Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Advertisements, Advertising, Online Ads, Online Advertising

I just witnessed the most disgusting ad presentation I’ve ever seen on the internet.  The ad itself wasn’t intentionally meant to offend, but it’s format did something that was inexcusable.

Being a native New Englander, I often  got to  Boston.com to check out sports stories.  That’s what I just did a few minutes ago.  Right there, in front of me, was a story “Northboro Native Killed in Washington DC Accident”.  A photo of her shows a pretty, young fresh faced young woman, with a beaming smile.  Now that I live in the DC area, I was especially intrigued by this.  I was once 22 and lived in DC.  Young.  Idealistic.

So I went to click through to read the story.  In the corner of my eye, I began to notice  a ‘growing’ ad coming across the page.  One of those ads that form images across a web page.  In this case they were images of the walking footprints of what looked to be that of a hiker.  The footprints continued across the woman’s face and would not let me click through to read the story.  That’s because just as I pressed down on my mouse, the ad crossed over the exact spot where it was pointing to.  Suddenly, I was transported to another site, the landing page of the ad.  Tourism in New Brunswick.

When I finally got back to the site I wanted to be at and clicked through the story I wanted, I began reading:

A Northborough woman and Amherst College graduate beginning her career in Washington, D.C., was killed in the nation’s capital yesterday morning when she was run over by a garbage truck while riding her bicycle to work.

…beginning her career…killed in the nation’s capital…run over by a garbage truck”…riding her bicycle to work”…

Her young life snuffed out just like that.  Full of promise, full of life, now gone.

But we want to show you this ad first - the ad is more important.

This is definitely not the way to do things, folks.  These ad formats, while enticing, should not be used by news outlets.  At least on their front pages.  News outlets cover news and news is more often bad, or in some cases, tragic.  It isn’t worth the ad dollars.

Advertisers shouldn’t necessarily shy away from using these formats, but they should be very judicious in where they buy them.  They should look for sites that viewers come to be entertained.  I don’t care how effective they are.  Use another formats on front pages of news sites.

No Comments » Posted on July 9th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Advertisements, Advertising, Blogvertising

From Drew B’s Take on Tech PR via Nixon McInnes & Chris Abraham:

“Only 18% of TV ad campaigns generate positive ROI”

“The average person is exposed to 3000 advertising messages a day”

“36% of people think more positively of companies who have blogs”

No Comments » Posted on July 6th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Advertisements, Advertising, Advertising Networks, Blog Marketing Journal, Paid Advertising, Paid Bookmarking, Paid Media, Paid Placement, Paid Stumbling, StumbleLove, StumbleUpon

I quickly realized that StumbleUpon is the coolest and hottest social bookmarking service nobody has heard of.  I love it but I don’t nearly use it enough: either as a stumbler or as a marketer. I found this on Blog Marketing Journal and thought I would open it up to you:

In case you are not familiar with the concept, StumbleUpon allows you to pay for visitors to your pages, five cents per visitor or click. The question is, do you consider this to be a simple form of paid advertising, or paid social bookmarking.

I have done some experiments with paid Stumbling and what BMJ says is true:

If you set a limit of $20 per day, you will get 400 visitors. They may stay on your page or they may spend five seconds and disappear. Where the situations changes is when they thumbs up your page. That’s a stumble and can lead to more than just the 400 visitors.

So, in this case, content is key, and good content will result in conversions and interest.  If you just throw money at it without thinking your content or strategy through, you will be disappointed with the results, especially since there’s nobody on the planet more savvy than the gang from StumbleUpon — these are earl-adopters and are just the people you want to love you but these are the worse people to piss off. Just because you’re paying to have your content promoted doesn’t mean that people are prevented from digging the content down (thumbs-down) or writing scathing comments.

Read more…

No Comments » Posted on July 6th, 2008 by Chris Abraham

Filed under: Ad Budgets, Ad Buys, Ad Sales, Advertisements, Advertising, Brand, Brand Advocacy, Brand Intelligence, Brand Promotion, Brand Reputation, Branding, Branding Online, Commercials, Internet, Internet Culture, Internet Strategy, Market Research, Marketing, New Marketing, New Media, New Media Strategy, Old Marketing, Online Ads, Online Advertising, Online Brand Promotion, Online Branding, Online Collaboration, Online Copywriting, Targeted Advertising, Technology, Technology Strategy, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web Ads, Web Advertisers, Web Advertising, Web Applications, Web Apps, Web Metrics, Web Services, Web Strategy, Website Design, What About Clients?, ads

In my last post, I talked of the coming disruption of the three way relationship between marketer, agency, and media property. Essentially it centers on the idea that marketers (who are often behind themselves) are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of digital savvy of their agencies and are now turning to media properties for strategic ideas and creative capabiliites. And these media properties are making themselves all the more ready, willing, and able to carry out the needs and wishes of the marketers.

I believe that that’s happening. But there’s still a big problem with that model. Consistent brand messaging

On a micro-level, this new way of doing things makes perfect sense. Crafting an marketing campaign tailored to the offerings of an online property could maximize the effectiveness of the campaign itself. For that media property.

But last I looked, most advertisers don’t use all their spend on one property. They’ll pick many properties in many channels. They’ll test here and there. They’ll sometimes concentrate on branding, sometimes concentrate on direct , sometimes (and the web makes this more possible, concentrate on both.

If the marketer - the company that is the end client - has to tailor each of its marketing messages to that of the publisher, chaos could result.

Publishers will need to realize this and further expand their services, sort of becoming almost full service for their advertisers. But still, this still could run into brand confusion as each publisher will owe it to their paying client to create the most effective campaign for their specific property or properties, leaving potentially different and confusing brand messages across several media properties.

Wise agencies should see this as the window of opportunity and work with publishers before they even get clients to formulate the framework for effective marketing campaigns that can perform very effectively over a cross section of properties and platforms.

2 Comments » Posted on March 6th, 2008 by Jonathan Trenn

Filed under: Advertisements, Advertising, Commercials, Firebrand TV, Firebrand.com, ads

Then, Funny:

Now, Funny, still:

No Comments » Posted on February 21st, 2008 by Chris Abraham

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