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Ozometer by Play
The campaign was created to celebrate Foster's famous ‘No Worries’ attitude. In creating the campaign, Play searched for some of Britain’s most, and least, ‘No worries’ people, celebrities and places. More on Play's award winning campaign.When creativity and display advertising meets social media
by Dan Lehner, Social Media and Video Ad Solutions Manager, Yahoo! Network
It seems that, of late, as many column inches are dedicated to how social media sites are monetised, as to their latest product innovations. This perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise given the huge valuation of sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook and the huge numbers of engaged users (and user data) they draw. It’s clear that social media and advertising have the potential to become happy bedfellows. However, actually turning this potential into ad revenue has proven tricky thus far: the previously untouchable Facebook got their fingers burnt on the Beacon ad platform and even Google freely admit they can’t figure out how to best advertise against YouTube videos.
Of course, these days, any site worth its salt has ‘social features’ to it, so to draw a clear distinction between e.g. MySpace ‘a social media site’ and Yahoo! ‘a portal’ is erroneous. Media owners of all shapes and sizes are converging on a form of Media 2.0 – sites that offer pro content, UGC, community tools, editors, feeds, blogs ….
…and display advertising.
But the perceived chaotic nature of social sites and the proliferation of unmoderated content means some brands are hesitant to advertise in these new environments (despite freely advertising in print products for years!) However increased editorialisation – creation of safe, legal, high quality, brandable clearings on these sites - and more transparency of the ad booking process-ease these concerns. For example, Yahoo! Video relaunched this year with a clear distinction between pro-content and user-generated content. For the user there is no difference – all videos can be accessed all the time. But the pre-roll advertising only ever runs against the pro-content.
Furthermore, there are plenty of reasons why social media offers an improved environment for display advertising. The users are certainly engaged: 6.5 billion page views and 2.5 billion minutes per month on Bebo tells its own story. The folksonomy approach to organising and surfacing content – plus the amount of declared personal information – on social media ensures both content and advertising can be more relevant and engaging.
Many brands successfully use social media as a means of ‘online PR’ or brand reputation management – and there’s no doubt this is a very valuable communication platform. However, in the offline world, no brand would ever consider PR without advertising. It’s no good having consumers think your brand is brilliant if they can’t then buy your products. In short, if you’re integrating your brand into a social site, you should be
advertising on the site too.
Take an example: creating a sponsored profile or a sponsored group - a brilliant way of connecting in a real way with your target audience: the viral tools allow your message to spread from fan to fan, there’s strong engagement, strong word of mouth, and a really credible brand association. But how do you control who sees that message? How do you ensure relevancy of communication? How do you ensure optimal frequency of message? How do you determine ROI? What’s the value of a ‘friend’?
This is where the value of display advertising comes in. The advertising that Yahoo! serve on Bebo, for example, can be targeted by age, gender, geography, behaviour and content. Campaigns can be frequency capped and can be bought on a CPA basis. Furthermore, your integration page can be pixeled and the users who visited the site can be re-targeted with additional advertising (or, indeed, excluded from future campaigns to level out the frequency of messaging). There’s also the opportunity to further increase the reach of the campaign through ‘Look-a-Like Modelling’ - serving ads to users who are similar (in demography or behaviour) to those who visited your integration.
Display advertising also helps quantify success in these campaigns. Until we develop a set of tools for demonstrating the ‘brand’ value of more integrated social media activity, we are reliant on traditional metrics such as CTRs and CPAs on associated display ad campaigns to demonstrate success.
Advertising campaigns are also a really strong way of cementing the credibility of association – for example, through co-branded media – as well as offering a stamp of authority to the activity: ‘yes, this is us, not someone claiming to be us’. For example, when Sainsbury’s sponsored the Food and Drink category on Yahoo! Answers, they integrated themselves in the community, sharing recipes and advice … but they also ran brand advertising on every page of the Food and Drink category and across the Yahoo! Network to cement the association.
For some brands, integrating within social media sites is not what they’re after. It might be considered too expensive, too high maintenance or too risky. There may not be a compelling enough call to action to create a community around your brand. This doesn’t mean that social media advertising should be altogether dismissed, however. Provided your target audience are there, in big numbers, you should still fish where the fishes are.
One thing we know about social media sites is that users like spending huge amounts of time there, it’s their default media consumption for killing time. Rich media advertising offers the opportunity to engage users with interactive games, video trailers and embeddable social widgets – essentially all the functionality you would expect from a sponsored profile. As with any activity in social media the key point is not to detract from, interrupt or invade the experience.
So approaching advertising on social media sites should use the same basic principles as in all advertising. The fact that you can deliver engagement and word of mouth goes almost without saying, however you use social media. But to achieve genuine reach and relevancy of message plus optimal frequency and accountability requires display advertising – either in conjunction with or independently of more integrated activity. Over time, advertiser fears of UGC will decrease though users’ fears of invasion of privacy may increase – but amongst all of this, the same principles apply: keep the message engaging, add value, be authentic and understand the medium you’re working in.
This campaign sought out to engage participants online right up until DVD release day through the use of online PR, seeding an advertising campaign to drive traffic to the Resident Evil Extinction website. Users signed up and created a competition avatar which they looked after until the day they were released onto the web into some never seen before live rich media placements over a number of sites. Here, they were killed off throughout the day...until there was only one.
