Digital Pulp Blog

We’ve watched year after year the slow, painful decrease in click-through rates of traditional ad banners. And actively encouraged clients to opt for a rich media campaign using the ad banner as a branding vehicle to measure engagement over click through. Well MSNBC.com has taken it a step further and done away with the banner and replaced it with a rich sponsorship:

“With the redesign, the media company hopes to be able to sell large, customizable ads and put an end to the “pageview” metric, focusing more exclusively on user engagement such as time spent on pages … As many as 30 different ad combinations are possible with the new design, with a flexible layout that is based on the sponsorship, says Charlie Tillinghast.”

At least one major agency has approved of the new approach but we’ll have to wait and see if other sites will follow MSNBC’s lead.

Read more here:  MSNBC.com Redesigns, Does Away with Pageview Metric

New market research from comScore indicates that Facebook is ready to monetize its position at the center of the social media universe. In the first quarter of 2010, Facebook served more display ads than Yahoo or Microsoft earning itself a healthy 16% marketshare.

Now comScore didn’t include the extended content networks held by the two giants and the revenue generated by Facebook is not quite there yet but we predict digital marketers will see this news and add Facebook as a pillar of their digital media plan. We can’t wait to see what happen’s next…

Wall Street Journal: Facebook Makes gains in Web Ads
Social Media Today: Facebook is Now the Leading Publisher of Web Display Ads

Recently the NYTimes took a deeper look into targeted Facebook ads that use personal information to grab attention and found they either work brilliantly or come across as seriously creepy…

“The site’s pages are also home to countless ads from smaller companies that can be funny, weird or just plain creepy — those suggesting you are, say, eligible to get a free iPad because you are exactly 26 years old, or entreaties to see what your offspring would look like if you had a child with a celebrity.”

As in the real world, it seems there are limits as to how familiar you can get with someone you’ve never met. Read the full article at: Ads Posted on Facebook Strike Some as Off-Key or check out the related multimedia piece that shows actual Facebook ads as seen by four demographically diverse users: Facebook’s Targeted Ads

Oct. 27 marked the 15th anniversary of the industry’s first banner display ads, which appeared on the first commercial digital magazine on the web (Hotwired.com). The first banner campaign got a 78% click-through rate and started a $24 billion business. Imagine that…

As it turns out bigger is not always better when it comes to ad banner performance according to a study by Dynamic Logic. It’s the quality of creative that determines impact and effectiveness. Excerpt from MediaPost:

“In most media, advertisers pay more for the biggest, and theoretically most noticeable advertising formats, because they believe they work better. But when it comes to online advertising, smaller, and ostensibly less expensive, may actually work better. That is the conclusion of new research unveiled this morning by advertising effectiveness researcher Dynamic Logic. ”We continue to believe that creative quality is the most important factor driving the success of online advertising,” Ken Mallon, senior vice president-custom solutions at Dynamic Logic added.

Read the full article:  Bigger Isn’t Necessarily Better When It Comes To Online Ad Formats