We’re pleased to bring you an excerpt of a recent article written by Dean Donaldson, Director of Digital Experience at Eyeblaster, originally published in AdWeek. Dean challenges the industry to adopt measurement standards that are more in line with consumer behavior rather than rely on ‘traditional CTR’. The full article can be found at AdWeek.

From now on let’s measure all outdoor and print display advertising by the number of QR (quick response) codes captured by consumers’ cellphones. Then, let’s set up a trading system called Cost Per Quick Response (CPQR) and try and convince every traditional marketer in the world of its value. The argument will be that technology says we can measure it and everything not measurable is useless and out of date with modern consumer behavior. Oh, and I also expect to gain a whopping 3 percent of print media share in 15 years.

Sound familiar?

For an industry that’s considered progressive and labels itself “new media,” it’s certainly locked into an archaic catch-all metric, the click, which measures only a menial part of a consumer’s senses — a part so pigeonholed to action it dismisses all aspects related to influence (think, feel, sense, imagine and interact). Clicks have little to nothing to do with exposure to creative and actually ignore emotional connectivity to a brand. Simply put, clicks only measure one response — which we generally often assume is a positive indication of intent versus accidental — and generally are a long way from a suitable conversion point an advertiser actually seeks.

Advertising at its core is about reaching out to the senses to captivate an imagination, influence an action or change a perception by enhancing a consumer’s desire.

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Averages can be deceiving. Gather ten of your colleagues into the conference room and calculate their average income. Now, imagine that Warren Buffett had just dropped by. While your average has just spiraled up, all of your friends remained exactly as well-off as they were before.

Averages can also be misleading when looking at the average frequency of your campaign. On average, two thirds of cookies have a frequency of only one exposure, while only 12% of cookies have a frequency of three exposures. The ‘ideal’ frequency has been under debate for a long time. In an online campaign, the ideal frequency may depend on variables such as off-line advertising exposure, product life-cycle and others. However, numbers that are suggested for an ideal frequency were typically higher than one.

Cookies are used as a proxy for unique users. The first time that a user views an ad served by Eyeblaster, a cookie is placed on his or her browser. Browsers can then be uniquely identified every time they are served an Eyeblaster ad.

In one of our earlier blog postings, we explored the difficulty in increasing average frequency. This provides another angle to this topic. Serving more impressions may increase the number of cookies with one frequency, as well as cookies with higher frequencies—thus leaving the average frequency more or less the same.

Ushering more cookies towards a higher hypothesized ideal frequency should use a balance between increasing the number of served impressions, decreasing the number of sites on which they are served and a prudent use of frequency capping. It is not likely that campaigns would be able to have the majority of cookies circled around the ideal frequency; however, it is possible to have fewer cookies with a frequency of only one impression.

Since 2001, the Eyeblaster Awards have been among the most prestigious global awards in digital advertising. They are a celebration of engaging, effective and creative campaigns from around the world.
This year, as every year, the Eyeblaster Awards party was a night to remember. Hundreds gathered at the orange-covered Providence to recognize the best in digital advertising (and to watch the Yankees win!).
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Thanks to all those who celebrated.  See all of the pictures here.

For the full list of winners, click here.

During the first night of ad:tech, Eyeblaster honored the winners of the 2009 Eyeblaster Awards. In its 8^th year, more than 75 campaigns from at least 15 markets globally were in the running for this year’s competition. The campaigns represented the best in digital advertising which crossed channels, borders, and formats, including long form video, homepage takeovers, and social media integration.

London Creative Agencies Feed and Hi-ReS!, along with Media Agency MEC Global, were recognized with the International People’s Choice Award for Chanel No.5’s global homepage takeover.

“Working on the Chanel project; making the vision of such an iconic brand a reality for their first online campaign was something really special,” said Managing Director of FEED, Rob Armstrong. “The end result was a campaign that took over the MSN homepage across 18 different countries, in 11 different languages, and received over 650 million impressions.

