Eyeblaster has now officially released its Channel Connect for Search. See Press Release.

For me personally, this is one of the most key developments in online advertising, notably because rather than fighting a declining click-rate, it addresses real consumer behaviour as opposed to assumed behaviour. It gives agencies and advertisers confidence in measuring the effects of online advertising by breaking down the silos of display and search and getting to the heart of the matter – if people are not clicking on display adverts, then what the heck are they doing?!

Very few people click on adverts – about one in a thousand. As a consumer, you would have to be very far down the purchase funnel as a result of supporting media in order for you to click and convert immediately as a result of a display banner. Clicking away from content to a website to me is the equivalent of asking me to get off a bus on the way to work just because I notice a sign through the window saying “discount here today.” Reality being is even if I was interested, I would make a mental note and go back later at my convenience. No matter how keen you were, most of us would still go to work first – we have our own agenda – it is a huge call to action to expect me to get off that bus unless I was already on my way there. But, I still ‘noticed’ the sign…

We are therefore forcing and measuring unnatural human behaviour. No other media channel is expecting users to respond “now”, rather they work together to build up a story where results are seen within a period of time. The lack of immediacy has no reflection upon effectiveness.

Online advertising has created a rod for its own back. Its accountability is also its downfall. This is all about to change.

Often what is missed by mass-media however, even if successful in gaining results, is the consumer journey and process in between exposure and conversion – measuring the true behavioural effects over time. In my analogy, did people research the company and/or product prior to going back there to make a purchase? After all, few of us buy without qualifying first.

We are about to find out…

What is the strategy behind Eyeblaster’s launch of Channel Connect for Search?

The link between awareness and interest has always been a key aspect in a purchase funnel. Traditionally, mass-media advertising has driven foot-traffic to brick and mortar shops where sales staff have been able to answer inquiries live. With web 2.0, much of this conversation now happens online, as consumers look for product reviews and ratings to help qualify their research methods from trusted peers, beyond mere information.

Being able to measure the effects of display advertising beyond an immediate click-through has always been at the heart of rich media. Much of the missing data regarding brand effectiveness beyond the impression is seen by consumers seeking further information – in a way they feel more in control – and that is via search. Linking search and display is in essence being able to measure the conversation between a brand and the consumer more completely. It is now possible to follow the conversation across multiple impressions and channels to the final conversion, giving marketers full visibility of their sales funnel.

What challenges does Channel Connect for Search help agencies and advertisers address?

For any advertiser, it is a mistake to disregard the 99.5% of people who do not click on an advert. No other media are measured on an immediate response, rather a piqued interest that moves a consumer along a conversion cycle. The linking of the data sets of both display and search give insights into actual user behaviors and helps justify investment in display advertising beyond the click. Pulling the results from both areas brings a more unified analysis on behalf of an advertiser as well as revealing the bearing each discipline has upon the other. From an agency perspective, it reveals crucial insights as well as a huge time saving in concatenating or de-duping information. It also helps agencies develop a more natural strategy for advertiser-consumer dialogue, with less forced emphasis on immediate clicks as a way to measure campaign effectiveness. In other words, unified reporting provides clear evidence that the credit for conversions must be distributed beyond the final impression, whether it be search or display.

What brands have used/will use Channel Connect for Search?

Channel Connect for Search was a response to Eyeblaster customers across the globe. They asked for an easy way to integrate their digital advertising channels that provided unified apples to apples reporting. We are currently running major campaigns for many verticals, including pharma, cosmetics, broadcast entertainment, automotive, financial, and consumer packaged goods.

How will Eyeblaster get the word out about the service (i.e. marketing tactics)?

Eyeblaster has a heritage of innovation for helping the advertising community develop against a sea-tide of change in consumer behavior. Eyeblaster has this year gone through a rebrand, representing our evolution from a pure rich media vendor to delivering cross-channel digital consumer experiences. Our staff from around the world are already geared up to discuss this turning point with their agency contacts. With a fresh look and message, a new challenging advertising campaign focused on an industry coming of age, as well as multiple industry speaking opportunities discussing advertising 2.0 – building brand-consumer relationships in a digital age – it is indeed a powerful and exciting and timely message for the digital industry.

Press comments on Channel Connect for Search:

• DM News: Eyeblaster releases cross-channel analytics tool




• ClickZ: Eyeblaster Tries to Bridge Gap Between Display and Search




• Wired: Eyeblaster Announces Search and Display Tracking Tool




• Mobile Marketer: Eyeblaster helps brands, agencies track consumer behavior




• Marketing Vox: Banner Ads Influence Search Conversions; Eyeblaster Tries to Prove It




• Biz Report: Eyeblaster takes marketers beyond the last click




• Business Wire: Life’s Good for LG Electronics as Mindshare Connects Search & Display

It’s an exciting time for Eyeblaster.

As digital starts to permeate every media channel out there, the blurs of online have never been seen more clearly as in the case of mobile. It is redefining our concept of the web and communication.

Consider the digital landscape. From humble garage roots over a relatively short time span, Google, Apple and Microsoft have come to be household names all fighting for media dominance - at the very least a huge piece of the global media pie across all channels. Yet the irony is that with all its clever marketing and design, Apple’s iPhone could not be taken seriously until it had GPS integration with Google maps and was hooked up to Microsoft Exchange!

