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Video Game Advertising
Marketers and media planners have been frustrated trying to reach young people
with traditional ads on mainstream media. That has led to an increased focus on
unusual media that are clearly the province of young people, such as video games.
Now a global multi-billion dollar industry, the video game business is developing
as a major new medium for advertisers to target 12- to 34-year-old males,
although girls are getting into the act as well. And, Wii is bringing in an older
adult audience of both men and women with its sports and exercise programs.
The iPad made the video game market mobile. Video games offer opportunities
for advertising but also for product placement. Marketing communication
opportunities are mined both by creating online games and by placing products
within games.
Place-Based Media
A situational or place-based media can target specific people with specific
messages at a time and place when they may be most interested. As mass media
have decreased in impact, place-based forms, such as outdoor, have become more
attractive to many advertisers.
Out-of-home media or place-based media includes everything from billboards to
hot-air balloons. That means ads on public spaces, including buses, posters on
building walls (barn roofs in the old days), telephone and shopping kiosks,
painted and wrapped cars and semis, taxi signs and mobile billboards, transit
shelters and rail platforms, airport and bus terminal displays, hotel and shopping
mall displays, in-store merchandising signs, grocery store carts, shop- ping bags,
public restroom walls, skywriting, in-store clocks, and aisle displays. Blimps and
airplanes towing messages over your favorite stadium as well as inflatables that
weave and wave in the wind at grand openings and other special events. Figure
12.1 is a depiction of the breadth of the outdoor and place-based media world.
Outdoor Advertising
Of the nearly $6 billion spent on outdoor advertising, billboard ads accounted for
approximately 60 percent; street furniture, such as signs on benches, and transit ads
brought in the rest. Outdoor advertising refers to billboards along streets and highways,
as well as posters in other public locations.
An advertiser uses outdoor boards for two primary reasons. First, for national advertisers,
this medium can provide brand reminders to the target audience. A second use is
directional; billboards are a primary medium when the board is close to or gives
information about a company’s location.
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In terms of size and format, there are two traditional kinds of billboards: printed
poster panels and painted bulletins, as well as digital LED boards.
Printed posters are created by the advertiser or agency, printed, and shipped to
an outdoor advertising company. They come in two sizes based on the number of
sheets of paper used to make the image: 8 sheet (5 by 11 feet) and 30 sheet (12 by
25 feet).
Painted outdoor bulletins, differ from posters in that they are normally created
on site and vary in size or shape, although their standard size is 14 by 48 feet.
However, posters can be painted on the sides of buildings, on roofs, and even
natural structures, such as the side of a mountain.
Designers can add extensions to painted billboards to expand the scale and break
away from the limits of the long rectangle. These embellishments are sometimes
called cut- outs because they present an irregular shape.
Digital and LED boards are brightly lit plastic signs with electronic messaging.
These signs come in a variety of sizes, colors, and brightness. Digital displays use
wireless technology, which allows them to be quickly changed to reflect an
advertising situation or the presence of a target audience member.
oThe outdoor landscape was dominated by large roadside billboards, but is
now experiencing a paradigm shift as static ad displays are being
converted to digital units.
oFor advertisers the conversion to digital, in addition to digital’s lower
production costs and shorter lead times, provides greater availability,
scalability, and flexibility on content. Digital boards are developing a true
communication channel, controlling the content (owned, earned, and
paid), its distribution, and consequently the depth and breadth of audience
connection.
Advertisers can purchase any number of units (75, 50, or 25 showings daily
are common quantities). Boards are usually rented for 30-day periods, with
longer periods possible. Painted bulletins are bought on an individual basis,
usually for one, two, or three years.
The cost of outdoor advertising is based on the percent of population in a
specified geographical area exposed to the ad in one day. Based on a traffic
count, the number of vehicles passing a particular location during a specified
period of time is called a showing. The number of boards required for a 100
showing varies with the size of the city.
