A wide range of business models and ad formats are taking today’s Internet advertising campaigns by storm. Let’s look at where they are, where they’ve been and most importantly – where they’re headed!
Online Advertising is marketing communication intended to persuade Internet users (viewers, readers or listeners) to purchase or take actions based on content displayed on a website (or webpage) as it relates to products, ideals or services.
Unlike other arenas of advertising, online advertising benefits from a dynamic interactivity between advertisers and consumers. Promoting products and services over the Internet adds the ability to target intended audiences in the context of their interests (contextual advertising) with strategic , interactive delivery across segments such as age, gender, geographic region, day part, and more.
So what can online advertising do for you?
· Attract your visitors’ attention
· Arouse your visitor’s interest
· Compel your visitors to visit your advertiser’s websites
· Impel your visitors to complete actions you intend (this will vary depending on your advertisers’ goals be they to sell products, get users to register their personal information on their website, or subscribe to email lists, etc.).
Evolution in Advertising Industry Business Models
According to the observed behaviors of advertisers in the online market, advertising business models have evolved from CPI (Cost Per Impression) or CPM (Cost Per Mille – 1000 impressions) to CPC (Cost Per click) to CPA (Cost Per Acquisition).
The illustration below depicts the shift from CPC to CPA:
Internet Ad Formats Divided into 4 Critical Categories:
- Search ads
- Mobile ads
- Video ads
- Other ads
Text Ads. Advertisements composed of text (displayed largely as sponsored links on search engines), indicated by underlined hyperlinked titles, when clicked, take the user to that advertiser’s website. Text ads are key players in content targeting. Text ads are also generally lower in cost than banners, as they are fairly simple and many websites will accept them.
Banner ads. Ads placed at any point on a web page typically contain text, logos, photographs or other images. Banner ads are priced slightly higher than text ads because they are found to be more effective. Banner ads range from simple pieces of HTML code to multimedia objects developed using technologies like Java, Shockwave and Flash. Banner managers in banner ad software rotate them to keep a site’s content fresh adding content targeting contextual ads into the mix. Banner ads may also include video, sound and animation to pack a more powerful punch.
Rich media. Rich media ads allow advertisers to incorporate multimedia elements such as flash technologies adding sound, animation and post-production type special effects.
Brought about by the increased bandwidth of broadband, rich media ads may lead to higher response rates and better branding capability. Rich media ads certainly offer more creative potential.
A convergence of television and the Internet with interactive advertising is likely to lead to larger budget commitments. The largest advertisers are only just beginning to enter the online fray. New interactive media will likely lead to adjustments in web advertising agency business models, brands, and media choices, in concordance with a new data rich, understanding of consumers online habits. The future of interactive agencies and advertisers must be ROI-driven. Web ad agencies and advertisers must work together in collaborative ad networks to integrate ad campaigns, data, and technology through a variety of new, traditional and hybrid media across geographies and cultures.
In a recent study examining the effects of rich media ads, ads featuring video, on average, appeared to increase purchase intent by 1.16%, compared with a control group that did not see an ad. Compare the effects of videos ads to a simple Flash ad at 0.26%,and we’re seeing a huge difference,
Orbit Ad Server and Orbit Ad Market offer their users the ability to inject content targeting into their ad campaigns that display text ads, image banners and rich media ads.
In-text ads – Contextual ads are where targeted keywords or phrases are highlighted in the body of text on a web page. When users hover their mouse over the keyword/phrase they see an ad appear to arise out of the text. The selling point of this ad delivery format is its relevance to the web page’s content, allowing the ad to target the user’s known interests reaping the benefits of contextual advertising.
At Orbitscripts, we’ve developed a plug-in for In-text ads that allows owners of Orbit Ad Server and Orbit Ad Market to display In-text ads on all of their websites.
Bloggers and website owners earn PPC (pay per click) revenue each time users click a hyperlinked ad. Words and phrase choices are selected by ‘In-text crawler systems and algorithms’ that identify subjects and keywords/phrases as areas of interest within the page. The system then looks for the occurrence of keywords/phrases corresponding to products and services promoted by advertisers and attaches those corresponding ads from its ad network inventory to words and phrases on the page. The users sees the content of an In-text ad in a “tool-tip style balloon” above the keyword. The ad displays when a page visitor passes their mouse over the keyword/phrase.
Pop-up/Pop-under ads. These types of ads open in a new web browser window over (pop-up) or under (pop-under) a website, when the visitor enters the website. You’ve surely run across pop-up advertisements in your travels around the net. Though many people find pop-up advertisement delivery annoying, pop-up/pop-under advertisements are the most noticeable for visitors and are a very efficient way to promote products and services.
