The Future Of Rich Media Online Advertising

There is currently a huge shift happening in the manner that Rich Media advertising is being approached. The swing is happening due to technological developments that are being driven by innovation and new ways of thinking about advertising online as a whole. At this current stage in the progression I am going to call this new order - Dynamic Adverts - although I'm sure once it finds its feet that a name will declare itself.

Currently Creative Agencies and Media Agencies are having to create multiple variants of adverts depending on language, video, text, text changes and various other factors. In the past the best way to deal with this was to use XML (or even better some sort of chain of XML) but everyone learnt very quickly that this can have issues. Firstly the servers the XML needs to be on must be so robust it is rare that anyone except the large companies could host them without the server crashing due to the amounts of requests. So therefore the XML was ultimately not as quickly up datable as people would have liked. Then there is the ability to pull in dynamic content on RSS feeds so that the updates would happen without any work required to the advert.

The way the industry is currently moving is into the realms of Dynamic Adverts. This in simplest terms means that an advert could be created that is in essence a shell with all the content ready to be pulled into it. You can then set up as much text, video, images and audio as you want and reference which ones you want to use. It is then possible to swap all the elements of the advert over at the touch of a button (with acceptance from the client, media agency and creative agency if required of course!). This then makes all creatives instantly up dateable whether it is a simple price change, date change or if the entire video has been re-shot and re-edited. It also gets rid of the need to re-make the creative again for this change or for sites to re-test anything as technically it already works.

This then opens up whole new ideas in terms of booking and buying media space and planning campaigns that will run for much longer terms but are still optimisable and updateable during the lifespan of the campaign. For example I could soon see media space being bought in big bulk deals over the space of a few years and then being resold for more money, actually becoming investable space. You buy with the plan to fill the slots and then if they are not getting the desired results, sell the space on for profit. It also means that you can leave the ad tag in the page for a long period of time and the sites need to traffic far less saving them time and money.

Ultimately it means that advertising becomes far less transient and yet more so all in one step, you get the opportunity to use it as you wish rather than being confined by others. You can also start planning much better combined camapigns and swapping elements around to test them and see what gets the best results. Of course everything is completely trackable and so you can see what works best in all areas of your camapign.

Ultimately the whole process of advertising online will change but hopefully away from the more laborious tasks and into giving everyone more time to think about better targetting, niche marketing and inventive ways to utilise the medium. This will be especially true for Creative Agencies as it will allow them much more time in the thinking stages rather than the making stages. Also they can plan to update as more content arises. This should lead to a huge step up in the online advertising world from all apsects and finally a far better grade of creative setting the benchmark.

Internet Advertising First Rather Than An Afterthought: Part 2

Something I have been advising people on when about to depart on a video campaign is the overall process of the filming that will have to happen. What is currently happening is, 1: The TV advert is being used for the online ads and stays in this staid linear fashion and is shoehorned into the ad slot, or 2: After all the offline advertising is planned and executed the online team have to go and film something completely different wasting time and money.

I have been trying to persuade the integrated agencies to start planning their online adverts at the same time as the offline adverts. One way this can save money is by adding a small amount of time to the filming schedule, editing schedule and post production so that ultimately it will save time and money in the long run (I am also persuading more and more to cover off their viewfinder when filming so that the video is filmed perfectly to the size of advert it will be displaying, whether expand or not, and this has made for some far more interesting and valid video adverts). This also means the over all campaign will be far better integrated and not leave online as the poor cousin to the offline adverts when so much more can be gained in return than from any other format.

To go back to my first point the other reason that this is becoming more and more necessary is that the new generation of online users (the // generation as they are quickly becoming known as) do not respond well to linear style videos and are becoming used to having a certain amount of second level artistry that they can apply to videos. Through YouTube and other platforms they are making pastiches of videos or re-editing and changing videos to make their own bespoke version. If the advertisers don't realise this change in the mentality of the younger generation soon and how they want to interact with videos then there is a whole section of the younger generation that they will lose out on passing their message to.

Really Grinds My Gears

In the words of the legendary Peter Griffin I just wanted to write a note about what really grinds my gears in the world of Rich Media advertising.

I personally believe that the process behind nearly all online campaigns is undertaken in the wrong manner. I spend so much time speaking to creative agencies who have been given a media plan that has been defined before the idea has even been generated and therefore ends up not fitting the campaign. The worst example of this being when a film campaign has had loads of 468x60 placements bought and then it is expected that a 4:3 aspect ratio video will be squeezed into it.

I think this process needs addressing throughout the entire industry so that the client and the creative agency plan the ideas and THEN the media agency goes and purchases the placements to fit the idea perfectly. This would ensure spend is used in a far more succinct, worthwhile manner and would be more wisely allocated. I also think that then it would enable a lot more niche targeting of campaigns to ensure a far better response from that campaign and give room for far more innovation.

I know there are one or two examples of campaigns being run in this correct fashion however it takes so much strength from the creative agency to literally force the hand of the client that it can sometimes cause a rift between these three elements who need to work as one fluid entity. We somehow need everyone in the industry to start altering their mindset and hopefully we can get all campaigns to be as efficient and outstanding as the few exceptions to the rule that run their camapigns in the correct order end up winning all the online awards.