Posts Tagged: web

NeXplore brings interactive video to web advertisements

NeXplore has just launched the latest beta version of its web advertising software called NeXplore Ads which focuses on search capabilities. In what the company is calling a “lifecycle platform”, marketers will be able to utilize NeXplore Ads to create web advertisements and then manage their ad campaign going forward.

NeXplore Ads will allow marketers to engage in advertising campaigns that include a variety of different advertisement formats including simple text, video, instant message, and email. The new advertising platform will integrate with the company’s web browser called NeXplore Search which users will enjoy simply because of its aesthetic qualities.

The chief marketing officer for NeXplore, Scott Grizzle, said that with the help of NeXplore Ads, marketers will be able to create engaging advertisements that people will enjoy. He added that “With a simple click consumers can watch a brief video commercial and can click again to initiate a real-time video chat with a call center representative of the advertiser. With NeXplore Ads, targeted consumers are engaged, relationships forged and transactions consummated within seconds, with absolute privacy and without leaving the search results page.”

One of NeXplore’s consultants is Rowland Hanson who previously worked with Microsoft on their branding effort for Windows. Hanson has said that NeXplore Ads has really changed the way in which search advertisements can be delivered. He added that companies who take advantage of the interactive advertisements that NeXplore can generate will likely see a great return on their investment.

Ewdison Then
1st April 2009
The Web
2 comments

Web advertising continues to grow rapidly. At the moment, many marketers are looking for alternatives to print advertisements and the web is providing plenty of incentive for them. There are plenty of companies around today that offer a variety of tools to make web advertising easier. Some tools help companies create advertisements while other tools are used to help you understand how effective your web advertisement really is.

A new company called Yield Software is attempting to combine these aspects into one tool which marketers will be able to use with ease. Matt Malden, who is the chief executive officer of the company, said that they were looking to companies who want to spend upwards of $20,000 a month for marketing. He pointed out that a number of companies find current tools to be cumbersome or that they do not include all of the capabilities that they want.

Malden said that Yield Software developers spent a great deal of time thinking about the various elements that they would include in their package. Some of the tools could be automated while others could not.

Companies will be happy to know that the software will help them determine the types of keywords that their search advertisements should be based on. The program will help to determine the actual look and style of the advertisement as well. Anyone that is interested in Yield Software will have an opportunity to test it out for free during a month long trial period.

Wedding Mapper introduces new type of web advertising

gi_0_kswichitastatandads Popular website Wedding Mapper is changing the way web advertising is conducted. In what is considered to be a first in the advertising industry, Wedding Mapper is going to start auctioning off space for web advertisements that will be placed on a variety of different local sites.

The President of Wedding Mapper said of the new web advertising scheme that “Most industry websites cannot afford to cater to small, local businesses due to the overhead required to penetrate such markets with a sales team. Because we are fully automated, Wedding Mapper can serve diverse markets and support large and small businesses delivering the industry’s most competitive pricing structure with stronger results.”

Wedding Mapper uses a sophisticated algorithm to determine price levels. This algorithm takes into account things like web traffic and even the city which the site might be geared toward. Any company that wants to participate in the web advertising auction is required to create a budget. After the bidding process is over, Wedding Mapper will chose the winners who will then receive premium advertising space.

Those that win the auctions will receive an update every other month which details how well their advertisements are doing. Various statistics are included in this report such as the click-through rate.

So far the auction scheme seems to be working out well for Wedding Mapper. The site has already received around 250,000 bids for advertising space which covers approximately 7,000 markets.

Web advertising to improve towards the end of 2009

New York was the host of the Pontiflex CPL Summit recently and a number of leaders in the web advertising industry were in attendance. Imran Khan with JP Morgan spoke at the summit and is predicting that the web advertising market will see an improvement towards the end of the year.

Khan emphasized that once the economy begins to pick up, the web is likely going to profit greatly. At the moment, television is still one of the greatest pulls for people’s attention in terms of the available media options. Not far behind is the web. Although a number of people take advantage of this useful service, only around 8 per cent of marketing budgets are spent on web advertisements. According to Khan, this presents an incredible amount of opportunity for advertisers to tap into.

What is interesting is that newspapers receive around 20 per cent of marketing budgets which is far more than the web receives. This is odd considering that television and the web both demand far more attention from people than newspapers can even hope to receive.

Khan pointed out that newspapers would likely continue to feel the pain from the loss of advertising budgets in the months to come and that they have not taken into consideration the power of the web at this point. As people quit reading the newspaper and choose to instead read the news online, they will have to adapt in order to compensate for the change in consumer behavior.

