The shrinking attention span of the consumers has forced advertisers to gradually move from 60-second spots to 30-, 15 and even 5. Now the length is making its way back – and beyond – as advertisers are recognising the value of entertainment.

Lady Gaga’s nearly 10-minute video “Telephone” has been the latest long-form hit gaining over 30 million views on YouTube. While the phenomenon is not exactly new, a clear spike in the popularity of long-form ads can definitely be seen, the article states.

Read the full article on Ad Age website

We already have our long-forms

Ad Age listed some of the recent efforts of the brands engaging in long-form advertising.

Pringle of Scotland
The iconic brand presented the spring/summer collection with a film starring Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton, who walks through the Scottish highlands wearing the expensive clothes.

Absolut Vodka
The booze brand created a 15-minute commercial for Absolut featuring Jay-Z. The ad-slash-documentary, which was called NY-Z, was by TBWA/Chiat/Day and directed by Danny Clinch.

Rodarte
Photographer Todd Cole created a thriller-cum-high-fashion drama called “Aanteni” as a way to promote Rodarte’s spring 2010 collection. Set in California on property belonging to PayPal founder Elon Musk, it shows the designer clothing throughout the film.

Nike
In a ploy to reach its fans who are also music lovers, Nike, with the help of agency Wieden & Kennedy, Tokyo, created a three-minute ad that shows us the art of dropping beats using sneakers.

Waitrose
In March, high-end British grocery store chain Waitrose broke an ad that took up an entire three-and-one-half-minute commercial break. It took the form of a mini-cooking show featuring celebrity chefs cooking a meat dish, and offered tips on how consumers can make it.

Kraft Foods
For Lacta, a chocolate brand popular in Greece, Kraft and Ogilvy One crowdsourced a 27-minute branded movie that initially was going to run only online but spurred so much talk that a local TV station offered to air it for free.

Opening Ceremony
Jason Schwartzman and Kirsten Dunst star in a short film featuring clothes by hip store Opening Ceremony and music by Schwartzman’s label, Coconut Records. View the film here: http://creativity-online.com/work/opening-ceremony-non-plus-one/18978

Kent Wakeford, chief revenue officer of AdSafe, said: “The use of verification is growing exponentially. It’ll become standard in online media buying.”

Misplaced ads have been troubling the industry already before the internet but during the digital era the problems have escalated.

Some estimates suggest that up to 15% of all campaign impressions are non-compliant. Ad verification company DoubleVerify has said their service can find campaigns in which 80% of the ad impressions are in violation of the insertion order.

Future in preventing technologies

The reporting approach, by which most ad verification services operate, has been critisised by some. An ideal service would prevent the ads from showing up on dodgy sites in the first place.

Marta Martinez, svp of operations at MediaMath, said: “The reporting approach is exposing the problem, but making it difficult to provide the solution. The future is in the prevention technologies.”

Some ad verification services do offer prevention services, but problems are said to occur, for example, when advertisers buy from exchanges. Most filtering technologies also suffer from the problem of ‘false positive’.

Kurt Unkel, director at Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi Nerve Center, says a campaign running on a Miami Dolphins website was flagged for “suggestive content” due to photos of the cheerleaders.

He said: “It [the filtering technology] can create more problems it solves.”

Source: AdWeek

Coca-Cola is focusing on goal celebrations in its advertising in the run up to the football World Cup in June.

The main TV ad, titled ‘History of Celebration’, opens with footage of Cameroon’s Roger Milla’s famous corner flag celebration dance in 1990.

Followed by a montage of different players showing off their moves, the ad is intended to amplify the message of Coca-Cola’s global marketing campaign ‘Open Happiness’.

The campaign also features ads designed more specifically to the web.

An animated spot features an African child celebrating with different players and robots. The ad, titled ‘Quest’, is encouraging users to upload their own goal celebrations to YouTube.

The third spot, ‘Border crossing’, features Coca-Cola truck being stopped by serious looking border guards breaking into cheerful celebrations after finding the FIFA World Cup trophy in the truck.

According to New Media Age, the campaign is Coca-Cola’s single largest integrated marketing drive across 150 markets.

Watch ‘Quest’ on YouTube

Sources: MarketingWeek, New Media Age

Read also

MediaWeek has listed five strategies utilising different media channels to give an idea of how brands and agencies are approaching the World Cup.
Read the article on MediaWeek’s website

The new way is said to better represent the nature of the interaction. Michael Lazerow, CEO of social media advice agency Buddy Media, described ‘liking’ a brand as a lower threshold for users.

He said: “The idea of liking a brand is a much more natural action than (becoming a fan) of a brand.”

According to Facebook, an average user becomes a fan of a four pages each month.

According to an article by Stuff.co.nz, it is not yet sure whether the change would apply to all fan pages including those of celebrities and musicians. It is also reported that, despite the change, the ‘liked’ brands would still remain listed on the users’ profile page.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

According to an AdWeek article, the new research shows that people who watch TV shows online are far more tolerant towards ads than it had been thought.

Sites like Hulu could increase their average serving of ads from four minutes per hour to seven, the report found.

The findings shoot down the prevailing conception of online video viewers as ad avoiders. According to the report, 71% of the web video viewers said they view online because they’ve missed the episode on TV while 67% choose the web for convenience. Only 38% said they view online to avoid ads.

Tania Yuki, director of cross media and video products at comScore, commented on the findings by saying that online video sites would be smart to stream more ads than they currently do.

She said: “We [as an industry] are leaving money on the table.”

Source: AdWeek

The service allows advertisers to target previous visitors in trying to lure them back.