There is indeed a platform war going on out there, and Eyeblaster is ingrained in this conversation. That is why Eyeblaster is proud to be the premium sponsor of OMMA Global Conference 2008 “Platform Wars”. As we find ourselves in the midst of change from a rich media provider to delivering global cross-channel consumer experiences across all digital media; from inBanner to inStream and inGame, from display to search to mobile to IPTV and beyond.

This week’s Eyeblaster sessions in the US have been entitled “Courting the Consumer: Spending quality time with your audience” where I was discussing brand measurement. The industry has to move from impressions to audience targeting, and find new metrics for online brand activity – it is in a pubescent time as it begins to mature. Branding takes time: From creating initial impact as a result of exposure, to an increased time spent with a brand, to a deeper emotional connection as a result of interaction, to the resulting investigation via search or conversational ‘buzz’ within social media.

A click therefore is a tiny aspect, and often a skewed, measurability for today’s digital world – and has no real relevance to brand managers seeking to measure emotional connections; impact simply cannot always be measured immediately. Comparing post-impression to post-click activity this is certainly proving the case as anywhere between 5-10x more conversions happen as result of seeing as opposed to clicking on ads. The click also has no relevance for digital media in terms of TV and out-of-home as they begin to receive digital connections. It is about exposure, not just interaction.

There is hope however, measuring the Dwell time, the number of seconds spent engaging with a brand, offers a consistent point of measurement for diverse creative executions. It shows the shift of a user in wanting to explore a brand in situation. With the average Dwell time being a minute across all rich media creatives – that is 30 seconds longer than the average TV ad - and at a user’s request. It offers a huge confidence for anyone considering digital brand building.

In terms of the after effects, perhaps this can be seen in terms of measuring actual user journeys. Seeing a consumer’s path to conversion; viewing the movement beyond ‘seeing’ something via display advertising, to ‘inquiring’ about further information via a search engine – and ultimately how the resulting targeting could allow further display creative’s to be even more relevant to the consumer purchase funnel.

This is something at the heart of Eyeblaster’s channel connect strategies, breaking down silos between search and display or mass-media and online. We are beginning to help agencies join the dots.

From iMedia Brand Summit in San Diego to OMMA Global Conference in New York this week, the questions and discussions from advertisers and agencies alike certainly seem to agree – how do we build and measure emotional impact with our audiences in a fast-paced digital world…

It really is a time for change.

From garage start-up to global brand, the now monolith of Internet dominance is no stranger to scrutiny, and none more so then since acquiring leading ad serving company Doubleclick last year for $3.1Bn. The tactical move was to seek to control the lion’s share of online display as well as search advertising in order to build a single platform for inventory management. However, the backlash of media attention over antitrust concerns was rife, especially as privacy groups pushed the issue of data retention and ownership to reach the heights of the European Commission.

Now just over a year later, in what will be seen once more as incredible turn about face strategy, Google has decided to open up their Content Network to accept online display advertising served by third-party ad servers; companies who could very much be competitors in this space to DoubleClick.

Expert data analysis is a key aspect for most advertisers and their respective agencies, affording unique insights into building more effective and relevant advertising messages to their audiences. This makes media agencies irreplaceable in the advertising making process. Google’s previous policy had sparked concerns over how they viewed the future for agencies. Agencies feared that existing models were in jeopardy, with their role as media planners and buyers being potentially downplayed in favour of ease of entry and to advanced optimisation afforded by the merger. This latest move seeks to address this head-on.

The industry has remained decidedly inventory-agnostic from an agency perspective, with independence in ad serving often a key aspect for choosing a potential vendor, brought about partially by having a comparison for delivery outside of a publisher’s control. The additional outlay for ad serving is outweighed by potential overall media costs saved – it is an external checkpoint for actual delivered inventory. That is to say nothing of the additional benefits competitive vendors bring to this space from service to innovation. All this has been a hard position for Google to find themselves in, as it was their very openness that helped them build up their search dominance in the first place.

In truth, the move by Google to open up its network is not just to address agencies concerns, but fuelled in part by a desire to capitalise on revenue streams that are currently blocked. Many advertisers would have overlooked the benefits of reach afforded by Google’s Content Network due to existing preferential relationships with ad serving companies other than DoubleClick, especially with providers who service the more interactive formats that rich media offers. A potential Microsoft-Yahoo relationship – both of whom are open to external ad serving suppliers – will also have prompted a rethink in strategy within the Google camp.

Just as Google could foresee the fall outs over data retention and quickly moved to limit the length of time it would store data, so once again we see an incredibly tactical decision to compete against Microsoft’s competition in the advertising space by too opening up their network. With Eyeblaster, the largest global supplier of rich media online now approved by Google, we can expect to see more interactive ads driving actual conversions within banners running across their network, which will continue to help monetise the long tail. The result is good for the entire industry.

Google has always been very effective at reducing the barriers to entry in online advertising and simplifying the buying process. This latest move today ensures such continued openness will no doubt be seen as a welcome addition to the media mix as well as an incredible confidence boost by most agencies that no longer need to fear for their lives.