It was recently revealed that General Motors pulled its $10 million advertising budget from Facebook because they wanted to run page takeovers instead of the more typical sponsored posts and display ads. Page takeovers and display advertising achieve different results, as do interactive rich media ads, or integrated options like advertorials and social media activity. The creative execution that is right for your advertising really depends on your campaign goals. Each method of advertising has its pros and cons that work with or against your goals. Understanding the results each type of advertising achieves is important.

DISPLAY BANNERS

How display banners work well: - Display banners can be a cost effective way to buy reach, and design costs can be low. - They can work well for specific brand messages out to a large number of people. - Depending on the campaign, display banners may click better on certain websites, but this can be an ineffective measure for branding purposes. - There are a variety of ad sizes available, allowing the advertiser more choice. - Smaller international creative can often be used in larger sizes (eg, a 728X90 ads can run in a 760X120 placement), which can cut reduce deisign costs. . Things to consider: - Make sure you’re buying placements based on the audience you want to reach (following clicks may not always get you the right audience) - For performance campaigns, it is important to have a clear call to action, otherwise the display banner tends to work better for branding. - Remember, banners influence people well beyond the click. Make sure you’re monitoring post-click activity in the form of sites visits and direct google searches for your brand - Because of their limited space, keeping to the essential elements in your banner design is important.

Read the rest of this article.

For those of you who haven’t read the latest copy of AdMedia yet (you should go and buy a copy :) here’s an article I’ve put together on behalf of the IAB NZ and Adhub.:

There’s been a lot of doom and gloom over the global recession but despite this, digital media businesses are growing … through the roof.

Starbucks’ Facebook profile has 3,847,224 fans. That’s not far off the total population of NZ and certainly the largest chunk of our spending population who’ve visited its pages and refer friends, participate in polls, pass on big ups or the wackness.

Tom Osborne of Wag the Dog believes the fundamental difference to marketing in 2009 has been the shift to conversations supporting placements. “Much of what we’ve done for 2degrees Mobile is dialogue driven – you have to understand and embrace communities,” he says.

According to Osborne, the average kiwi has 120 friends on Facebook so it doesn’t take a lot of referring individuals to create a big impact. “The key learning for us has been to build the community before you try to sell them on your product or service. If you start selling your widget, coupons or polls too early you can miss the bigger upside of a large base of fans.”

“It used to be that a great idea would do the job; nowadays the great idea merely earns you the right to have a conversation. It’s the conversations that drive reach and increase frequency of your message or brand.”

There’s no question that online media has been the winner of the recession, with new shops like Wag the Dog and iProspect popping up within the last six months and large accounts like BNZ and TVNZ jumping ship – in part for perceived benefits to their digital strategies.

The most recent and significant investment from most serious media agencies has been search. All the big shops have search specialists beavering away like counterfeiters printing currency. But it’s not greenbacks they’re concerned with, it’s search terms and consultancy around optimisation for client sites better found by the mighty Google.

“Search is just navigation,” Says Carat’s Ryf Quail, who’s also just joined the search stampede with iProspect. “Those that position search against display and brand advertising are missing the point – search is not an against medium, it’s a leverage medium.”

Read the rest of this article.