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We have already seen Google introduce their Display Ad Builder and ad serving companies like Adform and Eyeblaster also including similar offerings (create-a-banner-easily) in their systems. Today I found a new service reaching out to all those clients that can’t afford to pay unreasonable sums for banners and versioning of them. Pointbanner offers you custom banner ads within 48 hours…

Companies in need of banner ads typically face the choice between creating their own or hiring a professional to create it for them. Many do-it-yourself sites use templates while using professionals can be expensive and time-consuming. Aiming to offer a third alternative, PointBanner promises custom-created banners in just 48 hours for USD 49.

Customers submit a banner request with New York-based PointBanner in three simple steps: they upload their logo, enter their desired text and URL, and then pick a size. Eschewing templates, the company’s design team works on each banner individually, guaranteeing a result for USD 49 within 48 hours. Three free revisions are included for each banner, and an assortment of multi-banner packages are also available with per-banner pricing as low as USD 11.

Much like Inkd, which offers a third alternative in the realm of graphic (print) design, PointBanner seems like a natural next step in the evolution of web advertising, making professional quality more accessible to all. One to adapt locally—or, more broadly, find another area where the niche between cookie-cutter and professional approaches is currently unfilled, and offer a middle ground of your own.

Check it out here: www.pointbanner.com and also have a look at their blog: pointbanner.com/blog

Source: Springwise

In august last year, Eyeblaster achieved highest recognition by Nielsen Norman Group for its Campaign Monitor, who named it one of the top 10 user interfaces (UI) of 2008. The Campaign Monitor raises the bar for intuitive, efficient campaign management with its functional design that provides a clear graphic overview of campaigns.

Eyeblaster’s Campaign Monitor includes a visual dashboard with graphical gauges that display real-time data for key performance indicators such as setup and approval status, under-delivery and over-delivery and performance metrics including Interaction Rate, CTR and ROI. By providing a consolidated, bird’s-eye view of all campaign activity, users can manage every aspect of their digital campaigns, helping the user and industry as a whole achieve optimal results to keep clients coming back and encourage online industry growth.

Another great thing that Eyeblaster provide clients with is Dwell Time. Dwell Time is Eyeblaster’s unique metric that measures user engagement with large branding campaigns without relying on clicks and constant mouse activity. It’s the rich media metric that allows for the best comparison across various formats and creative implementations. So basically it tells us how long people have interacted/ engaged with the rich media.

For more information on visit http://www.eyeblaster.com/

In a new report published in December 2008, comScore gives us their views on how online advertising works – is clicks and click through rates really the right metric for measuring an online campaigns success?

In today’s economically challenging times, advertisers and their agencies appear to be moving their online display ad dollars from CPM campaigns that require payment based on the number of people exposed to the campaign to “payfor-performance” programs (“CPC” or “CPA”) that require payment when the consumer performs some desired action such as clicking on an ad. Data from Competitive Media Reporting shows that total online display advertising spending (CPM and CPC/CPA) increased by 8% Y/Y during the first half of 2008, while the Internet Advertising
Bureau reported a 15% increase. In contrast, Nielsen, whose data only includes CPM spending, reported a 6% decline in display advertising over the same time period.

Click rates have fallen dramatically in recent years to levels under 0,1%. The comScore research* revealed that two-thirds of Internet users do not click on any display ads over the course of a month and that only 16% of Internet users account for 80% of all clicks. ComScore’s research also showed that the demographics of clickers are skewed towards younger users aged 25 to 44 earning less than $40,000 per year. Even search ads, presumably the most effective form of online marketing, are only clicked on 4% of the time at Google, and 2% at MSN and Yahoo!, according to comScore statistics.

But are low click rates evidence that an ad has not had any impact on consumer behavior? Or, does online display advertising work in a similar manner to traditional offline advertising with multiple exposures over time being needed to effect a change in consumer behavior? Below you’ll find the key findings from the report:
It’s clear that display advertising, despite a lack of clicks, can have a significant positive impact on:

• Visitation to the advertiser’s Web site (lift of at least 46% over a four week period)
• The likelihood of consumers conducting a search query using the advertiser’s branded terms (a lift of at least 38% over a four week period)
• Consumers’ likelihood of buying the advertised brand online (an average 27% lift in online sales)
• Consumers’ likelihood of buying at the advertiser’s retail store (an average lift of 17%)

In the Retail category, it is also clear that while the lift in sales from a display ad is lower than the lift from a search ad, the reach of a display campaign is typically far higher than that of a search campaign. When the sales lift is weighted by reach, display campaigns generally outperform search campaigns. However, the combination of a display and search campaign delivers substantial synergy, with the sales lift from the combined strategy being greater than the sum of the individual components.

By not relying on cookies and instead tracking computers that have comScore’s monitoring software installed, comScore research also shows that online advertising can have a substantial latency effect on consumers’ online behavior while also having the ability to drive increased traffic into retail stores, resulting in meaningful increases in offline sales.

The report provides great insights into who clicks on online display ad’s and shows that display advertising really have an impact on consumer behavior. If we combine these findings with ad serving & tracking technology from companies like eyeblaster we can move the evaluation of online campaigns to a whole new level. When it’s possible to see the time spend interacting with a rich media ad on top of clicks, click through rates, CPC etc., then online display advertising really get’s comparable with TV. Furthermore online advertising still have the clear advantage that you can directly interact with the media.

Hopefully the findings of this report will help us move budgets to online advertising and get marketing people to really see the advantages and possibilities of using online advertising.

You can download the full report from comScore’s website.

*The research is based on comScore’s proprietary panel of 2 million global Internet users and does not rely on cookies to track users. The data is statistically weighted and validated through comparison to 3rd party data.