OrbitScripts offers highly effective, easily customizable Pop-up/Pop-under advertisement Plug-ins for our two ad management solutions: Orbit Ad Server and Orbit Ad Market.
Floating ads – Rich media ads that appear to float above the content on a web page. Research shows floating ads to be one of the most effective ad delivery formats with some of the highest click through rates (CTR).
OrbitScripts always moves in step with the latest in ad serving technology. As of this writing, we’re developing a plug-in that provides our ad serving software users the ability to offer strategic, content targeted floating ads to their advertisers and publishers.
Floating ads, also known as overlay ads, are rich media ad formats that enable advertisers to serve advertisements that appear uninitiated or superimposed over a user’s requested page. The ads then disappear or become unobtrusive after a specifiable short time period (typically 5-30 seconds).
The most basic floating ads simply appear over the web page, either full screen or in a smaller rectangular window. They may or may not provide a means of escape, such as a close button. More sophisticated versions come in any shape or size and include sound, animation and interactive components.
What Floating Ads Can Do for You:
· Floating Ads are proven to increase brand exposure through the delivery of visually engaging, impactful content that ‘floats’ above your publishers’ web pages. Floating ads add elegance to content targeting in contextual advertising with the graceful way they appear then dissolve. The prevalence of the floating ad in recent years is attributed largely to its high impact.
· Publishers are given full control over their positioning and layering attributes. By specifying screen coordinates and z-index parameter values passed to the Mediaplex ad tag, the publisher can effectively optimize the delivery of the floating ad, so it doesn’t obscure or interfere with their site’s core content and other layered elements.
· Publishers may control the duration of the floating ad to their tastes. This is set as a variable passed on the ad tag.
Expandable ads. Expandable rich media ad formats, allow the dimensions of an ad to expand contingent upon a user action – typically a click or mouse-over. When a user clicks or mouses over an expandable banner the parameters of the ad expand beyond its original space making the ad appear larger, adding real estate value and attention grabbing to the user experience. The expandable banner ad format is rapidly gaining in popularity with both advertisers and publishers.
Orbitscripts does not sit on the sidelines when it comes to delivering the latest in advertising technology to our user base! Keep checking back here for our upcoming announcement of the arrival of a new plug-in we’ve got in development that will put the power of expandable ads in your Orbit Ad Server and Orbit Ad Market online advertising arsenal.
The most common applications expand leaderboard spaces vertically into larger rectangles (i.e. expand from a 90 pixel height to a 500 pixel height.) or expand 250×300 rectangle spaces horizontally into larger rectangles (expansion from a 300 pixel width to a 600 pixel width). Lots of other implementations are also possible with the expandable ad format.
Expandable Ads and You:
· Get more ad space to share interactive experiences and content targeted information with your advertiser’s audience.
· Support the inclusion of any number of rich media ad features, including video within a single ad unit.
· Allow your advertisers to measure the number of ad expansions and the amount of time the ad is expanded, in addition to common metrics available to all Mediaplex Rich Media ad formats.
Video ads. Video advertising really speaks for itself. According to market statistics, users click video ads 10 times more frequently than your average banner ad! Who doesn’t love video? Video ads grab visitors’ attention and hold it while your message is delivered, increasing demand for your advertisers products or services.
One big word: Youtube.
Online video is forever increasing in popularity with viewers and TV companies are starting to realize there’s a real need for a cross-platform strategy. The days when television was all there is and was more than enough to captivate an audience are well and truly over.
From a fiscal standpoint, Internet video ads will only truly take off when media, TV, and cable companies embrace it as an alternative to traditional television. But for that to happen, there has to be a profit in it. Can Web Television ever compete with traditional TV when it comes to ad revenue?
We’re working to bring video module creation to your Orbit Ad Market and Orbit Ad Server systems. We stand strong on our commitment to keep our ad serving and ad network platforms on the leading edge of ad serving technology. Bookmark this blog for an announcement of our new video module creation plug-in coming soon!
Mobile Ads
Internet users are just not sitting inside on their butts in front of their screens any more. Butts and screens are on the move with today’s smart phones, ipads, tablets, ebook readers, laptops, mini-notebooks, netbooks – you name it! Thanks to the plethora of mobile devices available, the PC is on its way to being at least a secondary point of access. As always, form follows function. Consumers look to the Internet to stay wired to the world – for news and information and ever increasingly for entertainment and staying tapped into their social networks. Make sure your mobile ads go where they go.
Mobile Advertising isn’t just driven by mobile display ads. Text messaging is creating a new marketing opportunity to reach mobile users and your potential clients.
Data already shows higher response and conversion rates from Mobile Advertising. eMarketer’s forecast mobile ad delivery to hit $1 Billion by 2011 and that looks just about right on target. Are you going to be a part of it?
Stay tuned with OrbitScripts!
