As banner ads become more and more dynamic, one of the big requests in the Rich Media front is the ability to tie into social media content and social services.
In years past, a banner ad was exclusively a highly-critiqued, tightly-tailored advertisement. Heck, the close-eyed nature of creating banner ads is precisely why we created Bannerflow (see our launch presentation).
The basic level of advertising using social media is to provide links to your social media presences. By in large, these ads are similar to previous instances, but instead of a single, dedicated landing page, advertisers may be looking to direct their traffic to their Facebook or Twitter page.
But as brands and messaging have grown into the social sphere, we’re seeing refined banner ads that include mostly unfiltered commentary from the social web. It’s pretty cool.
As ads get more advanced through concepting and development, the actual feeds and functionality is built into the SWF.
Viewers of these ads will be able to see what the general public is saying about these brands.
I’m curious if with oAuth and, more specifically, Facebook’s new Open Graph, it won’t be long until we see ads “Liked” or “Viewed” by your friend.
Despite the severe economic global downturn, as predicted, online advertising has continued to chug along. Here’s some headlines now that we’re about halfway through 2010:
NYT—U.S. Online Ad Market Grows in Q1 “comScore reported on Thursday that impressions of display ads rose 15 percent in the first quarter, year on year, to a record $1.1 trillion.”
As we’re all keeping an eye on the banner ad space, it’s great to see the positive news regarding display advertising.
Click the link above to view a detailed chart, published in April, visualizing quarterly growth in the online advertising sector.
Online Media Daily—Study Finds ‘Transparency’ Impedes Display Ad Growth “The study found that some of the key issues related to display ad transparency include “message misalignment” (advertising message appears out-of-context from surrounding Web page content) and outright “dangerous” placements (ads appearing on pages that defy good “taste, respect and basic courtesy”).”
Economics are not the only challenges that face our industry. To continue growing and succeeding in the broader marketplace, it’s important that the industry takes note of ways to improve the offering and instill more confidence with clients/customers. This outlines the challenges regarding the common question, “So, where will my ads be shown?”.
When sending ads out the media servers, one of the final things we all do is whip together a quick backup GIF or JPG to ensure impressions are delivered even when Flash can’t be served.
Side note: It’s interesting that the argument used to be that these backups were for visitors who had pre-IE5 browsers, or something super-antiquated. But now cutting-edge devices—a certain company in Cupertino comes to mind—are also making these backup important.
Well, rather than waiting until the last minute, you can make sure to provide impactful backup impressions by using animated GIFs to keep your creative as consistent as possible.
Take a look:
Flash
Animated GIF
What do you think? Do you use animated GIFs for the backup images?
If you don’t visit BannerBlog, you must. It is the greatest source of banner ad creative on the web. We’ve seen a couple really great ads over the past few weeks, and we threw in two we liked from back in 2007.
Check out the ads by clicking-through to BannerBlog.
BannerBlog says: Customise your Smart Brabus. This banner saves the colours and position of the car within the banner for the next person who comes along.
“My name is Fernando Ferreira, and I’m from Sao Paulo, Brasil. I recently filmed an advert for Emirates to mark the launch of their new nonstop flight from Dubai to Sao Paulo in which I have to talk about Brasil for 14 hours and 40 minutes (the duration of the flight) without stopping. No breaks, no cuts, no edits, no cheating.
At www.nonstopfernando.com you can watch me talk nonstop for 14 hours and 40 minutes about Brasilian restaurants, literature, Formula 1 drivers, museums, cities, coffee, shopping, culture, music, dancing, soap operas, sumo wrestling, food, cocktails, carnivals, dating, language, architecture, politics, banknotes, holidays, football….”
Admittedly, I’m a bit busy to truth check it, but hey - I’ll roll with that.
Do you ever submit your ads to BannerBlog? We’d love to know if some of our Bannerflow customers are getting recognized on BannerBlog! Let us know in the comments.
