As Facebook works feverishly this year to hammer out its business model, it should consider that the three most profitable online media companies in the U.S. (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!) all rely on advertising revenue for their businesses. Moreover, advertising has furnished a reliable business model for every electronic medium in U.S. history and there is no reason to think that online social networking platforms will be the exception. With this in mind, Facebook should look into different ways to enable advertisers to place rich, engaging content on the site that users could share with their friends. Allowing brands to place shareable rich content on the site could also play into the company’s recently launched virtual currency program (“Facebook Credits”). The company could permit advertisers to “sponsor” Facebook Credits of users who share the sponsor’s ads with their friends. In this way, the company could generate revenues from both advertising and its virtual currency while more effectively monetizing the myriad of social interactions that occur between users on the site.

Currently, Facebook allows only site-served ads and a strictly limited set of formats. Facebook’s rationale behind its decision to limit the creativity of advertisers in this way is that it ensures a sleeker user experience. Moreover, the company clearly believes that the enhanced relevancy of the ads (since they’re served by the site which has access to all user profile data) will make them engaging despite their rudimentary content. However, relevant does not equal engaging. People share content because it’s entertaining. Conversely, people will often fail to notice boring content, even if it’s ‘relevant.’ The narrow range of creative formats Facebook offers allows little room for truly rich engaging user experiences. Thus, in its effort to create less intrusion, Facebook has in fact enabled the placement of boring content that actually clutters the user experience – despite the fact that it’s targeted for relevancy.

In conclusion, as it searches for a profitable business model, Facebook should proceed as follows. First of all, it should look to emulating profitable online media companies in the U.S. market. Second, it should remember that relevant does not equal engaging and users will ignore even the most targeted ads if they’re not entertaining. I have suggested one strategy the company could use to monetize content sharing by allowing advertisers to place rich engaging ads on the site that users could, by sharing the content, use to earn Facebook Credits sponsored by advertisers. However this is just one approach among many other, equally valid, and equal in quantity to the myriad of ways that users interact on Facebook.



Sean Gelles, Manager, Product Planning

While data drives display advertising and allows advertisers to serve specific ads to specific users and change messaging to users who have viewed your message before, advertisers are still relatively blind to users behind search. This is one of the topics discussed at i-com International Conference on Online Media Measurement in Portugal this week.

According to Chris Copeland, CEO of GroupM search in the US, the problem of lack of visibility to the searcher is still masked by the outstanding Direct Response performance of search. “One of the problems is that without the third party ad serving, there are extreme limitations in attribution and bidding. Without third party serving it is hard to attribute the search to other media and to value the consumer based on the information that we know about him.”

“We undervalue some users, and overvalue others because of lack of data,” he said. “Today, there is no ability to change messaging for users who search multiple times.”

At the same panel, Henry Eccles from Google argued that the search channel has an impact beyond direct response. At Google, he said, they divide the value of search into four pieces:
1. Direct response and traffic generation—the conversions that happen directly after the search.
2. Latent conversion, beyond the last click—these are conversions that take a long time to materialize, sometimes over one month.
3. Online to off line, the impact of online advertising on offline sales—this is projection the value of search in the offline world. According to Google, using econometric modeling they see an increase in off-line sales as a result online display advertising.
4. The branding effect of search— according to Google, the text of paid search by itself has a branding effect. Nevertheless, the branding effect is maximized when users are exposed to both paid search text and visit the website.


Lots of food for thought. So is now the time?

Ariel Geifman, Research Analyst

Have you ever wondered what a Chlamydia looks like? Curiosity. That is the basis of the campaign orchestrated for the Ministry of Health by Cartier Communication and their media partners: Vizéum and Espresso Media. Yannick Manuri from Espresso Media shares his insights on this daring campaign developed with Eyeblaster and ALT Productions.

Based on the theme ‘Quite often, there is nothing to see’ overall campaign efforts included posters, bus shelters, Internet, stands in several colleges, as well as tactical and viral events. As ‘nine people out of 10 don’t know that they have an STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease)’ the campaign wanted to remind youth that ‘because you look safe’ is not a valid argument for not using a condom.


The first part of the campaign execution was a video that is circulating on You Tube and various social media sites. The video stars an opera-theatre piece created and presented just before Valentine’s Day throughout eight colleges in Quebec. At the peak of lunch time, in the cafeteria, what seems to be the beginning of a couple’s fight regarding a STD becomes an entertaining musical comedy.





The viral scattering of this video just started and has already generated over 11 000 views on You Tube. The video segment was also integrated in the content portion of several popular sites such as: 33mag.ca, Bombe.tv, Ckoi.com, Cinoche.com, etc.


THE TARGET AND STRATEGY

Espresso Media handled the online portion of this campaign. To reach this highly coveted target audience (15-24 year olds), we needed to be creative in order to surprise them and captivate their attention.
We strongly believed that a standard ad banner would not effectively reach this audience. Actually, we think that one is very disconnected from today’s reality if they believe that a simple bigbox campaign on sites such as musiqueplus.com is efficient to reach the target.


