'Net Features : display ad builder

Saving Display: Ads Get Social at SiteScout

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 18:15:00 GMT

Banner ads never did receive much in the way of click-throughs and as such advertisers (and the publishers that support them) are on the look out for anything that might reverse the long and tedious slide of display into obscurity.

Advertising technology (media buying) company SiteScout is on the scene today, releasing a rather unique system to create dynamic display ads that are integrated with social media widgets out of the box. SiteScout’s AdBuilder aim to increase engagement, add “social proof” (social validation) to a campaign and leverage the inherent viral nature of social networks.

"We are extremely excited to be offering this new tool to our advertisers." says Paul Mokbel, SiteScout CEO, "We think that both brands and direct response marketers will get tremendous value from this new breed of ad."

SiteScout’s AdBuilder tool is available exclusively on its RTB (real-time bidding) platform.

Display Ad Builder from Google the Salvation of Display

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 17:21:00 GMT

Google has announced several improvements to its Display Ad Builder, a service (launched in ’08) which enables advertisers to design display ads for free.

Improvements to the platform include:

Bulk copying and editing: Advertisers can now copy ads built with DAB (Display Ad Builder) across campaigns and make bulk edits (including ad names, destination and display URLs, and ad statuses.

Social and Expandable Templates: Perhaps the most innovative of the enhancements released, Google is now allows users of Display Ad Builder to build their brand and engage users with new social and expandable templates. Social templates include the latest tweets from a Twitter account in the creative. The expandable templates expand an advertisement when a user clicks to twice its width or height essentially claiming more of the page’s ad real estate.

Template Customization: If the two previous enhancements didn’t catch your attention, this one surely will. Google has given users of DAB the ability to customize the templates, moving text boxes and images where the advertiser wants within the template. Couple that with the ability to choose from a variety of fonts, sizes and backgrounds and you've got the making of a tool that made save the display advertising market.

Yahoo Launches Display Ad Marketplace

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:14:00 GMT

Display advertising, once the darling of Internet marketing, fell out of favor as the rise of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising began.

That may soon change as Yahoo! today launched Yahoo! My Display Ads, a self-serve display ad marketplace for ads on Yahoo and its partner sites. The service is powered by AdReady, a service profiled in Website Magazine's June issue on e-commerce.

The merits of display advertising are many. Perhaps the most important reason to consider display ads however is that the reach users at a totally different point in the sales cycle than search does (which usually occurs at the beginning of the purchase process). According to the Yahoo! blog post on the announcement, "Getting in front of someone with display ads when they’re in an open mindset can influence whether people search for you or not when they are ready to buy."

According to a 2008 Specific Media study, people who saw a display ad for a product were 155 percent more likely to search for that product than those who didn’t. Much like Google, Yahoo! is clearly looking to ramp up the more lucrative display ads, convert some of its search ad business to the more lucrative display ads. Yahoo! has offered display ads across its network since its inception, but the ability to create ads from templates should make it easier for smaller businesses to get into the display ad market.

Advertisers can upload their existing ads or build their own from more than 700 templates. And, unlike traditional display, you can get started with as little as $30 a day and choose either CPM-based (cost-per-thousand impressions) or CPC-based (cost-per-click) pricing. Ads can be targeted by geography, channel or audience demographics.

"This new solution provides an affordable and accessible option for businesses to run brand and performance campaigns that reach the local audiences that matter to them most," Joanne Bradford, senior VP of North America revenue and market development at Yahoo, said in a statement.

“AdReady’s partnership with Yahoo! will provide advertisers with direct access to high value advertising inventory from the largest provider of display advertising in the world,” said Aaron Finn, President and CEO, AdReady. “With Yahoo! My Display Ads, we hope to make display as easy, effective and accessible as search.”

As a brief aside, Google has had a Display Ad builder for quite some time (using its own technology). Display Ad Builder is similar in functionality but not nearly as robust (plus, it only works with Google Adwords). Unique about AdReady by the way is that display advertisers (at least in the regular solution) can advertise directly on multiple platforms, including Google and its partner sites, not just Right Media and Yahoo! sites.

Google Display Ad Builder Improves with Rich Media & Video

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:45:00 GMT

Google made several notable improvements to its AdWords display ad builder. With a focus on bringing richer content, interaction and tracking to display ads, the new Rich Media and video templates will provide advertisers with the ability to add more functionalty to ads and enable users to interact with those ads before they visit a site.

Some of the improvements include:

- The new templates enable advertisers to display multiple products/services, which is perfect for advertisers looking to share a brand with users by allowing them to tell a "sequential story" within specific ad units.

- Multiple destination URLs can now also be included, as the templates provided allow advertisers to assign a different destination URL to each featured product.

- Advertisers will also be able to track "interactions" - which is very interesting. While advertisers have been able to see the "mouseover rate" within the reporting column, some of the new templates will track unique interactions such as play rate for video ads. This data will be displayed in a new "Interaction Rate" column.

- Video can be added to advertising files. Advertisers can upload video to the new "Click to Play" video template, which allows for the setting of starting and ending images and features a display URL color picker.

Advertisers can access the new templates within their AdWords account by choosing the "Display ad builder" ad format option within any ad group and selecting the "Rich Media and Video" category.

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Google Display Ad Builder Improvements

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:54:00 GMT

Google has made some significant improvements to its AdWords display ad builder. Advertisers were previously able to create and customize display ads, but the enhancements enable users to make building display ads even easier.

Features released include an image picker (which gives advertisers the ability to select from previously uploaded images), real-time editing (which shows what the text and other customization edits look like without having to select the "update preview" button), faster review of which images fit in specific ad sizes, and additional templates for customizing ads.

All in all very modest changes. Google has released a video on YouTube which will come in handy when it comes to learning how to use the display ad builder.