It seems that, of late, as many column inches are dedicated to how social media sites are monetised, as to their latest product innovations. This perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise given the huge valuation of sites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook and the huge numbers of engaged users (and user data) they draw. It’s clear that social media and advertising have the potential to become happy bedfellows. However, actually turning this potential into ad revenue has proven tricky thus far: the previously untouchable Facebook got their fingers burnt on the Beacon ad platform and even Google freely admit they can’t figure out how to best advertise against YouTube videos.
Of course, these days, any site worth its salt has ‘social features’ to it, so to draw a clear distinction between e.g. MySpace ‘a social media site’ and Yahoo! ‘a portal’ is erroneous. Media owners of all shapes and sizes are converging on a form of Media 2.0 – sites that offer pro content, UGC, community tools, editors, feeds, blogs ….
…and display advertising.
But the perceived chaotic nature of social sites and the proliferation of unmoderated content means some brands are hesitant to advertise in these new environments (despite freely advertising in print products for years!) However increased editorialisation – creation of safe, legal, high quality, brandable clearings on these sites - and more transparency of the ad booking process-ease these concerns. For example, Yahoo! Video relaunched this year with a clear distinction between pro-content and user-generated content. For the user there is no difference – all videos can be accessed all the time. But the pre-roll advertising only ever runs against the pro-content.
Furthermore, there are plenty of reasons why social media offers an improved environment for display advertising. The users are certainly engaged: 6.5 billion page views and 2.5 billion minutes per month on Bebo tells its own story. The folksonomy approach to organising and surfacing content – plus the amount of declared personal information – on social media ensures both content and advertising can be more relevant and engaging.
Many brands successfully use social media as a means of ‘online PR’ or brand reputation management – and there’s no doubt this is a very valuable communication platform. However, in the offline world, no brand would ever consider PR without advertising. It’s no good having consumers think your brand is brilliant if they can’t then buy your products. In short, if you’re integrating your brand into a social site, you should be
advertising on the site too.
Take an example: creating a sponsored profile or a sponsored group - a brilliant way of connecting in a real way with your target audience: the viral tools allow your message to spread from fan to fan, there’s strong engagement, strong word of mouth, and a really credible brand association. But how do you control who sees that message? How do you ensure relevancy of communication? How do you ensure optimal frequency of message? How do you determine ROI? What’s the value of a ‘friend’?
This is where the value of display advertising comes in. The advertising that Yahoo! serve on Bebo, for example, can be targeted by age, gender, geography, behaviour and content. Campaigns can be frequency capped and can be bought on a CPA basis. Furthermore, your integration page can be pixeled and the users who visited the site can be re-targeted with additional advertising (or, indeed, excluded from future campaigns to level out the frequency of messaging). There’s also the opportunity to further increase the reach of the campaign through ‘Look-a-Like Modelling’ - serving ads to users who are similar (in demography or behaviour) to those who visited your integration.
Display advertising also helps quantify success in these campaigns. Until we develop a set of tools for demonstrating the ‘brand’ value of more integrated social media activity, we are reliant on traditional metrics such as CTRs and CPAs on associated display ad campaigns to demonstrate success.
Advertising campaigns are also a really strong way of cementing the credibility of association – for example, through co-branded media – as well as offering a stamp of authority to the activity: ‘yes, this is us, not someone claiming to be us’. For example, when Sainsbury’s sponsored the Food and Drink category on Yahoo! Answers, they integrated themselves in the community, sharing recipes and advice … but they also ran brand advertising on every page of the Food and Drink category and across the Yahoo! Network to cement the association.
For some brands, integrating within social media sites is not what they’re after. It might be considered too expensive, too high maintenance or too risky. There may not be a compelling enough call to action to create a community around your brand. This doesn’t mean that social media advertising should be altogether dismissed, however. Provided your target audience are there, in big numbers, you should still fish where the fishes are.
One thing we know about social media sites is that users like spending huge amounts of time there, it’s their default media consumption for killing time. Rich media advertising offers the opportunity to engage users with interactive games, video trailers and embeddable social widgets – essentially all the functionality you would expect from a sponsored profile. As with any activity in social media the key point is not to detract from, interrupt or invade the experience.
So approaching advertising on social media sites should use the same basic principles as in all advertising. The fact that you can deliver engagement and word of mouth goes almost without saying, however you use social media. But to achieve genuine reach and relevancy of message plus optimal frequency and accountability requires display advertising – either in conjunction with or independently of more integrated activity. Over time, advertiser fears of UGC will decrease though users’ fears of invasion of privacy may increase – but amongst all of this, the same principles apply: keep the message engaging, add value, be authentic and understand the medium you’re working in.
Resident Evil Extinction – Extinction campaign (Greenroom Digital)
This campaign sought out to engage participants online right up until DVD release day through the use of online PR, seeding an advertising campaign to drive traffic to the Resident Evil Extinction website. Users signed up and created a competition avatar which they looked after until the day they were released onto the web into some never seen before live rich media placements over a number of sites. Here, they were killed off throughout the day...until there was only one.
