Adobe Teams Up With Yahoo to Run Ads in PDF Files

By VAUHINI VARA
November 29, 2007; Page B3

The text-based advertisements that you are used to seeing on Web sites are coming soon to an unusual place: PDF documents.

Adobe Systems Inc., a maker of online-publishing software, announced Thursday a program in which publishers can get paid to run ads from Yahoo Inc.'s ad service alongside PDFs.

Adobe, San Jose, Calif., gives away the Reader software used for accessing documents in its "Portable Document Format" and makes money by selling the Acrobat software used for creating such documents. Until now, publishers could place ads in PDFs on their own, charging advertisers for static blocks of text or graphics that they would place in the document. But that meant the publishers had to sell the ads and lay them out on the page on their own.

Now, publishers will be able to show ads alongside their PDFs without selling and inserting the ads themselves, by uploading the PDF content to Adobe's Web site to ad-enable it, then distributing the PDFs as they previously did -- an easier and less costly option. Advertisers, meanwhile, can use Yahoo's existing self-service ad system to buy text ads that will run in a panel to the right of the PDF, when it is viewed in Acrobat or Reader. Yahoo will use the text of the PDF to place contextual ads that are relevant to the subject matter of the PDF -- similar to the text ads that run in blogs, for instance. For example, the editor of a newsletter for car enthusiasts could send out the newsletter at no charge and make money through the ad system, which might display ads for car accessories.

The revenue from the ad will be shared between the publisher, Adobe and Yahoo. The companies declined to give details on the revenue split.

"Consumers' expectation is that content is free," says Kurt Garbe, an entrepreneur in residence in advertising at Adobe. "Some content will be sold at premium pricing, but there's a whole bunch of content" that can be monetized through ads.

Publishers participating in the program, called Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo, include Meredith Corp., Reed Elsevier PLC and Pearson PLC's Pearson Education, among others.

Link to Wall Street Journal Article (Sub. Req.)

Tag Heuer Pumps Up Holiday Campaign With Pros

SWISS LUXURY WATCHMAKER TAG HEUER has launched its first major online initiative, a rich media ad campaign timed for the holidays that features athletes Tiger Woods, Maria Sharapova and Jeff Gordon reprising their roles as campaign spokespersons.

The campaign features a standard rich media leaderboard paired with a smaller, square banner that's nestled in the editorial content, and the message jumps between both units. With the Tiger Woods ad, for example, the main banner features Woods on a mesh golf course, ready to take a swing. After he hits the ball, it actually bursts through mock editorial copy in the smaller unit.

Chicago-based Bagby and Co. handled the creative, with WPP's MediaCom behind the media strategy.

This banner-centric creative furthers Tag Heuer's "What Are You Made Of?" brand philosophy--a tagline launched in 2003 via TV and print. It also complements recent product placement spots in movies like Universal Pictures' "The Bourne Ultimatum" and Warner Bros' "The Brave One" that feature tough, resilient protagonists.

Clicking on the ad takes users to a landing page featuring the athlete, and copy referencing past experiences they have had with overcoming hardships--essentially defining "what they were made of." There is also information on the specific watch each spokesperson wears, as well as links to the rest of the Tag Heuer site and authorized watch retailers.

For an initial investment of $1 million, Tag Heuer's message will be conveyed via more than 26 million impressions across sites like CondéNet's Style.com, PGA.com, CNNMoney, and Yahoo--establishing parent company Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey's most costly single-brand online presence to date.

But the banners are just Tag Heuer's initial campaign launch in North America. The company plans to use digital ads for future product introductions.

"We already have one of the broadest and most innovative marketing strategies in the luxury watch world," says Jenna Fagnan, VP/marketing for Tag Heuer, North America. "The digital initiative adds the next layer and enables us to reach these consumers where they are spending an average of three hours a day--online."

Link to MediaPost Article

Yahoo Expands Online-Ad Reach

Yahoo Inc. agreed to acquire closely held online-advertising company BlueLithium for about $300 million as the Internet giant tries to expand its ad reach beyond its own sites.