Google hopes to make shopping easier by investing in Pixazza

A new company called Pixazza is hoping to change the way in which companies can advertise their products on the web. This new method will also change the way in which consumers purchase these same products. Pixazza is proposing a marketing system that would place shopping tags over various parts of a photograph that might be featured on a website. When the user hovers over one of these tags, a popup will provide a number of products that are similar to what is featured in the photograph. From there, the user will be able to purchase the product by clicking a link.

To help Pixazza, Google, along with a number of other sources, is providing funding. The service is said to function in a similar way to Google’s AdSense although it uses graphics instead of text. Advertisers will be able to utilize the Pixazza service which will focus on industries like home furnishings, electronics, and apparel.

At the moment, only around 20 people are actually employed by Pixazza although the company is hoping to take advantage of what is called ‘crowdsourcing’. This simply means that Pixazza is hoping to recruit a large number of people that will contribute fractional amounts of labor. This includes adding tags to photographs and even finding appropriate products that match the tags. People that take part in this crowdsourcing initiative will slowly work their way through the ranks which will earn them additional capabilities.

SMBs become the target of local web advertisers

Local web advertising has proven to be a valuable market over that last few years. Their target was primarily larger businesses that helped this market grow at lightning fast speeds. That is until the recession began to set in and marketing budgets started to tighten. This has left many web advertisers looking for a new target market to tap into. The answer for many of these local web advertisers seems to lie with smaller businesses.

In the past, small and medium sized businesses proved to be wary of using the Internet for advertising. In many cases web advertising can prove to be a less expensive alternative to other forms of advertising such as print. As a result, many smaller businesses are now hurrying to advertise on the web.

Last year, these smaller companies spent nearly $7 billion on web advertising. It has been suggested that tapping into this lucrative market might not prove to be so easy. Gordon Borrell with Borrell Associates said “The point is that for everybody’s desire to get to those SMBs because they appear to be a pot of gold, it is a heck of a lot more complicated than that. It will require thought and stamina to corral them in a way that will provide sustainable income for a media company.”

One of the major issues with smaller businesses is that they typically spend a lot less on an individual basis when compared with much larger businesses. This presents a problem for web advertisers, as the amount of work that they must do is comparable between the two groups.

Bill focused on web advertising meets its demise

The State Senate in Utah killed a bill which was attempting to regulate the way in which web advertisers used trademarks. This particular bill would have made it illegal for a company to use the trademark of another company as a trigger for one of its own web advertisements.

This was not the first time that the State Senate had attempted to pass similar bills. There are at least four previous attempts which produced a variety of outcomes. In some cases, the laws were declared unconstitutional while in other cases the writing of the bills was simply too poor.

Utah is the home of a couple large websites including Overstock.com. This site has already filed a lawsuit over this type of trademark infringement. Their claim was that a competitor was improperly using the Overstock trademark to bring attention to its own web advertisements.

A number of internet based companies campaigned against the bill. They suggested that if it became law, businesses that were focused on web advertising would be the ones that were hurt. They also claimed that ordinary web browsers would also be unfairly punished because they would miss out on an opportunity to see web advertisements that might of interest to them.

The director of the High Tech Law Institute, Eric Goldman, said that the bill was a disaster. He also noted that it was very probable that the State Senate in Utah would introduce another bill with a similar focus in the future.

Behavioral web advertising sparks concerns about privacy

A new survey published by TRUSTe shows that Americans view their privacy on the internet as a primary concern. Over 90% of the people that responded to the survey commented that privacy was at least somewhat of a concern to them.

One form of web advertising called behavioral targeting, which produces advertisements based on a web browser’s activity, was a cause for concern among those who participated in the survey. Less than 30% of respondents said that they did not mind this form of web advertisement. When asked if people could be taken advantage of if they were not careful, 75% said yes.

As behavioral targeting grows in popularity, the controversy that surrounds it continues to grow as well. Several groups are concerned about regulation in the industry and they are working hard to establish standards on their own before the government is forced to intervene. Even with the extra effort, not all government officials are convinced that self-regulation is the answer.

Jon Leibowitz, who is a commissioner with the Federal Trade Commission, said of the developing situation that “Put simply, this could be the last clear chance to show that self-regulation can — and will — effectively protect consumers’ privacy.” If self-regulation fails, Leibowitz added that “it will certainly invite legislation by Congress and a more regulatory approach by our commission.”

Some companies like Google and Yahoo have already begun to refine their web advertising practices. This includes giving web browsers the ability to see what type of data they are collecting as well as better explaining what happens to that data.

[via NY Times]