Because of the very short time consumers are normally exposed to a
traditional billboard message (typically, three to five seconds), the message
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must be short and the visual must be very attention getting. No more than 8 to
10 words is the norm.
The “Practical Tips” box identifies key features of outdoor media and
provides suggestions on how to design effective attention-getting messages for
this “gigantic canvas.”
New and Novel Forms
Innovation is important for the out-of-home industry with some boards now
equipped to run mini-movies and ads electronically. Some digitally enhanced
outdoor boards can be hooked up to the Web. Creative thinking is necessary to
brainstorm and plan ‘never-been-done before’ OOH campaigns. All types of
interactive and unusual billboards have immense attention-getting power and are
captivating audiences.
Posters and Kiosks
Posters are posted on bulletin boards, the sides of buildings, and even vehicles.
The walls of the subway are lined with posters advertising all kinds of products.
The repetition of the images created a strong billboarding effect. Empty
storefronts in prime downtown locations and major thoroughfares have become
the latest venue for posting posters. With their large expanse of window space,
abandoned retail stores have become a frugal way to deliver a big message during
the recession.
Special structures called kiosks are designed for public posting of notices and
posters. Kiosks are typically located in places where people walk, such as a
many-sided structure in a mall or near a public walkway, or where people wait.
The location has a lot to do with the design of the message.
Transit Advertising
This is mainly an urban mass advertising form that places ads on vehicles such as
buses and taxis that circulate through the community as moving billboards.
Transit advertising also includes the posters seen in bus shelters and train, airport,
and subway stations.
Most of these posters must be designed for quick impressions, although people
who are waiting on subway platforms or bus shelters often study these posters, so
here they can present a more involved or complicated message than a billboard
can. More recently, these walls have become the site for large-scale interactive
digital advertising.
Another type of transit advertising is naming rights; by that, a station, for a fee,
may carry the designation of a nearby business, such as Times Square Station at
42nd Street in New York, which refers to the New York Times.
There are two types of transit advertising - interior and exterior.
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oInterior transit advertising is seen by people riding inside buses, subway
cars, and taxis. These are primarily posters or car cards, sometimes with
coupons or other forms of tear-off information that can be taken away.
These can be designed like outdoor boards with simple messages, but
because the riders are largely a captive audience, interior posters often
carry more complex messages.
oExterior transit advertising is mounted on the side, rear, and top exteriors
of these vehicles so pedestrians and people in nearby cars see it. Even
windows can be covered with see-through silk screen images that carry
commercial messages. Exterior transit advertising is reminder advertising;
it is a frequency medium that lets advertisers get their names in front of a
local audience who drive a regular route at critical times such as rush hour.
Painted vehicles make up another type of transit advertising. More recently,
recession-weary drivers have been tempted to sign up to have their cars and trucks
wrapped with ads. Some of these use striking graphics, such as the brand-image
designs on the sides of many trucks, both long haul and delivery.
Event Advertising and Sponsorships
Ads at events and stadiums are another type of out-of-home media. Some are electronic,
but many are printed posters. Ads also appear all over cars at races as well as on their
driver’s outfits. Companies pay huge fees, as sponsors, in order to get their logos in
prominent positions.
ONLINE ADVERTISING
Internet advertising can be delivered to a website as a traditional display ad, or it
can be presented in other formats, such as banner ads across the top or bottom of a
Web page. The percentage of most marketing communication budgets spent on
Internet advertising is still relatively small, but growing fast. In the United States,
online advertising spending overtook print in 2012.
The greatest percentage of Internet advertising is found on a small group of large,
established sites that operate as electronic publishers, such as www.nytimes.com,
www.wsj.com, and www.espn.com, as well as on major search engines and
service providers, such as Google and Yahoo!. These media and search
organizations have established reputations, and they know how to sell advertising.
Social media sites, such as Facebook, also accept advertising, and Facebook has a
section on its site about how to create Facebook advertising
(www.facebook.com/advertising). In 2013, Twitter announced that it was
beginning to offer advertising space.
