Mar/100
ISM’s Web Makeover
Our fly new look.
Amazing stuff is happening in Image Space Media Headquarters: We've unveiled our new website, logo and our publisher panel PubStop. AND our team is gearing up to head to SXSW Interactive tomorrow. It's an exciting time to be using in-image ads.
But let's break it down a little. Our team has put in a lot of work to make our new website look as beautiful as it does... from back-end developers to content writers, from management on down to us bloggers/ISM cheerleaders. And we're pretty happy with the results.
Here's a run-down of some of the additions to the site:
- Special section for advertisers, including FAQs and information about our content channels.
- For our WordPress, Blogger, and Tumblr friends, step-by-step instructions on how to implement our code on each specific blog platform.
- PubStop! Our exclusive interface for publishers where you can see how many dolla bills you've made, control which ads have images, and just generally have a good time.
- Management bios! Ever wondered what the smiling faces of the ISM team look like? You're in luck!
- A new look! From our beautiful new logo to our poppin' color palette, every aspect of the ISM site is designed to be evocative.
Not to brag, but we think these updates are pretty fly. What do you think? We hope you find them to be an exciting and useful upgrade to ISM's services. Let us know what you think! Post your thoughts in the comments or email info@imagespacemedia.com!
Feb/100
The Banner Blues: Combating Burnout and Blindness
via Jakob Nielsen for Useit.com
At Image Space Media headquarters, we're all pretty big proponents of online advertising (Cash Rules Everything Around Us, after all). We think it's a great way for publishers to financially support their passions and their expressiveness. And, of course, we believe we provide a unique and game-changing way for publishers to use their unique images to get paid.
But not all online advertising is effective online advertising. And it's not just you, getting sick of seeing the same banner ads above the sites you visit every day - it's a proven phenomenon called Banner Burnout, and it has very real implications for publishers and advertisers.
Let the stats do the talking: A study by DoubleClick found that after the fourth impression, CTR rates for banner ads go from 2.7 percent to less than 1 percent. That's pretty abysmal!
Photo via Flickr user jamescastle3
But before you can even worry about click through rates, there is the critical problem of Banner Blindness to deal with. As you can see from the amazing eyetracking studies shown above, created by Jakob Nielsen, the eye is automatically drawn to areas not dominated by ads. As Nielsen writes, "If users are looking for a quick fact, they want to get done and aren't diverted by banners; and if users are engrossed in a story, they're not going to look away from the content."
To combat the Banner B-problems, advertising experts suggest placing banners with animation, flashing bright colors, and cryptic messages at the top of your site. But what if that's not exactly the style you have in mind for your site? Remember, banner ads are not the only ad solution. These are many great advertising strategies to generate revenue - banner ads, Google AdSense and AdWords, in-text ads, Image Space media ads... Given the number of options in your arsenal, it's important to be tactical about your advertising solutions. How do you want your site to appear visually? Check out our online advertising tag for all of our past coverage of the various ways you can make ads work for your site.
Feb/100
The Ads of Super Bowl XLIV (Who Cares About Football, Anyway?)
I won't try to presume you're a Colts or Saints fan, and I won't even presume that you know that those are football teams. That Super Bowl XLIV is this Sunday may be news to you. I can be reasonably assured, however, that at some point you will watch a Super Bowl ad on YouTube. In an age of partisanship and global conflict, YouTube, the great cultural leveler, has united the masses over adorable cat videos and embarrassing local news segments. And creative advertising and commercials rank right below bloopers, clips of pets, and Lady GaGa music videos in terms of popularity.
The Super Bowl is a fantastic opportunity for advertisers to showcase their creativity. With millions of viewers, expectations are high. And some of the past decades most memorable commercials have first aired during the Super Bowl (see: Waaaasssuuuuupp). So what can we expect for this year?
Photo by volov via Pixmac.com
As always, there will be beer commercial upon beer commercial. The site I4U News reports that Anheuser-Busch InBev, the owner of Budweiser, Michelob, Stella Artois, and basically every other beer that you drink, is this year's biggest Super Bowl advertiser with five total minutes of ads (which cost the brewery $30 million, no big deal).
And beyond the expected focus on brews, this year's selection of ads has been surprisingly political. Focus on the Family, an evangelical church organization, will show a pro-life ad that features Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother -- a development that has been made more controversial by CBS' rejection of an ad for ManCrunch, a gay dating website.
If you want a run-down of all the ads, the content, and the agencies responsible, check out AdWeek's comprehensive Super Bowl XLIV Commercial Players Chart.
Having taken on the totally arduous task of watching most of this year's Super Bowl ads (it's a hard job, but someone has to do it), I have a few favorites:
Dec/091
Who is more likely to click on online advertisements?
Erick Schonfeld
Chitika, a search advertising network, has compiled data showing that Microsoft users are more likely to click online ads than any other users. Chitika analyzed users based on their browsers and operating systems. As a result, it found that Microsoft's Internet Explorer users are roughly 40 percent more likely to click ads than Firefox users. Also, Firefox users are 50 percent more likely to click ads than Apple Safari users. These numbers are based on over 134 million impressions on 80,000 sites.
Based on operating system, the trend was somewhat the same. Windows users are nearly twice as likely to click ads than Linux and Mac users. Although it is a very large sample, the data is only compiled from one ad network. However, it is still a very significant trend that I am sure will be studied more in the near future. For now, it seems as if Microsoft users are the ones to target for online advertising.
