After Unicast took its core Superstitial brand to full-screen size yesterday, the company still feels there's room to grow on the technology side. "I think there's still room for a larger canvas," said Allie Savarino, Senior Vice President. "What we've introduced is a new product that runs on a full screen for 15 seconds with a 300k file size, and that's the biggest canvas anyone has online. However, I think as advertisers become more comfortable they will demand even more flexibility. In time I think we will provide more length and file size." Unicast said a response to advertiser demand for "more effective online ad formats" that offer the same creative flexibility enjoyed by offline media, drove the introduction of the newest addition to its online format suite, the Full Screen Superstitial. Savarino said an in-house survey showed that advertisers would be willing to give more budget percentage to a full-screen unit. The new unit's introduction was accompanied by a research report from Dynamic Logic, which shows that larger sized Superstitials drove key advertising metrics well above "normal" levels. Focusing on Unilever's Snuggle brand, the study found that purchase intent for the product outperformed the market norm for packaged goods by 32 to seven percent. Brand favorability outperformed normal levels by 46 to six percent. "Even when advertisers are seeing wonderful results from their online advertising, they're still holding back from getting into ten percent of their budget," said Savarino. "We think these numbers will get them to reconsider. Purchase intent and brand favorability are the hardest numbers to move." Savarino said Unicast is now focused on presenting its new product to "tons of CPG companies" as well as key players in the pharmaceutical and financial categories.
DoubleClick Inc. on Monday announced results of its Q1 2003 Ad Serving Trend Report, which reveals that rich media continues to increase in usage, with 28% of all ads served being rich media formats, compared to 17.3% in Q1 2002. On average, rich media continues to increase by 10% per quarter, and could encompass nearly 40% of all ads served by the end of the year. Rich media includes dynamic ads that fly across web pages, pop-ups, and any ad that includes Macromedia Flash creative technology. "The data demonstrates that online advertising continues to prove its effectiveness for marketers, becoming a more creative yet at the same time standardized medium," said Doug Knopper, Vice President and General Manager, Online Advertising Solutions, DoubleClick. "It is encouraging to see that marketers are not just relying on click-through rates, but are also assessing all kinds of post-impression responses to optimize campaigns and gain a more complete picture of conversions." Rich Media Impacts Conversion Rates Rich media, often used for branding objectives by entertainment, automotive and packaged goods advertisers, has proven to generate higher rates of post impression activity per impression (.78% vs. .41% for non-rich media), demonstrating that consumers are likely to take some kind of action after viewing an ad. For advertisers using direct response metrics (click-throughs), rich media click-through rates have declined slightly to 2.14% from Q4 2002 levels of 2.44%. This could be due to advertisers using rich media creative for branding and thus not eliciting clicks from the consumer. However, overall click-through rates have remained stable since the beginning of 2002, currently averaging .7%. View-throughs, which assess some action observed within 30 days of a consumer viewing an ad, have continued to rise, and are now averaging .61% for ads served by advertisers. While click-throughs assess immediate response, view-throughs reflect the latent impact of an online ad. This metric has become an important factor in accessing the overall effectiveness of an adverting campaign. Primetime on the Internet is Work Time For online, primetime is work time with impression volume peaking from noon to mid-afternoon EST and then gradually declining throughout the day to a low point at midnight. Click-rate volume also peaks during this time. Publishers continue to take advantage of content targeting. This tactic has grown from 42% of all ads served by publishers last quarter, to nearly 50% in Q1. By tagging specific content areas of their site and selling that inventory to relevant advertisers, publishers have been able to increase the value of their inventory and the effectiveness of it for advertisers. While day-parting -- or planning advertising using specific times of day to reach implied audiences -- has been much discussed as a potentially effective technique for online advertising, in reality it is little used. Less than 3% of all ads served by DoubleClick use this targeting parameter. Increasing Standardization of Sizes In comparison to television, which has three basic ad units (the :60 spot, the :30 and the :15), online has a nearly infinite creative palette, which has made the medium particularly complex for advertisers. But as the industry matures, patterns of standardization are emerging. For the first quarter since DoubleClick began releasing these statistics, the number of ad sizes used declined -- from 11,500 to 10,529, an 8% decrease. In addition, on average, 70% of all sizes are Internet Advertising Bureau standard. The standard banner (468 x 60 pixels) is still nearly half of all ads served (46.7%), while the 120 x 600 skyscraper is the next most popular size, accounting for 6.9% of all ads served. Skyscrapers (120 x 600 pixels and 160 x 600 pixels) and large rectangles (336 x 280 pixels and 300 x 250 pixels) are the fastest growing units in the system: skyscrapers have nearly doubled since Q1 2002, now accounting for 8.4% of all ads served.
The defining trait of traditional media has always been the fact that some "editor" somewhere put together various elements of content and served it all up as one package. You can just buy the comic pages, you also have to buy the local business news. You can't see Morley Safer without having to suffer Andy Rooney. Songs on the radio come sprinkled between contest promotions and idiotic banter. Some of us more naïve Internet guys thought interactive media might change all of this - we were confident enough that we spent many long nights arguing over whether or not it is a good or a bad thing that people have to broaden their content intake beyond what they really want. I can remember back in 1993 arguing with Jay Heinrichs, a magazine editor, about whether or not we need any editors. He maintained that people like him were absolutely essential because people weren't going to wade through all the dreck to get to the interesting articles. But Jay hadn't yet met Google. We are now seeing true instances of the breaking down of this "forced amalgam" of content consumable only in the portions and combinations made available by editors. Google's new news service strips the most interesting stories from thousands of sources, using a popularity algorithm, much like its quite successful search directory listings. This is a perfect example of people getting news outside of the context that the publication editors anticipated. Even more interesting is Apple Computer's new Music Store service, allowing people to buy individual songs and eschewing the record album format that forced you to purchase the seven "B sides" along with the two or three hits you were seeking from your favorite singer. This isn't merely a new convenience to viewers. These sorts of applications change the marketplace of media in two ways. First, it makes content creation a very different business. Right now B sides are pumped out as filler for albums, where in the new model they really have no place. More effort can be spent taking risks on more innovative attempts at hits. Secondly, it leaves fewer formulaic places in which to insert advertising messages. If you're watching a partial segment of 60 Minutes, thus safely avoiding the Andy Rooney segment, you're also not hanging around for the commercial pod that played between the two. This means that advertisers may have to reach people based not on what publication they view, but rather what they are doing at the particular moment. This points less toward the run-of-site media buy and more toward the behavioral campaign that pops up for the user only when the message proves relevant or useful. It's a start.