With over a billion users, Facebook has a lot of viewers whom advertisers would
like to reach. The Facebook philosophy seeks to protect its user experience of
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friends and conversations. To be true to its mission, it prizes subtle advertising
and advocates using such ad forms as sponsored stories that look like Facebook
posts. This philosophy tends to create tension with big advertisers as well as
criticism. Advertisers would like a bigger presence on Facebook pages but can’t
prove advertising effectiveness. Marketers and investors arealso reluctant to
promote Facebook as an advertising platform.
Facebook suggests measurement should focus not on “clicks” but rather on brand
advertising image and relationship building. To capture more advertising dollars
from its huge trail of user data, Facebook has created Facebook Exchange (FBX),
which provides local sales links to targeted customers. Using behavior targeting,
FBX retargets consumers who have made previous purchases or shown purchase
intention on the Web.
Google has been the most successful at attracting advertising, leading in search
engine advertising, display advertising, and mobile advertising. Google also
dominates the search ad industry and sells display ads, along with search ads, for
thousands of sites. Google and Yahoo! bring in about $88 in revenue per person
for its search engine users, while Facebook only makes about $15 per user.
Digital media have benefited from innovations in interactivity that we call rich
media, which means viewers are able to participate in the ads or manipulate them
by clicking or rolling over parts of the image. Viewers can also download
streaming video or brand-related apps. Tablets, particularly the iPad, have taken
advantage of the rich-media technology.
Although online advertising continues to be a hot topic at industry seminars, there
are some critics who question its effectiveness. Some people believe that people’s
behavior on the Web and how they interact with advertising is different from
traditional media, and that online advertising has less impact. The word is still out
on the effectiveness of online advertising.
Cell Phone Advertising
In addition to being essential communication, information, and entertainment
tools in most people lives, cell phones provide new avenues for commercial
communication.
Phones can be used for paid ads, which look like small banners tucked into the
corner of a Web page or spread across the top or bottom of the screen. Because of
the screen size cell phone display ads are a challenge for ad designers. Mobile
advertisers have found that context—the website or game—is particularly
important for this medium, as intrusive ads seeking to attract attention have little
room to work their magic on the small screen.
Website Advertising
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Small ads on other Web pages that lure visitors to switch pages are called banner
ads. Visitors can click on them to move to the advertised website, Banner ads are
easy to create and are usually placed on a website featuring complementary
products or related topics. Display ads are larger than banners and include text
and images in their designs. The design of other forms of display internet
advertising is constantly changing as the industry advances.
Here are some common, as well as novel, formats:
Skyscrapers are the extra-long, skinny ads running down the right or left side of a
website. Response rates for skyscrapers, which began to be used aggressively by
more companies in the early 2000s, can be 10 times higher than for traditional
banner ads.
Pop-ups and pop-behinds burst open on the computer screen either in front of or
behind the opening page of the website. They are seen as intrusive and annoying,
so some internet advertisers have moved away from this format, and some
computer software programs block them.
Micro-sites or mini-sites are small websites that are the offspring of a parent
website, such as the TDI Diesel site on the corporate VW site. For marketing
purposes, the micro-site may cover particular products, campaigns, events, or
promotions. Microsites tend to be more tightly focused than their parent sites and
may be transitory because the reason for the site might have a time frame and
expire. Another variation allows advertisers to market their products on other
branded websites without sending people away from the site they’re visiting. This
type of advertising generally gets a higher click rate than banners or display ads;
about 5 percent of the people who see the sites click on them.
Superstitials are thought of as the “Internet’s commercial” and are designed to
work like television ads. When you go from one page on a website to another, a
20-second animation appears in a window.
