the Web Chef's e-Bytes

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Web Tidbits - Advertising & Online Video

Ad Lab posted a link to AdSlogans and their advertising slogan hall of fame.  The top slogans were analyzed to see what characteristics made them work including "5 words; new brand mention; declarative; grammatically complete; contain alliteration, metaphor or rhyme".

Financial Times reports on the top 5 online video campaigns of 2007 (ranked by GoViral).   

I've embedded my favorite "WillitBlend".

Financial Times also had an interesting article discussing how online video is converging with television.  In the article they referenced a few video sites that might be of interest.  Unfortunately they don't provided links to the sites, something that I thought diministhed the online value of their story.  Among the sites referenced are the following:

• PurePlays - YouTube, VideoEgg, DailyMotion, Revver, Vimeo
• Video Verticals - FunnyorDie, DanceJam (coming soon), Jaman (world video)
• Media Companies - Hulu, Crackle, SyncTV
• Video Search Enginess - Dabble, Blinkx, Taboola (coming soon), Truveo, CastTv (invitation only beta)

For more on online video see my article "Lights, Camera, Action - the state of Online Video" on Wisconsin Technology Network.

Web Tidbits - Online Advertising

Online advertising continues to grow as mainstream advertisers shift their marketing budgets to where the eyes are.  The options for online advertisers continue to grow with video ads, banner ads, in-text ads, out of banner ads, interstitials, sponsorships, PDF ads, etc all being part of the available options.

According to statistics from the Newspaper Association of America reported in a recent Business Week article, newspaper advertising continued to decline last year to $46.6 billion, a decrease of 1.7%.  The article also quoted eMarketer statistics that showed online advertising grew 27% to $19.6 billion. 

The same article focused on one of the growing areas for online advertising - in text ads.  These ads are found within the editorial content and are triggered off a highlighted keyword that when rolled over generates a related ad.  One of the firms discussed in the article that delivers these ads was Vibrant Media, "the in-text advertising leader" and an Inc. 500 firm in the last two years. Vibrant Media provides publishers with up to three ads per article and has set up technology to try and avoid ad placement in negative stories according to Business Week.

Meanwhile Inc. Magazine reviewed some of the ways that publishers could make money from their site in a December article "Clicks for Cash".  Among the services referenced were Google AdSense, AdBrite, AuctionAds, Vizu and ValueClick. 

In other advertising developments, Adobe has announced a partnership with Yahoo!, that will allow for the placement of ads in PDFs according to published reports in CNET and other sources.  The ads will also be keyword triggered and will appear in a righthand panel of the PDFs.