To now have this recognised by an Eyeblaster award makes it even more special.  Our thanks go to Hi-Res! for the beautiful graphics they supplied us, the team from MSN who flew over from Redmond to London to help us in the final manic weeks and the team from Eyeblaster London who helped us make this thing happen. Most of all, thanks to everyone who voted for us.  We hope everyone had a great night, thank you!”

The International Judge’s Choice Award was awarded to Creative Agency MediaFront and Media Agency Mediacom NO (Norway) for IKEA Set the Table .

“It is always rewarding to get recognition for our work and its extra special to receive this award when you look at the high quality of the Eyeblaster campaigns around the world,” said Sverre Stabell, interactive director at MediaFront. “We feel that the banner ad is underestimated, and we always aim to bring more into the banner. In the IKEA case, we wanted to give the users the ability to set the table themselves and get inspiration, directly in the banner – without having to go to a campaign site. And, of course, display all the varieties and options that IKEA has to offer.”

The North America People’s Choice Award and the North America Judge’s Award went to Creative Agency Bridge Worldwide and Media Agency Starcom for the Pringles Can Hands campaign. This campaign ran in multiple markets worldwide. The campaign is a brilliant example of how creative can drive user interaction. Be sure to click through to the end – it just keeps getting better and better.

R/GA was honored as the winner of the 2009 Cross Channel Effectiveness Award for its Dear Mr. President Campaign, which combined social media with online display advertising.  For a full review of this campaign, see our previous blog entry.

“To celebrate President Obama’s inauguration, R/GA and Pepsi created ‘Dear Mr. President,’ a campaign that was a mash-up of social media and breakthrough ad technology. People across the nation recorded, submitted and shared their own video messages to the President directly from online ad units,” said Michael Lowenstern, group director of digital advertising at R/GA. “We’re excited that the technology, innovation and passion that drove this campaign has been recognized by the Eyeblaster awards.”

Congratulations to all of the winners and nominees!

The wet ‘n wild Barclaycard Water Slide campaign by Dare Digital UK (creative) and Walker Media UK (media) was recently nominated for an Eyeblaster Award. This is the first in a series of interviews with nominees for a behind-the-scenes look at some of the best campaigns from 2009.

Eyeblaster: What was the brief for the campaign?

Dare Digital: The context: Barclaycard launched an epic TV ad to signal a step change for the brand. They wanted to challenge the conventions of financial advertising in order to drive brand reappraisal and nudge consideration. Likewise, digital needed to behave in a fresh and innovative way to engage a younger, more tech and marketing savvy audience and make the most of the buzz from the ATL comms. To positively impact the brand’s health we wanted reach delivered in an engaging way, rather than disruptive advertising.

Eyeblaster: How did you come up with the idea for the game?

Dare Digital: The waterslide campaign was such a fun idea we felt the audience would respond well to a more engaging and interactive concept. We remembered a computer puzzle game from childhood where you took the role of a plumber trying to join up pipe pieces before a gushing stream of water can overwhelm him. This style of simple game play became the perfect vehicle in which to set the waterslide in.

Eyeblaster: What was the cross-channel strategy and impact of the campaign?
Dare Digital: The cross-channel strategy was to work each channel to its strengths to deepen engagement with the brand and build awareness through seeding. The TV created awareness and brand affinity whilst the HPTO game extended the TV idea and rewarded users for getting involved. The campaign was joined up both thematically and visually by the most distinct element: the waterslide.

Some noteworthy results of the online campaign:

• 13.7m impressions
• 4.6m Unique users
• Total Interaction rate was 58%
• Average dwell time was 58 seconds – far greater than typical banner advertising

Eyeblaster: What was the client’s response to the final product?
Dare Digital: They loved using a game to create real impact and felt inspired by the creative opportunity the media channel offered and its potential to challenge what financial advertising conventionally means.
They were excited to see how bespoke digital advertising (rather than doctoring TV assets) could create really compelling communications that build upon the TV’s effect.  Seeing digital play an important role rather than supporting has definitely encouraged them to place involvement and innovation at the heart of all the briefs.

Congratulations again to Dare Digital and Walker Media for dreaming up and executing such an engaging campaign.