Bannerflow - Blog

Social media content in banner ads, basic and advanced

Tom — Wed, 26 May 2010 10:36:05 +0000

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.

Are you using social content in your banner ads?

Flash-less banner ads—making ads without Flash?

Tom — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:22:00 +0000

With all the news regarding Flash vs. HTML5/JavaScript, we’re curious—have you ever designed a banner ad using something other than Flash?

Take the Survey: Flash-less banner ads, Have you ever designed an ad using something other than Flash?

And don’t miss some previous polls:

Online advertising outlook, six months into 2010

Tom — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:07:35 +0000

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.
Business Insider—Online Advertising Is Back, Baby! (Chart)
“After getting rocked from the financial crisis, online advertising has bounced back.”

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?”.

Using animated GIFs for your backup images

Tom — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:29:03 +0000

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?

Some of our favorites from BannerBlog

Tom — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 10:18:15 +0000

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.

Smart Car—Customise

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.

Mentos—Diamond White

BannerBlog says: If the webcam security doesn’t work on the version above, you can click here to view it in a new window.

See what your teeth would look like if they weren’t covered in nicotine and coffee stains, then record a short video with your new bling’d up mouth.

There’s some very clever stuff going on here.

Emirates—Fernando

BannerBlog says: Cute.

“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, footballÃ¢â‚¬Â¦.”

Admittedly, I’m a bit busy to truth check it, but hey - I’ll roll with that.

SlimJim—Trap

BannerBlog says: Quite good 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.

Adding Rich Media ads to your account

Tom — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:38:56 +0000

Bannerflow is a lightning-quick resource for uploading your SWF assets for effectively managing the banner ad review process.

In most cases, this pertains to your self-container standard banner ad assets. Most rich media providers use proprietary systems that bundle SWFs, FLVs and other technology, and then they conveniently provide you with preview links for your team members and clients.

But what if your campaign contains both standard banner ads and rich media ads? We made it dead-simple to keep your entire campaign managed within your Bannerflow account.

Here’s how you can add Rich Media ads, using any rich media provder you’d like—PointRoll, EyeWonder, EyeBlaster, et. al.

» First, get started and set up your Client, Project and add your assets. You can view our getting started video here.

» To add a Rich Media ad, first upload your rich media assets to the provider of your choosing. After you upload your ad, the provider will give you a Preview URL.

» Using your Preview URL, add it into Bannerflow using the “Embed URL” option.

» Within the client view, you’ll see that your Rich Media ad is rendered in an iFrame and is manageable within your Bannerflow account.

What is the percentage of standard-versus-rich media ads that you’ve been producing lately? Let us know!

Customizing Bannerflow with your company’s look & feel

Tom — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 22:11:31 +0000

This 3-minute video shows you how easy it is to customize Bannerflow.

What ad server(s) do you use?

Tom — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 16:15:33 +0000

We want to know what ad server(s) you use for serving your banner ads.

Take the survey: What ad server(s) do you use? » (SurveyMonkey link)

We’d also love some of your personal feedback on your ad server(s) in the comments.

Designing banner ad rollover states

Tom — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 16:05:56 +0000

The call-to-action (CTA) is one of the most crucial aspects to banner ad design. For starters, often times (impossibly) success will be gauged at some level by click-clickthrough, rich-media interactions, or video views.

As our overal ad impressions work towards building the brand, our CTA’s design can help us achieve or goals. When I’m designing ads, I make an effort to keep both of these things in mind by keeping both the logo and CTA ever-present. Do you ever see the final frame of an ad and it makes no sense? Not good. Think billboard—not TV ad—when designing those final frames.

From a more detailed perspective, I sometimes see missed opportunity with ads out the web. See the below examples and see if you notice the difference.

Did you catch it? In the second ad, the over and hit states for the button are accessed from the entire area of the state. The first ad only changes when you’re directly over the button.

As we encourage engagement and action from the ad viewers, it’s smart practice to show your state changes even when the mouse isn’t directly over your button.

What do you think? How do you design your calls-to-actions and the over/hit states?

How to upload your first ad with Bannerflow

Tom — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:45:05 +0000

A quick 3-minute video showing how to set up your first Bannerflow project.