When microsites go bad

We've all been there... click on an ad and you're directed to a fancy flash intro page that a bunch of people have put a whole lot of effort to make slick and professional. Often there's a fair amount of effort put in to making it look "unprofessional," but in either case the result is the same - 90-seconds (a life-time if you're ADD like me) of nothing for a bunch of music (don't get me started on non-opted music) some moving imagery and still a bunch of nothing!

Why do brands still insist on doing this? There appears to be an element of design for fancy rather than function. While flash can look fantastic, it doesn't necessarily get us to the heart of information we wanted when we clicked on an ad in the first place. Let's remember why 99% of people use the web in ever increasing minutes - information and functionality. We use the web because it's faster (mostly) and more efficient. When we're using it for entertainment, it's generally because we can get the stuff quicker than if we were to wait for it to be released or it's the only place we can get such tightly targeted niche content.

Here's an idea for money better spent - build your microsite to provide specific information and functionality. If you're building it purely for entertainment and brand engagement make sure it works simply and easily and gets people to the guts of it quickly. Save yourself even more time, energy and money and don't build it yourself at all. Let publishers (those in the business of building form and functionality) build one for you that caters to their specific audience. This way you can immerse your brand in relevant content. Just make sure it's useful / entertaining and simple. Many publishers have purpose-built content management systems to make this happen - AKA - FaceBook or MySpace. Others have threads and discussion forums ripe for the task and many can turn around an elegant solution within a couple of days that meets brand and content objectives for a fraction of the cost.

Here's an example of the very simple things we do for brands on our sites all the time:















There are plenty of other ways to achieve an outstanding brand experience on your own, but beware the cost! If you do have the budget and the fortitude to see it through - David Armono of Advertising Age provides some good tips here

Brand ads in drag

So what's up with all these performance ads without clicks? Well at least not clickable links that any normal human can find without the aid of a magnifying glass. Some even go so far as to not let users click for 30 seconds or more - after the message has rolled and re-rolled. I'm sure performance advocates would maintain that all of these practices are measures to ensure that only qualified clicks get through. But what if it was more than that? What if these measures were really about exceptionally cheap brand advertising, or Brand ads in Drag?




















There are a number of local brands (you know who you are) mascarading on performance networks and benefiting from loads of brand exposure and only paying on a CPC basis! CPC only ads are hard for many publishers to swallow at the best of times (particularly if they come complete with logos, animation and branding messages), but many brands (mainly in the financial industry) are surely taking the piss? So what does this mean to the average publisher? Giving away impressions at next to nothing is all good and well if you have the scale of a TM, but if you don't, you'll find every impression is precious. Most smaller publishers simply can't sustain their sites without a fair price for each one.

Many brand ads in this market are measured on a clicks basis (to guage success) anyway, which is surely wrong? For the average publisher that means that, while their ads are sold on an impression basis, they're being measured on results that are only marginally under their control. After all - creative comes supplied in what ever form it takes and it's pretty rare that publishers have a say in the look, feel or delivery. So the only element under publisher control is audience. In some cases the audience is perfect and the branding is fantastic! A happy marriage to be sure, but the elements missing from this relationship are brand measures - intent to purchase, share of mind and brand positioning.

If these factors aren't taken in to consideration when making a CPM purchase, there's a lot of hard work - from creatives, media shops and publishers, that goes unaccounted for. Stay tuned for more local brand research from the IAB NZ soon... in the meantime - let's give everyone a fair suck of the sav aye?

Inaugral post

Welcome to our first post! So what's happening in the interactive scene in New Zealand? Lots actually - in a time of recession (no one knows how deep yet) many web publishers, advertisers and their agencies are battening down the hatches, but not necessarily for the normal reasons. There's evidence of brands spending more, publishers doing more and agencies booking more. So the hatch is much more likely to belong to a Sherman tank than some sort of hurricane room or bunker. Think of it more as toughening up and thinking smarter and more strategically about what we do.

Online ad-spend is up (particularly display) both year on year and qtr on qtr. Can't tell you how much yet - but stay tuned for further evidence that online advertising, in particular, continues to grow and outstrip traditional media channels. This doesn't mean that traditional media is completely f*&^d, but don't expect it to look feel or perform in the same ways that it has in the past.

Speaking of which - I had an interesting discussion with a traditional media ad-man who said, quite rightly, he was sick of new media guys (like me :) telling him the end is nigh! He quoted some stats that suggested television viewer-ship was actually up (if you believe the antiquated people meter system still used by broadcasters). To me it's not a question of online, mobile or digital outdoor killing their predecessors - it's more a question of the changing times spent with all media. Like an amicable break-up with your ex. - the intention to stay connected, spend time and remain friends sounds great, but as time drifts so too does that connection - until at last that flashy new "someone" occupies more and more of it (time that is)!

Total time online in this country (with the wired consumer) now occupies more space than any other media according to this report. So the issue isn't so much what is still used and what isn't - it's more a question of how much time your intended audience is spending engaged in it. Online media spend in this country is under 7% yet time spent is (arguably) in excess of 30%. So unless you want to end up like the ex - buy more online advertising now!

The other thing that popped up recently at TIB's advertising Symposium was a certain minister's reference that around 90% of NZ traffic spends their time on over-seas sites. This (like his calculation for the average IQ in our industry) is some serious bollocks. The real figure is more likely between 40 - 60% (check-out Hitwised data if you have access to it). So what does that mean for the local industry or your advertising dollars? Very simply - we need to produce more great local content online and you need to seriously look at how much of your local advertising is being viewed by overseas audiences.

Which leads me to another bit of news - we have launched an online ad network called AdHub. Thankfully - some 80 +% of our audience is local across our sites flicks.co.nz, grownups.co.nz, getfrank.co.nz and weddings.co.nz. See the growth curves for these sites if you want some examples of great content online and how it grows share!