Dec/090
Delivering Pay-Per-Click Conversions
Are you satisfied with the performance of your Pay-Per-Click advertising?
Entrepreneur.com just posted an informative article on putting the "pay" back in pay-per-click. The entry offers great tips on delivering conversions --not just click-throughs which can add up for new publishers.
The article outlines several different factors that contribute to poor conversion rates.
The most critical seems to be "Click Fraud"
In our experience, some of the smaller PPC search engines deliver clicks but no conversions. Check the clicks-to-conversion stats for every search engine you use, then stop using any where the results are seriously out of whack compared to your PPC performance on the other search engines.
Other culprits include:
-Content networks
-Lack of keyword research
-Scattergun ads
-Irrelevant landing page
-Sticking with the same old ad
Continue reading to learn more best practices to PPC advertising here.
Nov/090
Burberry: Art of the Trench
It's no surprise that luxury brands have been struggling this year. Economic malaise has shunned high-end spending and have greatly benefited discount retailers like Target. Luxury labels have been looking for ways to reinvent themselves to appeal to younger consumers and have sought exposure in numerous ways with mixed results.
Luxury brands have struggled to utilize the web where sites for knock-offs and deep discounts abound. Upholding the integrity of their brands is of utmost importance to keep their aging consumer base.
All eyes are on Burberry who has just launched Art of the Trench, a gallery of street photography of people wearing the iconic Burberry trench. They enlisted fashion photographers to begin the project and have invited the public to submit their own photos. The execution of the site is beautiful and has lead to a lot of buzz. It will be interesting to see how Burberry will ride this wave and if other luxury brands will follow suit.
Nov/090
Online Advertising Rebounds
Source: Erick Schonfeld
Online advertising bounced back a bit in the third quarter of 2009, after declining in the first two quarters of the year. The online advertising revenues of Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL rose 1.2% to roughly $8 billion for the quarter. These four companies account for an enormous proportion of online advertising, so looking at these four companies gives a good representation of the overall industry. However, Google was the only company to report a rise in revenues in the third quarter. The other three had slight decreases in revenue. While it is still early to assume that the worst is behind us, this definitely gives hope that the online advertising industry might be stabilizing.
Nov/090
The Next Frontier of Online Advertising
Source: unwiredview.com
As has been extensively covered this week by online media sources (see: the New York Times and Advertising Age, for starters), Google is set to acquire the mobile advertising company AdMob for $750 million in stock. According to Jon Fortt for CNNMoney.com, this deal represents a sign of the times. The mobile-display advertising sector is now the advertising market that seems most poised to grow, and with this deal, Google has positioned itself as the current leader.
Fortt, however, is skeptical of mobile advertising's potential. Although the popularity and ubiquitousness of smart phones is undeniable, spending on mobile advertising market was only $416 million in 2009 -- which is nothing compared to the close to $24 billion spent on online advertising overall in 2009.
Fortt is also skeptical of the smart phone user's likelihood to put up with mobile ads. He writes, "If you think online display ads are at best an annoyance on a 30-inch monitor, what about a three-inch screen? Ignoring ads on a PC is easy enough; on something I pay $60 or $80 a month for (especially if serving up the mobile ads slow my wireless network even more) ignoring the ads will be the default mode."
It remains to be seen whether Google can successfully develop a mobile advertising service with the acquisition of AdMob. In my estimation, and Fortt's as well, the difficulty of creating a mobile-display ad that doesn't completely turn off users is a significant hurdle that Google and other competitors must face.
Read the rest of Fortt's article here and let us know what you think of mobile advertising in the comments!
Nov/090
ad:tech New York
This year's ad:tech New York expo was hosted at the Javits Center, and Image Space Media was there to partake in all the action (and free schwag!) With over 250 exhibitors, ad:tech is the largest gathering of online marketers and where "brands, agencies, publishers and service providers come together to share, network, and do business.". The expo was held here in New York City on November 4th & 5th, but if you missed the NYC show, it is also held yearly in: Sydney, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, Chicago, Tokyo, London, Shanghi, and Beijing.
Many companies were very creative in making their booths, and were giving out all sorts of schwag like notebooks, pens, condoms, stickers, breathalyzers (I tested mine out later that night), and candy. Convert2Media had a bar with Amstel light on tap, Design Back Office was offering free logo designs, and Facebook gave out a code for free trial ads.
After all the fun at the expo, there were after parties all over town. Some of our team hit up the Roosevelt Hotel and the Providence Hotel to celebrate a successful day.
Overall, the expo was very interesting (thanks to the free beer and schwag) and the Image Space Media team gained a lot of valuable knowledge (along with sore feet.)
Oct/091
Take Control of Your In-Picture Ad Campaigns
In addition to being the first and leading provider of in-picture advertising technology, Image Space Media also offers publishers an innovative feature that allows
them to control which images their in-picture ads appear on.
The Image Manager allows publishers to take complete control of their in-picture advertising campaigns. Within this control panel, users can view the number of impressions, clicks, and earnings on their domains and add additional keywords to increase the relevancy of the ads on a particular image. The Image Manager provides a great deal of flexibility so that publishers can manage their visitors’ experience.
Don't believe us? Get started with Image Space Media this weekend and check it out for yourself!