Widgets are tiny computer programs that allow people to create and insert
professional-looking content into their personal websites and also onto their
television screens. They include news notes, calculators, weather feeds, stock
tickers, clocks, book or music covers, or other Web gadgets that can be a
brand-name promotional offer. It’s a way to get a nonintrusive brand reminder ad
on the desktop, website, or blog.
oWidgets also refer to mini-applications that pull content from some other
place on the Web and add it to your site. In addition to getting onto cell
phone screens and social media pages, they also can monitor contacts
when someone clicks on the feature.
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As advertisers have searched for more effective ways to motivate site visitors to
stay longer, they have used animation to become more entertaining with games
and contests, interviews with celebrities, and even musical performances.
Originally, internet ads were jazzed up using relatively simple animation
techniques to make elements move. New technologies provide even more active
components. Research generally finds that the click-through rate nearly doubles
when motion and an interactive element are added to a banner or display ad.
Click-Throughs
The measure of the success of an online ad or banner is the number of times
viewers click on the link to check out the advertiser or the message. These clicks
usually take viewers to the website of the advertiser or to some other special
interesting feature.
Online banner ads continue to be a major part of online advertising, but the
overall click-through rate has dropped to less than 1 percent. The most successful
banner ads achieve 5 to 7 percent click-through and can help build brand
awareness even if they don’t deliver a high level of response.
The difference in click-through response lies in the creativity and attention-getting
power of the banner ad or ad and where it is placed. The more related and relevant
a site is to the brand, the more likely it will generate a higher level of
click-throughs.
Principle: The click-through rate nearly doubles when motion and an interactive
element are added to a banner ad—or to any form of online advertising.
Pay-per-click is a type of online advertising that is driven by consumer search.
The advertiser pays when a viewer clicks on an accompanying ad that takes them
to the advertiser’s site. Similar to search advertising, pay-per-click relies on key
words that relate to a brand or product and bring the Seeker to the search. Each
time a Seeker clicks on your ad, you pay the negotiated click-through price.
Principle:The more relevant a website is to the brand, the more likely an ad will
generate a higher level of click-through.
Online Video Ads
Website visitors or viewers watching video downloads also confront a variety of
online video ads. There are about 30 formats available, so advertisers who want to
use video are struggling to find the best platform for their ads. The most common
are in a pre-roll format, which forces viewers to watch a video ad before viewing
video clips.
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Other formats include interactive video ads that drop down over the screen and
allow viewers to click for more information and videos that allow viewers to click
on hot spots or buttons within the video to learn more about a product.
The lack of standardization means that agencies have higher production costs as
they try to adapt to different delivery systems.
A recent study tested a number of these formats and concludedthat the best way to
deliver video ads is through an ad selector, a feature that offers a group of ads and
invites viewers to choose one. The test found that consumers are more likely to
watch and remember video ads if they are able to pick the ones they watch.
Online Classified Ads
A small part of the online advertising is classified advertising, whether through
local media websites or Craigslist. The move to online “want ads” has been a big
reason why local newspapers are in trouble financially.
Craigslist is a community exchange for people who either want to sell something
or are looking for something. Its business model is to operate as a public service.
It doesn’t accept advertising but does charge for real estate listings and open-job
postings. Craigslist does have a problem with spammers who have automated the
mass posting of ads.
Search Advertising
People do hundreds of millions of searches a day on their computers, smart
phones, tablets, and other electronic devices. Estimates for the percentage of
internet advertising that goes to sites connected with search advertising range
from 50 to 80 percent, which indicates how important the search function is for
consumers and the marketers who are trying to reach them.
The reason the consumer search function is so important is that it provides the
marketer with an opportunity to position a brand message adjoining the list of
sites (articles, blogs, and Wikipedia entries) that is compiled in response to a key
word by search engines. This practice is called search advertising or search
marketing.
Because consumers initiate the search, the adjoining ads are not perceived to be as
intrusive as other forms of advertising. In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission
expressed concern that search engines would often bring up content that might not
be identified as paid advertisements and laid out guidelines to help visitors more
clearly distinguish ads from other types of information.
