Out with the old, in with the new, as the cliche goes. At least for the local advertising sales division of Jumpstart Digital Marketing, Inc., an interactive media sales, marketing and technology company, which recently stopped selling static banner ads to local auto dealers. Instead, the Jumpstart is recommending Point Roll rich media ads to their auto clients. Though partnerships with major auto sites such as NADAguides.com; CarandDriver.com; StoneAge.com; RoadandTrack.com; and Car.com, Jumpstart delivers more than 3.5 million car shoppers each month. Geographic segments of this audience can be targeted to help local and regional auto dealers reach in-market car buyers in their area. Jumpstarts says the decision to drop banners was made to encourage dealers to take advantage of the multiple panels offered by Point Roll ad units. "Dealers know that the majority of their customers are online before they come to the showroom," says Thomas J. O'Leary, Jumpstart's Detroit-based Vice President of Local Advertising Sales. "While it makes good sense to advertise where your customers are, dealers are savvy marketers and have questioned the effectiveness of "banners and buttons." He says that the Point Roll solution really grabs your attention -- it gives dealers more room to tell their story. They can show model details, prices, used specials, no hassle pricing, customized value propositions, even photos and video if they want them. The Point Roll ads appear like a normal banner but expands to 4 times the size whenever the user rolls his/her mouse over the ad unit. Those mouseovers reveal up to eight additional "panels" or extra real estate for dealers offerings. "Point Roll ads are essentially like having a mini version of our dealers' site within the ad units and, of course, can contain hot links to content on the car dealers' own websites," says Mr. O'Leary. The major attraction of Point Roll ads seems to be that they are user initiated. Unlike other ad units that have been the source of so much controversy, these aren't meant to assertively push ad messages on potential customers. The design of the ads encourages interaction without coming on too forcefully. "Although banners are thought to be ineffective because they can't deliver enough information and their click-through rates are low, Point Roll ads, which are the same unit size as banners, don't require visitors to click on them to be effective. As a matter of fact, 50% of the unique visitors to our partner sites look at Point Roll ads," says Mr. O'Leary. "That is an enormous response from a very large group of in-market buyers."
In addition to the millions generated from product placement fees, the producers of the Fox hit "American Idol" have followed the 'insider' Hollywood formula for increasing box office sales. They've got their Internet Buzz machine in gear. Buzz, word of mouth, viral, guerilla. Call it what you will -- but it is all really the same thing and it has been around for a long time. Some even say it has been proven to be the most trusted form of marketing and advertising, arguing, "Who are you going to trust more, an ad or a recommendation from a friend?" Movie studios have long recognized the value of Internet Buzz Building for that opening box office number, and over the last 3 years, studios and other savvy clients of agencies like 1st Approach have been budgeting more towards online buzz marketing. "Not only is it cost-effective, says Jeff Greenfield, vice president of 1st Approach, a strategic media and entertainment marketing company, "but since the success of the sleeper hit 'Blair Witch Project,' which was launched exclusively through online buzz marketing, it provides an immediate response -- which is unheard of in a traditional campaign." But , how do you measure buzz? Unlike a traditional CPM campaign, determining what effect word of mouth plays in a marketing campaign can be elusive. Enter David Godes and Dina Mayzlin, assistant professors at Harvard Business School and the Yale School of Management, respectively, who have published a 44-page study of the word-of-mouth phenomenon, how to measure it and specifically how it relates to television ratings. Among their findings: early conversations are the most important in creating buzz, and breadth is more important than volume. "It may not matter if the new version of 'Hollywood Squares' is enthusiastically discussed among 'Hollywood Squares' viewers," says Greenfield, "but when discussion moves to the viewers of 'ER' and 'American Idol,' that's buzz." Buzz firms like 1st Approach add in the appeal of a contest with a trip Greenfield calls the 'Hollywood Underground Tour' -- a "3-day fun-filled backstage tour of Hollywood." From Harvard to Hollywood -- now with Buzz on TV -- looks like we've finally got something to look forward to for the fall season.
Apparently concerned with being associated with war coverage, last week, Toyota announced plans to pull its ads off network TV. There has been speculation in the press that other automakers could follow. This is certainly bad news for the networks already suffering from the cost of covering the war and loss of other advertising especially during wall-to-wall coverage early in the conflict. Toyota's decision could be a two-edged sword. While they avoid having their ads run after or before potentially gruesome war footage, they could recede from public awareness at a time when the entire auto industry is suffering from a prolonged downturn in sales. Robert Passikoff, President of Brand Keys, which recently ranked brands on their ability to survive the demands of an economic and social environment at war, says, "Consumers will be looking for continuity and reassurance. Brands that are visible and viable - even in the face of war - will thrive. If there ever was a time to advertise, it's now." While Toyota will apparently still maintain a presence on cable TV, their best alternative to network TV is simply, the Internet. Putting aside that the Internet is undeniably the first stop in the car buying process (J.D. Powers and Associates says among the 60% of new-vehicle buyers who use the Internet for research/shopping, 88% visit automotive websites before arriving at a dealership for a test drive), the Internet can make up for the boxcar impressions lost by avoiding network TV. Seventy-five percent of Americans now have access to the Internet from any location. There are frequently more visitors to websites than the largest audiences delivered to advertisers by prime time broadcast programming. For example, the top three Internet properties, AOL, MSN and Yahoo!, each attract more than 100 million U.S. visitors per month. The Online Publisher's Association says that Internet content sites draw 3.8 million users per minute during the daytime. By contrast, the season finale for "Survivor" the highest rated show on TV this year, delivered about 29 million households in an hour. While TV is an exceptional medium for getting the consumer's attention with the emotional rush of a well-executed car spot, the Internet can provides marketers a unique ability to collect data about an advertiser's target audience. Traditional media never actually interacts with its audience so it cannot verify if its audience projections are true, nor determine how their audiences react to advertiser messages or make rapid adjustments to achieve better results for marketers. The Internet is unique in that every moment a user is on any particular site, the publisher can collect information about him/her. In fact, by assigning a universal cookie to individuals, data can be collected on them whenever and wherever they happen to navigate. So, it can easily be determined how long an individual is online; where they are coming from (down to the geographic location of their ISP), what kind of content they consume (or just as importantly, what content they ignore), what kind of ad units they interact with, what they buy or subscribe to, what kind of offers they respond to, etc. As publishers increasingly incent users to provide personal data such as age, gender, income, street address or zip code, etc. this information can be combined with content server and ad server data to provide a comprehensive profile of every user. If Toyota would move what they are canceling in network TV to the Internet, I'll bet their experience will be so positive, a good deal of that spend will remain online. Mitch Lowe is the CEO of Jumpstart Digital Marketing, an interactive marketing and media sales organization that focuses exclusively on the automotive industry. Lowe can be reached at mitch@jumpstartDM.com.