networks to capitalize on it people found plenty of ways to waste time.

Getting to the heart of the matter is a Facebook fan page with 1.6 million members, a YouTube video so popular it got removed (the litmus test for all YouTube videos) and a Twitter category #pantsontheground that made it into the top ten really worth anything at all?

Absolutely.  And I can sum it up in one word, display advertising, ok two words but one concept. No matter how untargeted or demographically messy those 1.6 million Facebook fans are they are still being served ads when they go to the Pants on the Ground fan page.  Those little ads you see on Facebook, when lumped all together with their projected future earnings are worth nine and a half billion bucks.

Percentage wise the amount of Facebook members that are also members of the esteemed "Generals" site is still only one half of one percent but in raw numbers that's still quite a bit of people.  If the general was the one who cashed the advertising checks I know he wouldn't be complaining.  The conundrum is does he deserve some of the revenue or is it his responsibility to capitalize on his fleeting glory offline being thankful for the forum he has been given by Facebook.

I'm leaning towards the latter, if he had the ability to take down the fan page would he?  I would advise not to however I would insist on administrative control whereby I could hock T-shirts, CD's, coffee mugs, discounted Christmas ornaments and commemorative plates.  After all this is the Internet.

Apparently, display advertising is dying, dead, or died a long time ago.  Search is dead, too.  Even SEO is dead, which I guess makes sense since search isn't around.  But gosh, what about something really new and trendy that's still growing in big numbers - like Twitter?  Nope, dead.  Even the bloggers predict their own fate.  

So why are any of us still hanging around in this awful, dying industry?  My thought is that it's growing like gangbusters, not dead at all, and wonderfully alive despite what is happening in other media.   

So let's stop 'the death of' stuff.  I'm apparently not even the first one to ask for the death of 'the death of'!  Yes, it's easy to be sensationalistic. Yes, there'll be a quick traffic uptick.  But what about when people look back at a "death of" article in two years and see that what was proclaimed to be dying is still thriving? It seems that bloggers who skip the sensationalism and instead provide thoughtful, insightful commentary are the ones who succeed the most.   So, can we all proclaim the death of 'the death of'?  Use the comments box below and let me know if you're with me.

• Technology constraints are lifting
• More top agencies are focusing their creative energies on building display ads and
• Publishers are giving advertisers a larger canvas.