Principle: Search marketing is important because it allows ads to be positioned
on sites that are associated with key words, which are topics of interest to the
consumer doing the search. It is the ultimate in brand linkage and interest
association.
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A benefit of online consumer searches is that they leave a trail of clues about
products, features, and advertising approaches. This behavior can be mined for
insights that lead to new products.
AOL uses massive amounts of tracking data to tell what Web search topics are
most likely to attract audiences. Search providers, such as Google, MSN, Bing,
and Yahoo!, auction off positions that let advertisers’ ads be seen next to specific
search results. These related ads are priced based on the number of consumer
clicks on the ad, with rates averaging around 50 cents per click.
Microsoft’s Bing.com and Google’s “Goggles” also offer visual searches that
display search results as pictures rather than words.
A recent development is Google’s foray into real-time search, which not only
produces the usual search results but also lets Google supplement the results with
updates posted each second on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter. This
mix of search and social media will only increase the speed with which brand
messages spread and will challenge the ability of companies to monitor their
brands’ online presence.
The practice of maximizing the link between topics and brand-related websites is
called search optimization. Companies try to affect their search engine rankings
in order to drive more traffic to their websites. They want their ads to appear as
close to the top of the list as possible in order to have maximum visibility.An
important first step for marketers in creating a viable website is getting it
registered with popular search engines so that it shows up early on the list
provided by the search engine.
Another type of consumer search using smart phones is based on a
quick-response code, which is a type of two-dimensional bar code that uses a
scannable matrix design of square dots. You see them in ads and articles, on
packages, and the sides of buildings, anywhere a company wants to post this code
as a scannable link to its website. The point is that this is just one more way
consumers can search for information using their mobile phones.
Online Advertising Sales
Selling online advertising space is complicated. Major sites, such as MSNBC.com and
History.com, sell ads on their pages charging premium prices because they are on
high-traffic sites. They can cost from $10 to $50 per thousand viewings, depending on the
visibility of the position.
Advertisers and their media buyers get access to internet sites through providers
such as DoubleClick, an internet advertising service owned by Google that places
more than 60 billion online ads per month. DoubleClick provides reports on the
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placement and performance of these ads to both publishers and advertisers and
also helps create ads and widgets.
Middlemen companies act as brokers for online ad space that they aggregate
across different sites and package as single buys, in effect setting up an ad
network. This ad networker offer less well designed sites and positions and may
sell space for less than a dollar per thousand viewers. They are criticized for
flooding the internet with cheap and sometimes tacky ads.
Data-mining companies like Blue Kai and eXelate Media collect data on how
visitors move around among sites and then sell access to advertising on groups of
sites that attract similar visitors.
Google, Microsoft, and AOL have set up ad exchanges that allow advertisers to
bid directly on available ad space on large groups of websites. In effect, they are
cutting out the middlemen. Other big websites, such as ESPN, Turner
Broadcasting, and Forbes magazine, have stopped doing business with the ad
networks in order to gain better control over the quality of the content on their
sites.
The Online Publishers Association, which represents major publishers of web
content, reported on a study that found that ads on portals, as well as ads bought
from ad brokers, were significantly less effective than the ads that the premium
sites offer. The idea is that the portals and ad networkers’ ads may be cheaper, but
they appear in formats that are less interesting and thus are less likely to connect
with visitors.
Digital Issues for Traditional Media
Print media, as well as broadcast, have been struggling with competition from
online media, as well as decisions on how to support online versions of their own
publications, particularly since tablets have made online print versions much more
readable.
Some newspapers and magazines have “bundled” subscriptions that include print,
digital, and apps for smart phones and tablets. Others offer separate subscription
rates for print, digital, and/or app packages.
Another problem is Google’s practice of displaying media headlines without any
charges—either to the media company or to the viewer. Google receives online
advertising revenue at the same time print media advertising is in a steady decline.
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