BlueLithium, founded in January 2004, operates what is known as an online-advertising network. It buys graphical-display ad slots, such as banners, on about 1,000 sites owned by other Web publishers and resells the slots to advertisers.

The purchase -- which follows a wave of online-ad acquisitions by Yahoo and rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. -- is part of the Internet company's push to increase the number of places where advertising it sells appears. Yahoo is hoping such ad sales outside its own sites will help boost its ad-revenue growth as advertisers look beyond the big portal sites. It cited disappointing revenue from display ads in announcing a 2.3% drop in second-quarter profit in July.

"With our goal of creating the largest global ad network, this really moves us along the continuum," said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo Publisher Network, which handles relations with partner sites that carry ads brokered by Yahoo.

BlueLithium, of San Jose, Calif., which has 120 employees and declines to disclose its revenue, had previously planned to hold an initial public offering early next year. The company uses so-called behavioral-targeting technology, which allows advertisers to have their ads displayed to groups of consumers based on their online activities, such as individuals whose Web surfing suggests they are researching a car purchase.

Yahoo said data collected for such behavioral targeting will span its own sites and those on BlueLithium's network. It played down consumer-privacy concerns, saying the data collected would be used to display advertising more relevant to users in a way that respected their trust in Yahoo. The company said users will be allowed to opt out of the sharing of such behavioral data across Yahoo and BlueLithium's ad network.

Yahoo said BlueLithium will also bring additional tools for so-called performance-based advertisers, whose spending Yahoo says it hasn't sufficiently tapped. Such advertisers often allocate their ad dollars based largely on what given ads yield in terms of sales rather than looking for a more general improvement in perception of their brands.

Yahoo in April had paid $680 million for the remaining 80% of online-advertising exchange Right Media Inc., following a 20% stake it bought in October, as part of the strategy of expanding its advertising reach to other sites.

Link to WSJ Aritcle (Sub Req)

Traditional marketing failing on social networks

Get interactive or get out, says analyst

Ian Williams, vnunet.com 17 Aug 2007

Traditional marketing campaigns are proving unsuccessful on social networking sites, according to a recently published report.

The Forrester Research study suggests that most marketers still use traditional tactics like run-of-site advertising and static microsites to push messages into these networks.

However, the return on investment in these campaigns is very low, and marketers should be prepared to engage in a personal relationship with users by providing something of value.

Promotions are good in this context, according to Forrester, but information or brand elements that users can pass on to their friends are even better.

"It is clear that successful social networking site campaigns do not follow traditional marketing rules," said Charlene Li, a principal analyst at Forrester and co-author of the report.

"Social networking sites cannot be treated as channels because their members are not passive web pages."

The report suggests that marketers should mimic how music acts promote themselves on sites like MySpace by engaging their fans with frequent backstage gossip and answering their questions.

"During the past 10 years, the evolution of the internet has dramatically changed how organisations interact with customers," said Gurval Caer, president and chief executive at marketing agency Blast Radius.

"Companies are recognising that traditional marketing approaches like advertising are less effective today, and marketers are struggling to deliver value.

"People no longer want 'interruptive' brand communications; they want interactions with their peers and true value from companies through Facebook applications or communities for sharing ideas and experiences."

Caer added that marketing needs to "turn itself on its head" with a much greater focus on building relationships that will make people's lives "easier, better and richer".

The report concluded that companies that want to advertise on social networks should embrace the interactive aspect of the sites in order to gain the full benefit of these campaigns.

Forrester Report: Marketing on Social Networking Sites

Link to VNU Net Article

YouTube to Start Selling Ads in Videos

By EMILY STEEL
August 22, 2007; Page B3

Nearly 10 months after Google Inc. agreed to buy YouTube for $1.65 billion, the video-sharing Web site is rolling out its first approach for selling ads within videos. The anticipated move, announced last night, answers speculation concerning Google's formula for mining revenue from the site and is expected to start to bring standardization to the growing ad market for Web video.