The campaign was based on:
- Innovation in the choice of ad formats, betting on the ‘newness’ factor
- Creation of a new and impactful ad format
- Investment in interactive and engaging ad pieces
- Favour video utilization


The development process of the online portion of the campaign was one of the most intricate that we have done here at the agency. Actually it’s probably the most complex project of my career! As far as I know, you can count on a single hand the number of times that this type of ad format has been executed in Canada.


This took over 50 hours of work by our media team, without counting all the hours of development and programming done by our technological partners ALT Productions and Eyeblaster.


The execution was so elaborate for the team that at one point we even questioned the feasibility of the entire project. On several occasions we thought that our ideas were too ambitious, and that we would be better off finding a plan B. It is with a huge sigh of relief that we proudly share the details of this new execution that will, without a doubt, surprise more than one!


EXECUTION DETAILS

In order to attract the target’s attention, we opted for a wallpaper format, with a rather surprising creative, across several popular sites reaching the youth target. With the agreement of the sites’ editorial teams, we replaced the usual backgrounds of each site with a picture of a young man/woman wearing nothing but underwear. Once we had grabbed the user’s attention, it was hard to not be intrigued by the banner where the message was ‘Touch me and I will show you what a Chlamydia looks like’.


Once the banner was clicked, the entire site folded towards the bottom. The underwear of the young man/woman was also pulled down in synch with the content of the site. This made room for the message ‘Quite often, you can’t see Chlamydia. Condoms, 100% OK. Youhaveonelife.com.”
In order to make this execution believable, we had to reproduce a constantly updated replicate of the homepage (content and layout) and overlay it on the wallpaper background. We personalized this for each site, each homepage.

The reactions to this campaign are numerous in news & information media and daily talk TV shows.

Touch and see the results for yourself….

From interactive video to synchronized video to slow motion to HD, this month’s new & notable campaigns featured in The Blast are not to be missed.


Coke SloMo Snowboard, DK

This homepage takeover features a wannabe snowboarding Olympian practicing in his living room.  Users can navigate between tricks and hit ‘hidas’ to watch the trick again in slow motion.

Media: Wunderman
Creative: Wunderman
Format: Expandable Banner Takeover
Interactive Feature: Interactive Video
Vertical: CPG







 

Pepsi or Pesi Poll, ES

This Spanish campaign resulted from Pepsi’s insight from Latin America that many Spanish speakers can pronounce the brand’s name more easily and phonetically without the second “P.”. In a new commercial-within-a-commercial,  Spanish soccer star Fernando Torres gets fed up when the director keeps correcting the way he says “Pesi” on camera.’  Users can vote for whether they prefer ‘Pepsi’ or ‘Pesi.’

Media: OMD
Creative: La Despensa
Format: Expandable Banner Takeover
Vertical: CPG

Sherlock Holmes Share on Social Media, FR

Media: Mediacom
Creative: Monstre
Format: Expandable Banner
Interactive Feature: HD video, Social Connect
Vertical: Entertainment

Wolfman Homepage Takeover, UK

After watching a video strip, users can continue their journey in the banner with the Wolfman by downloading wallpaper, viewing a picture gallery, playing a TV spot, opening a moon widget and linking to the movie’s Facebook page.

Media: Mediacom
Creative: Creative Partnership
Format: Expandable Banner Takeover
Interactive Feature: Microsite ad, Social Connect
Vertical: Entertainment

South Australia Tourism Sync, AU
This is a classic example of the power of synchronized ad that makes it fun for the user to explore what’s behind the closed doors with separate links to what most interests the user to visit in Australia.

Media: KWP
Creative: KWP
Format: Synchronized Unit
Vertical: Travel

We are pleased to bring you an interview with Mario Sánchez del Real, General Creative Director of Netthink. Mario discusses the interactive campaign that netthink and Isobar recently launched for MINI. He shares how they took advantage of the opportunity to use a big impact format to come up with something more entertaining and a ‘deeper than usual’ banner. Read on to see why this campaign was chosen as The Spotlight Campaign in The Blast Newsletter by Eyeblaster.

What was the client brief for the MINI campaign? Do an impactful, big and interactive piece that everyone likes so we can be doing interviews after it. MINI is the perfect client to match to Netthink and Isobar’s way of creating time with users, and this case is a good example of that.

How did you decide on the concept of an interactive video with a therapist? The campaign is part of an integrated MINI campaign whose theme is MINI – Better than Therapy; the issue is how you make a good offline concept turn more interesting online. Involving the brand with user interaction is a way of having a better brand communication. The perception of it becomes rather different than just an ad.

What role did Eyeblaster play in the campaign? We have been working with Eyeblaster for a long time, and it’s been always a perfect platform for every rich media format we create to become real and to work perfectly.

What was the client’s reaction to the campaign? What feedback have they received?
The Client has been an enthusiastic part of all of this from the beginning, and I want to thank MINI for the trust in us to do this kind of work. The feedback is a big smile!

Your idea of the perfect work day? No phone calls, the cellular inside a glass of water, no mail in the box, good music on the headphones, some weird words from a client: “This is perfect, let’s not touch anything, not even the copy”… and many more impossible but simple things.

Now the serious answer: Probably the time to see the results of the campaigns, and that those are working out far better than you thought keeps you up and awake for the next project to run.

When does your muse visit you? If there is a place and a time, please let me know!!