Comments on: Web Display Advertising Inexorably Moving to Full-Blown Brand Advertising

By: JonathanN

JonathanN — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:59:54 +0000

Great stuff, Ted.

How do you develop the kind of relationships with advertisers, so that they want to commit to a 12-24 month deal with you? Do you work through ad networks, do you go through traditional ad agencies or do you deal with the companies themselves?

By: Javier Zaffaroni

Javier Zaffaroni — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:52:23 +0000

Great post Ted.

I think this is an area with big potential for the next years, since big companies are starting to realize that online advertising really moves offline product. This is extremely powerful in niche sites, just like Dogster.

This article talks about that: http://www.dallasnews.com/mediakit/audience/industry_research/images/acnielsen_1.pdf

By: Ted Rheingold

Ted Rheingold — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 22:01:24 +0000

For brand to really work it needs to be over the course of at least 6 months, but 12 to 24 is really ideal. It does not have to be active that whole time. In fact the best campaigns are always dynamic with gaps in between the big pushes. A giveaway one month, a contest 2 months after that, a new display campaign after that (though pick any order). It simply needs to be changing giving reasons for the prospective customer to gain interest in it for different reasons. Meanwhile keep the sponsor logo on every page and run low volume banners through the entire process to keep brand recognition strong.

The return for the brand kicks in immediately (as you want to start with a big exciting push) and varies with the life of the campaign’s tranches, however, it’s much better to view result data normalized over the course of a quarter, or preferably a full year. If you plan the right big campaigns the advertiser will get 10x more clicks then they would on any comparable banner campaign.

Survey your members and find results to a) are you aware of Brand A? b) Have you considered using their product because of their participation in our site? c) Has your opinion of Brand A changed since they joined our site? if yes, how so.

This way you’ll have quantitative and qualitative lift data. Then, of course, there is the lift comScore reports on above

By: Michael Broukhim

Michael Broukhim — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 21:44:32 +0000

This is a great post Ted, and our own, more limited experience, backs this up (our first deal, with Little Tikes, was this more comprehensive type of sponsorship, and I think its been a great value to them).

At the same time, I think there is a significant lag in this type of understanding among brand advertisers, putting a lot of burden on the sales effort to make the pitch correctly.

The other thing to note, is this type of pitch is very difficult to pawn off to a 3rd party…

I’d be curious to know… how long are the terms of the deals Dogster/Catster usually construct – 3 months? 6 months? more? At what point do you think the returns really start kicking in for the brand?

By: Amy Jo Kim

Amy Jo Kim — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 19:21:45 +0000

Great post, Ted – thanks for sharing your insights from Dogster, it makes a lot of sense. This brand-awareness approach reminds me of product placement and corporate sponsorships — which are geared towards associating a brand with a positive experience.