Forget the Cupertino keynote, if you have missed GQ’s Men of the Year in the Christmas rush, then I recommend everyone download Condé Nast’s new GQ January 2010 app for the iPhone. Why? Because it’s a great example of the future of interactive design.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again; the future for magazines is not in creating browser-based web pages. We’re hopefully past the days of newsletters formatted in MS Word, or experiencing websites with terrible typography, microscopic little pictures and business-card sized videos, not to mention, those tiny little ads embarrassingly hidden in the corners, jumping up and down saying ‘click me, click me!’ It’s all more annoying than the donkey in Shrek.

Despite the amazing advances in functionality on the Internet over the last few years, design in digital channels is a long way from the offline aesthetic renaissance spurred on by desktop design programs like Quark Xpress. One only needs to browse a newsstand and marvel at the freedom of design, where bold, beautiful, creative typography are sensually entwined with stunning imagery. Even the Wall Street Journal runs color photos now! In contrast, type in the URLs of these same publications and prepare yourself for a walk through a design desert.

Yes, templates hold consistency, but like themes variations in classical music, they’re supposed to be deliberately broken to add interest or context. Good design adds value to the communication; it doesn’t just deliver information. It’s exciting and part of entertainment and we all know HTML just can’t do that. Connection speeds wouldn’t even let you send it if you could. Also, Flash is not the saviour and only a mere gimmick that doesn’t even rise to the level of commercial art.

So why am I now as excited as teenage boy who has just discovered a discarded copy of Playboy in a country lane? Well, starters being able to ‘pinch’ and ‘squeeze’ Rhianna… Ok, no that’s not it (lie, lie!).

Consider the fact newspapers close down on a daily basis as they struggle to make ends meet as advertisers abandon them. The ratio of ads to editorial in the print world is 60:40 or higher and online is shamefully a long, long way from anything like that.

Stop and observe the newsstand and notice the ever-shrinking physical magazines to pocketsize away from A4, and that many newspapers have now moved away from broadsheet formats. Next, hold up an Amazon Kindle next to one of those little mags – not too dissimilar is it? Watch how you flick through a magazine, getting to the article you want, taking in the visual fluff from all the pretty pictures including those ads that get you salivating over that latest hot hatch. Ah, so this is what all those rumors of the impending full-colour, networkable 10’ Apple iPad being launched on Joe public was all about.

Look back at the GQ app on your iPhone.

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In order to help advertisers and agencies understand how to get the most out of their holiday campaigns, Eyeblaster Research analyzed the 2009 online holiday shopping trends. Our latest Research Note shows that while there was an elevated conversion activity throughout the holiday season, some days generated far more conversions than others.  In the 2009 holiday season, conversions peaked around Cyber Monday, during the last five days before Christmas, and during the sales period after Christmas.

Voting with their mouse, shoppers sent two signals to advertisers.  First, customers responded to sales and discounts offered by online retailers, particularly during Cyber Monday and After Christmas Sales.  Second, although online shoppers cannot take the items from the shelf back home right away, they still wait for the last days before Christmas to do their shopping. 

These trends have further meaning beyond holiday shopping.  Even as the economy emerges out of a deep recession, consumers are still very aggressive in bargain hunting.  Thrifty consumers are looking for value, and when they find it, they are willing to open their wallets.

For the full research, please click on the following link.

Click here to download the Research Note on Holiday Conversions.

Ariel Geifman | Research Analyst

Mobile advertising industry leaders have joined forces to help the relief efforts for those impacted by the earthquake in Haiti in the largest mobile fund-raising effort. AdMob, Eyeblaster, Jumptap, Microsoft Advertising, Millennial Media, Ringleader Digital and other networks were approached by mGive-Mobile Accord to develop the mobile advertising campaign designed to broaden the reach of the American Red Cross Haiti relief efforts via the organization’s text messaging mobile campaign.
These mobile partners donated their time and ad-serving fees to enable the campaign across multiple publisher sites that donated their inventory for the campaign. The publisher sites, including MSN Mobile, Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger Mobile and E! Online featured banner advertisements allowing consumers to click on the ad to learn more about how they can donate to the American Red Cross, and providing the number (Text “HAITI” 90999) to make a donation.

The mobile campaign was designed exclusively for the convenience of consumers to donate via their mobile phone. (more…)

As part of our Favorite Brand Experience series, we’re pleased to bring you an interview with Alex Brunori, Executive Creative Director at MRM Worldwide, Italy. MRM recently worked with Eyeblaster and MSN to launch the first Sidekick format in Italy for Samsung.

Your idea about the perfect working day:

You get in the agency at 11:30am and open an email from a pitched client that informs you that they are more than happy to choose yours as their agency of records and that, to testify their esteem, they have decided to double the account too. Then you have some presentation meetings with the creative teams that come up with ideas so clever that, once executed, will result in pure gold in all the pivotal global advertising awards. Lunch break with the agency’s top client that says they are so satisfied by the utmost care you put in working on their brands that they want the agency to work for them globally with a lifelong contract. After lunch, a couple of hours of very interesting and educated discussions with the colleagues about art, philosophy, politics, music and religion and, finally, you leave the office at 5pm for a(nother) glorious and glamourous social evening/night.

Then you wake up from the weird dream you were having, generated by continuous sleep deprivation, and start the REAL working day.

Your muse best comes when:

In our industry you have to be “creative” round the clock, and you really cannot wait for the muse to come… Actually it’s more like chasing her round the office all of the time, kicking her butt whenever she stops. Having said that, extremes always work: late nights / very early mornings, or solitude moments / crowded team meetings.

How did you start working in digital advertising?

Me and technology, it’s a love story since I was a child. I have been doing R&D, experimenting with the endless creative possibilities, as soon as the digital age started dawning on advertising. Before MRM, when I was in JWT (and that agency didn’t even have a digital unit), I came up with a web-based, cross-channel campaign for Kraft that won many awards in Italy and abroad. That was a turning point, but the road was taken long before that.

What was the initial Client Brief for the Nuovo Samsung Omnia II Campaign?
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While 63% of publishers price display advertising using CPM, 30% of publishers now use CPC according to a survey by Econsultancy and the Rubicom Project cited by eMarketer in December 2009. JP Morgan notes that in the past 5 years, performance based display advertising, such as CPC, gained market share over the CPM based models. The report projects that in a recession environment, spread of performance based models is likely to accelerate, as advertisers place a higher value on a clear ROI.

In CPM, or Cost per Mille, the advertiser is charged a fixed amount for every one thousand impressions. CPC, or Cost per Click, is a pay per performance scheme, in which the advertiser is charged only for clicks.

While some may argue that publishers should be paid according to their ability to generate clicks, publishers only carry a partial responsibility for the generation of a click. The CTR is also affected by the vertical, ad size, format and particularly the ingenuity of the creative. Thus, when publishers are paid by the click, their compensation is at the mercy of others in the advertising chain who make decisions that affect the success of the campaign. Another concern is whether clicks are the proper metric for discerning the success of a campaign. In many verticals, the actual purchase is made in off-line stores, and therefore the value of the ad is in its retention rather than the click. (more…)