Resembling a popular ad model cropping up on a number of other video sites, YouTube's new format is a semitransparent ad that appears on the bottom 20% of the video. The ad shows up after a video plays for 15 seconds, and disappears up to 10 seconds later if the viewer doesn't click on it. Viewers can either click to close the ad right away or to watch the commercial. If a viewer chooses to watch the ad, the main video pauses until the commercial stops.

During a video from Ford Models Inc. about how to create an evening hairstyle, an animated ad promoting Time Warner Inc. unit New Line Cinema's film "Hairspray" pops onto the bottom fifth of the video player. When viewers click on the ad, the Ford Models video pauses and a trailer for the film appears. Viewers can click on a link that takes them to the "Hairspray" Web site.

YouTube, a subsidiary of Mountain View, Calif., Internet company Google, plans to sell these ads only on videos from its select content partners, whose original videos include professionally produced clips and user-generated content. The partners will earn a share of the ad revenue. The system is similar to Google's AdSense network, which matches ads to the content of a network of Web sites, and gives those sites a cut of the profits. YouTube, of San Bruno, Calif., has established revenue-sharing deals with more than 50 partners, including Ford Models and Warner Music Group Corp. YouTube declined to say what percentage of videos on its site comes from its content partners.

YouTube started testing its in-video ad format in June and July on more than 200 videos from 20 content providers, and found that 75% of viewers watched the entire ad. The ads had five to 10 times greater click-through rates than standard display ads that appear on Web sites, YouTube said. Other ad models are in the works. In the past month, BMW AG has started testing in-video ads on YouTube. Before the German luxury-car maker commits significant ad dollars, it needs to see how the results compare with other forms of online-video advertising and how users respond, says Rinku Mahbubani, interactive-media supervisor at GSD&M, the ad agency representing BMW.

While YouTube's announcement could pave the way for more ad dollars to go into online video, marketing executives say a number of hurdles remain. Right now, producing advertising for Web video is a logistical headache. If an advertiser wants its ads to run on two different video networks, it usually has to negotiate deals and create different ads for each of the different sites. Marketers also are hesitant to advertise during unpredictable user-generated content, which makes up a large portion of videos on these sites. YouTube says that ads will appear only during "brand friendly" videos, and that marketers have the ability to target their ads to specific genres.

One format advertisers won't see on You Tube is the "pre-roll" ad, the video ads that viewers must watch before viewing a clip. With 55.1 million unique visitors who spent an average of 49 minutes and 59 seconds on the site during July, YouTube is the most popular online video site, according to Nielsen/NetRatings NetView. YouTube has spent months testing different ad formats to figure out which models wouldn't alienate its viewers. It found that viewers abandon videos that include pre-roll ads at a rate of more than 70%, so it ditched pre-roll commercials.

Link to WSJ Article

Deal Puts VideoEgg on Facebook Apps

by Gavin O'Malley, Tuesday, Aug 14, 2007 6:00 AM ET

ONLINE VIDEO TECHNOLOGY COMPANY VIDEOEGG has reached a deal with Facebook to sell ads directly into applications developed by the popular social network's community. The move represents an effort by VideoEgg to expand its ad network, the Eggnetwork, which launched last year. "Aggregating dozens of application owners together in our network will give advertisers reach they need to go deep in any demographic," said Troy Young, chief marketing officer, VideoEgg. Early advertisers include Discovery Networks, Electronic Arts, Fox Searchlight, FX Channel, Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures. VideoEgg is not alone in its access to Facebook's application developers. Three competing ad networks--Lookery, fbExchange and RockYou--presently vie for their attention. With the Eggnetwork, application providers on Facebook can expect to receive 60% of ad revenue earned, with ads presently selling at above $10 CPM. Larger application Facebook developers like Rock You, J. Squared Media, Graffitii, Renkoo and Flixster have already signed onto the Eggnetwork. "The Eggnetwork ad units work very well with the Facebook platform," said Jia Shen, chief technology officer and co-founder of Rock You, Inc., developer and publisher of Facebook applications and widgets. Founded in 2005, VideoEgg manages the Eggnetwork, along with offering clients opt-in ad technology that stands in contrast to unpopular pre-roll video advertising. "Our ad units bring targeted, invitation-based rich media experiences to social environments," said Young. Today, VideoEgg powers 680 million video plays per month, from 23 million unique users. Including more than 80 social networks, its better-known clients include AOL and Bebo. Video networks in general are booming, with U.S. online video ad expenditures expected to total $775 million in 2007--up 89% from last year, according to market research firm eMarketer. Still, that number only represents about 4% of the projected 2007 U.S. online ad spend of $19.5 billion. In April, WPP invested an unknown sum in VideoEgg with the intention of exploring its various ad-serving methods. Link to MediaPost Article

