Hi. My Name is James Gross

The future of branded advertising

tedr:

bijan:

Much has been said about the issues facing publishers and advertisers particularly when it comes to branded advertising.

My head always hurts when I hear people say that at least with television, brands can safely advertise their brands.

Yes, television has been a success story when it comes to branded advertising. The dollars are big. Forget big, they are enormous.

But I’m convinced that it’s a fragile business. First, it’s not growing. And our attention is shifting. Even if Nielsen says we are all watching 25 hours of TV per day we know it’s not true in our hearts and our brains. The second the TV commercial comes on we whip out our mobile phone or we turn our eyes to our laptops. Or we just click thru the ads on our DVRs.

Yet online branded advertising has real challenges. The current search business doesn’t deliver branded advertising. The classic banner ad if targeted works well for many things — except branding.

To make display advertising ads friendlier to brands, new formats are being introduced like this super sized banner ad I saw on Alley Insider today.

To give you an idea how big that Mercedes ad, that photo is my 15” MacBook Pro which has a 1440x900 display!

I’m not sure this format is the best for publishers, advertisers and consumers. I have a feeling it’s not.

But I am optimistic that there will be more compelling solutions for branded advertising. I’ve seen a number of creative ideas & technologies over the past few months and I’m sure we’ll see others too.

@bijan. I’m with you 100%. Though the first way for brands to be effective online is to ditch standards and seek out publishers that are willing to prepare custom integrations for the brand into their media form. Advertising has been a lie for 100 years and we have the metrics to prove it now. Brands needs to be where their customers are and make their intentions known by helping their customers enjoy their lives more. Red Bull’s arial and DIY events are a great example. Samsung power stations at airports are another. Even the Bud Light Wheat / SNL takeover is the future. All of these were envisioned by the brand (and with the publisher or property holder) as an actual adn real (vs. pretend) benefit to the customer. It says we think your lifestyle is great and want to make it better. (Note the Bud Light ad buyout meant there was more time to show more programming (classic SNL clips) which along with reduced total ad minutes is a win for viewers.)

This is how advertising will work in the next century. It will take much more work, it will allow for far fewer martini lunches and a roiling of creative destruction for years to come before things settle out.

I’m speaking with confidence as our advertisers on Dogster and Catster get all their ROI from providing fun and information to our audience. They still use banners, but their just to set the stage for the real sharing points. We almost always turn down agencies that request pure banner buy, because they’ll never get the return they want and thus never come back.

So think big about how advertising will change, but think beyond IAB and standards and think about integrating with customers actual lives in a meaningful way.

I always struggle when web heads(included) use their logic to explain to the world what brand advertising should be. Ted’s answer is ultimately the way to best target niche communities, that runs contrary to much of what brand advertising needs; broadcast and reach.

The web needs to make up it’s mind on what it can do. I’m concerned if the broadcast and reach model wins. Welcome the ad exchanges and the winner take all media companies.

Source: bijan