Remarketing has previously been limited to only few advertisers as a premium-priced, exclusive product, but having moved out of beta stage the company has decided to offer it to everyone.

Bruce Daisley, Google UK head of YouTube and display, said: “The hardest thing for a marketer is getting people back to their site time and time again.

“We’re using the reach we have on the Google Content Network to bring people back at really low cost.”

Google has also announced that its other new ad service, called ‘Interest-Category Advertising’, is also expected to be rolled out to the masses later this year.

While still in the testing stage, the ‘Interest-Category Advertising’ allows advertisers to serve ads to people based on their browsing habits.

The company has already addressed fears of behavourial advertising undermining web privacy by pointing out the importance of transparency.

Daisley said: “Google takes privacy issues very seriously, which is why we launched the ad preference manager last year so anyone can see how they’re being categorised and can opt out”

Source: New Media Age

Description:

SAScon, delivered in association with Manchester Digital and SEMPO will be the UK’s leading Search Marketing conference. Speakers will include many of the world’s experts in search engine optimization (SEO), analytics and social media marketing.

As the global dominance of the internet continues, conventional advertising spend diminishes and local and national media circulation or viewing figures plummet Search Marketing becomes central in the success of any marketing campaign. SAScon will explore the way some of the UK’s biggest brands are employing the latest thinking and cutting edge techniques and tools to gain a greater market share and build reputation.

As digital channels develop so does the need for in-depth analysis and SASCon will highlight best practice examples of how well executed analytics can deliver invaluable insights into the traffic to your website and your online marketing campaigns.

Social media has now firmly entered the mainstream and organisations and businesses are embracing the very real benefits that platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and blogs provide to inform, listen and converse with audiences old and new. SAScon will investigate how effective use of social media is essential in any digital marketing campaign and drives visitors and increases website rankings.

A HUGE name in search and social will be delivering this years keynote speech at SAScon, with some of the biggest names in their fields exploring key topics and forecasting the future of Search, Analytics and Social Media in a number of interactive panel sessions. For further info see SAScon’s programme.

SAScon will also feature a number of social and networking opportunities including a drinks and comedy night featuring some of the North West’s funniest comedians and a post event breakfast where delegates can nurse their hangovers, network and hear from an industry speaker.

Visit the website for more details: http://www.sascon.co.uk/

via SAScon : Northwest Vision and Media.

Come and join the mix at the next Show and Tell event…

So what’s this event about, then? A chance to mingle and make friends in an informal environment. It’s an event for established people who work in film, tv, advertising and digital.

What else? Pick up freebies, win prizes. There’s a pair of Adidas trainers in a style of your choice up for grabs, a meal for two and other great prizes.

Where can I find out more about Show and Tell? To find out more about Show and Tell events, look at photos, find out who turns up and what sort of organisations endorse the events visit www.showandtellfilms.com

How do I get my hands on a ticket? Tickets are £5.50. You can click here to buy tickets: Buy tickets or browse the website first and buy tickets there.

We’ve chosen a small and cosy venue for this one, so places are limited- booking early is recommended

How can I stay connected? Join us on Facebook or Twitter

Organiser
Show and Tell Films

Contact:
+44 (0)7886 186718
Website: http://www.showandtellfilms.com

via Mix | Chinwag – the UK’s leading community media company for the new media industry.

Google's Parisian Love campaign told a virtual love story to the Superbowl audience.

The search engine giant, that previously has relied strongly on word-of-mouth hype in its marketing, has turned to creative agencies for a new advertising campaign, The Marketing Week reports.

Agencies across the UK have been invited to pitch for a campaign that will focus on promoting Google’s search facilities.

It is not yet officially decided where the future campaign will be aired. Google has said it’s not looking into following last month’s campaign at the Superbowl with advertising in the next massive sports event, the World Cup.

The news follow Microsoft’s announcement of a multimillion ad campaign to promote its search engine Bing in the UK. The company is trying to gain market share by portraying Bing as a “decision engine” with Google’s search associated with information overload.

Earlier this week, Google added to the rivalry of the two companies by opening an online shop for business software. Google Apps Marketplace involves more than 50 companies offering a wide-variety of cloud-based business software.

Chris Vander Mey, Google’s product manager, said: “The Google Apps Marketplace eliminates the worry about software updates, keeping track of different passwords and manual syncing and sharing of data, thereby increasing business productivity and lessening frustrations for users and IT administrators alike.”

Sources: Marketing Week, The Guardian, The Independent

The threats imposed by ad networks, exchanges and demand-side buying platforms is worrying Web publishers as sites are feared to be turning into commodities.

Tolman Geffs, co-president of the independent investment banking provider Jordan Edmiston Group, pointed out that brand advertising might be in trouble.

Geffs, who spoke at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s annual meeting, referred to statistics that show more money being spent on direct marketing and promotions than in branding in 2009.

This means advertisers are buying audiences rather than ads.

Geffs said: “Tons of players [are] getting into the audience-selling market. Premium publishers are losing a key advantage.”

What’s also concerning web publishers is the small margins they are getting from online ad revenues. As the scene is getting more crowded and complex – with ad serving companies, exchange suppliers, data suppliers and such involved – what the publisher gets out of the revenue might be as little as one fifth.

But that’s something that web publishers might just have to deal with, David Moore, chairman and founder of the digital marketing agency 24/7 Real Media, suggests.

According to Moore, agency-led demand-side platforms are here to stay and publishers must accept that fact.

International Advertising Bureau executives have also encouraged publishers to stand up for themselves in the midst of the change.

Jim Spanfeller, president and CEO of the online publishing consulting company The Spanfeller Group, said that publishers need to respect themselves more as well as the opportunities they present to marketers.

Source: Media Week