Users’ Online Time Spent Mostly on Content - not Communications, Commerce

Internet users are spending nearly half their online time visiting content - a 37% increase in share of time from four years ago and nearly as much time as spent on communications and commerce combined - according to a four-year analysis of the Internet Activity Index (IAI) issued by the Online Publishers Association (OPA).

The IAI is a monthly gauge of the time that users spend with e-commerce, communications, content and search; it is conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings.

According to OPA’s IAI:

• Communications accounted for 46% of consumers’ time online in 2003, but a dramatic shift has taken place since then, with consumers now spending 47% of their time with content, compared with 34% four years ago.
• The 37% gain in share for content is followed closely by a 35% gain in share for search.
• However, the total time being spent with search remains relatively low, accounting for just 5% of Internet users’ online time in 2007.

“The IAI has identified a very significant and sustained trend in where consumers are spending their online time “The index indicates that, over the last four years, the primary role of the Internet has shifted from communications to content,” OPA President Pam Horan said.

The increase in content’s share of time has been fairly steady in the last several years, growing 10% from 2003 to 2004, remaining even between 2004 and 2005, growing 13% from 2005 to 2006, and growing 13% from 2006 to 2007.

“The dominant role of content is driven by several important factors. The first is the online transition of traditionally offline activities, such as getting news, finding entertainment information or checking the weather. Quality content sites see a consistent pattern - major news drives traffic spikes, but traffic remains consistently higher even after the event,” Horan said.

“New online features and communities are also leading consumers to spend a larger share of their online time with content. Consumers spend considerable time with social-networking sites, which serve not only as places of content but are also increasingly important communications vehicles.”

The OPA found several other important factors behind the changes:

• A more accessible, and much faster, internet is driving increased overall time spent online.
• The increased popularity of video is leading to more time being spent with online content.
• The improvement in search allows consumers to more easily and quickly find the exact content they are looking for, increasing the likelihood they will engage more deeply with that content.
• The web simply offers far more content than it did even four years ago, increasing content’s share of time.
• The rise of instant messaging (IM) as a key communications tool has been a factor in communication’s reduction in share of time. IM is a more efficient communications vehicle than email.

About the IAI: OPA’s Internet Activity Index is derived from a categorization of Web properties accounting for more than 90%, on average, of active web users and approximately 55% of total usage time (excludes .gov and .edu Web sites, as well as pornographic domains). The IAI is conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings and is posted online each month.

Link to MarketingCharts Article

Revver Revs Up 'Impressions,' Adds CPM Model To Online Video Ads

by Joe Mandese, Wednesday, Jul 18, 2007 8:15 AM ET

IN A SIGN THAT THE social media and user-generated content market may be developing a traditional advertising model, revenue-sharing online video aggregator Revver this morning announced a plan to begin offering "impression-based advertising products" to advertisers and agencies. The new CPM-based ad deals will include both pre-roll and post-roll ads, which have become the online video industry's equivalent of TV's 30-second spots. Revver said the impression-based pre-roll ads will be no longer than 15-seconds in length, due to the shorter duration of viewing online video, and that to qualify for a pre-roll ad a video must be at least 30-seconds long. Like its original cost-per-click ad pricing model - which pays a user according to the number of ad clicks - Revver said it would split the revenue generated from impression-based ad sales 50/50 with content owners. "As the demand for online video advertising continues to grow, we're building a customizable range of ad products to better meet our partners' needs," said Revver CEO Kevin Wells. The company said the new ads would be tested over the next several weeks. Link to MediaPost Article

When Web Branding Works

Dynamic Logic's Data Offers Tips For Online Brand Builders

By Abbey Klaassen

Published: July 16, 2007

Want to craft an effective online branding campaign? Think pictures, not words. Keep it simple. And tie it in with your offline efforts.

