We’ve all been there… click on an ad and you’re directed to a fancy flash intro page that a bunch of people have put a whole lot of effort to make slick and professional. Often there’s a fair amount of effort put in to making it look “unprofessional,” but in either case the result is the same – 90-seconds (a life-time if you’re ADD like me) of nothing for a bunch of music (don’t get me started on non-opted music) some moving imagery and still a bunch of nothing!

Why do brands still insist on doing this? There appears to be an element of design for fancy rather than function. While flash can look fantastic, it doesn’t necessarily get us to the heart of information we wanted when we clicked on an ad in the first place. Let’s remember why 99% of people use the web in ever increasing minutes – information and functionality. We use the web because it’s faster (mostly) and more efficient. When we’re using it for entertainment, it’s generally because we can get the stuff quicker than if we were to wait for it to be released or it’s the only place we can get such tightly targeted niche content.

Here’s an idea for money better spent – build your microsite to provide specific information and functionality. If you’re building it purely for entertainment and brand engagement make sure it works simply and easily and gets people to the guts of it quickly. Save yourself even more time, energy and money and don’t build it yourself at all. Let publishers (those in the business of building form and functionality) build one for you that caters to their specific audience. This way you can immerse your brand in relevant content. Just make sure it’s useful / entertaining and simple. Many publishers have purpose-built content management systems to make this happen – AKA – FaceBook or MySpace. Others have threads and discussion forums ripe for the task and many can turn around an elegant solution within a couple of days that meets brand and content objectives for a fraction of the cost.

Here’s an example of the very simple things we do for brands on our sites all the time:

There are plenty of other ways to achieve an outstanding brand experience on your own, but beware the cost! If you do have the budget and the fortitude to see it through – David Armono of Advertising Age provides some good tips here

So what’s up with all these performance ads without clicks? Well at least not clickable links that any normal human can find without the aid of a magnifying glass. Some even go so far as to not let users click for 30 seconds or more – after the message has rolled and re-rolled. I’m sure performance advocates would maintain that all of these practices are measures to ensure that only qualified clicks get through. But what if it was more than that? What if these measures were really about exceptionally cheap brand advertising, or Brand ads in Drag?

Read the rest of this article.

Welcome to our first post! So what’s happening in the interactive scene in New Zealand? Lots actually – in a time of recession (no one knows how deep yet) many web publishers, advertisers and their agencies are battening down the hatches, but not necessarily for the normal reasons. There’s evidence of brands spending more, publishers doing more and agencies booking more. So the hatch is much more likely to belong to a Sherman tank than some sort of hurricane room or bunker. Think of it more as toughening up and thinking smarter and more strategically about what we do.

Online ad-spend is up (particularly display) both year on year and qtr on qtr. Can’t tell you how much yet – but stay tuned for further evidence that online advertising, in particular, continues to grow and outstrip traditional media channels. This doesn’t mean that traditional media is completely f*&^d, but don’t expect it to look feel or perform in the same ways that it has in the past.

Read the rest of this article.