Those are some of the common strategies behind eight campaigns Dynamic Logic found to be the most effective online branding efforts out of all the campaigns the company measured in 2006.

Kraft had four of the most effective brand campaigns, with creative and media for Oreo, Honey Bunches of Oats, Kraft Singles and Crystal Light On the Go scoring high marks in both awareness and persuasiveness. Other marketers bestowed with most-effective honors include Unilever, BMW, McDonald's and Luxottica Group for its Ray-Ban brand.

Common features
The winners share several traits, said Michelle Eule, VP-research at Dynamic Logic, which is part of WPP's Millward Brown. For starters, they kept the ads simple, with great visual elements and little text.

"These ads are competing with a lot of other elements to grab the user's attention," Ms. Eule said. "If the messaging is too complex or esoteric, people will not pay attention at all or not get the messaging in its entirety."

These eight are not an absolute measure of the best online campaigns of 2006 as the results were culled from only the 600-plus campaigns for more than 400 brands Dynamic Logic was tapped to measure last year. The study didn't include campaigns that have never been measured or were measured by another firm, such as Insight Express. Kraft, for example, is a big Dynamic Logic client and may have had more campaigns among those measured than another advertiser.

Unexplored metrics
While the online space is considered a performance marketer's dream, thanks to the ability to measure effectiveness based on actions such as clicks or conversions, those metrics don't always mesh with brand marketers' goals, which include measures such as awareness, recall and likelihood to purchase, which is what Dynamic Logic aims to capture through controlled exposure studies.

In this particular list, Dynamic Logic first considered awareness, with the top-performing campaigns garnering between 18% to 43% gains, and then looked at persuasiveness, with the eight campaigns listed here all falling into the top quintile in terms of that metric. They also all had positive brand impact, the firm said. Ms. Eule said it's difficult for an online campaign to successfully capture all of those things and credited the prominence of the branding and the products in the ad as being major drivers of awareness.

One key to success in the interactive space is, naturally, interactivity. (While that seems obvious, it's still common to see marketers that fail to take advantage of this attribute.) The McDonald's campaign, from Tribal DDB, Chicago and OMD Chicago, for its Asian salad allowed users to mouse over the ingredients to see exactly what each one was. Kraft's campaign for Crystal Light On the Go, from Modem Media, let users shake a water bottle after the powdery mix had been added -- to virtually mix the drink.

Importance of video
Many of the top campaigns also incorporated video. And it wasn't limited to pre-roll and interstitial ads but also made use of technologies such as running video within banner or display ads. Kraft did a particularly good job of this, Ms. Eule said, with its Oreo ad, from Modem Media, featuring three ballerinas dunking cookies into milk -- a 15-second re-edited version of a TV ad.

And that example pointed to another trait the top campaigns shared: consistency with offline ads.

"Video units consistent with TV likely helped," said Ms. Eule, who suggested Dove's Super Bowl ad about its Self-Esteem Fund, from MindShare, New York and Ogilvy and Ryan Interactive, helped give the online campaign a jumpstart.

The right ingredients for online ads

What the top campaigns had in common:

• Keep it visually simple. Stick to little text and beautiful product shots. Online ads "are competing with a lot of other elements," said Michelle Eule, VP-research at Dynamic Logic.
• Put the brand front and center.
• Align online and offline campaigns. What's happening in other media can reinforce the online message and vice versa.
• Incorporate video and rich media: McDonald's salad spun. Oreo cookies dunked. And try out various video units—pre-roll, full-page interstitials, in-banner video.
• Add interactivity. Kraft let users virtually mix its Crystal Light On the Go product into a bottle of water.

Link to AdAge Article
Link to Best Online Branding Campaigns of 2006