Flite Named sfBIG’s ‘Next BIG Digital Startup’ of 2011

Flite’s thrilled to announce that we were named winner of the sfBIG’s “Next BIG Digital Startup” award. The 2011 BIG Star Awards ceremony was held last week by The San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group’s (sfBIG) to recognize leaders in many areas of advertising – from great campaigns and the people who drive them to significant digital and social media advertising innovations.

sfBIG is dedicated to championing innovation in digital marketing in San Francisco and recognizes local companies with the sfBIG Awards for their outstanding achievements. Flite’s mission is to reinvent the way publishers and advertisers think about online display advertising by leveraging the possibilities of cloud computing.

Steve Klopf, Flite’s VP of Business Operations, was present to receive the award. He notes, “We are honored to receive this award from sfBIG, an organization that recognizes the impact that Bay Area companies can have on the advertising industry. Being named the Next BIG Digital Startup is great recognition of the work Flite is doing to continually advance online display advertising through technological innovations.”

Last week’s award ceremony brought together other interactive and digital leaders from some of the most disruptive advertising companies in the Bay Area. Congratulations to all the other nominees and winners!

Best Mobile Campaign
AKQA – Visa Signature iPad Pop-up

Best Multicultural Campaign
OMD Latino/Alma DDB - Clorox Pine Sol

Best Use of Rich Media
EVB – Wrigley/Skittles Rock, Paper, Scissor

Best Use of Social Media
Butler Shine Stern & Partners – MINI vs. Porsche Challenge

Most Innovative Search Campaign
AKQA Media – Entertainment Industry Client, Value of Branded Keywords

Most Creative Online Campaign
AKQA – Xbox Halo Reach – Remember Reach

Next BIG Digital Startup
Flite

Next BIG Salesperson
Adam Berman, YuMe

Best Digital Campaign From A Local Agency
Venables, Bell & Partners – Intel The Chase

Next BIG Media Planner
Diana Ahrens, Communications Strategist, Eleven

Best Digital Media Plan (TIE)
Signal to Noise – eBay Fashion – Derek Lam
Tribal DDB – Intel SmartTV

sfBIG Volunteer Appreciation Award
Stephanie Yang, AKQA

Lynn Ingham Community Service Award
Lindsey Thomas, JiWire

Lifetime Achievement Recipient
Scot McLernon, YuMe

IAB Innovation Days 2011: The Future of Display (is the Cloud)

Flite CEO Will Price recently took the stage at the IAB Innovation Days event in New York City as part of Internet Week 2011. The two-day IAB event focused on “The Future of Display,” and featured panels and discussions from experts across the advertising landscape.

The IAB’s CEO, Randall Rothenberg, opened the conference by demanding the industry work to reinvent the very concept of display.  He argued that, “brand advertisers are hungry for better, more exciting uses for display. They want to bring ALL the capabilities of the Internet to bear on their brand messages—right there, in the ad. They want rich, dynamic, immersive experiences with sight, sound, and motion, with social underpinnings.”  Fortunately, the IAB’s call for action maps exactly to Flite’s platform and value proposition!

Flite CEO Will Price discusses the future of display at IAB Innovation Days

In his panel, Price demonstrated how Flite is allowing brands to deliver ads that function like micro-sites by bringing in video, social content, lead generation forms, polls, and other interactive elements that dramatically increase engagement and user value. During his time on stage, Price took a traditional display ad for the movie Super 8 and transformed into a cloud-ad that included not only the original banner ad, but also the ability to look up movie show times, rewatch the trailer, take a poll, and sign up for a newsletter.  The demo highlighted Flite for Ad Networks, a product designed to transform the 91% of display ads from static images to engaging applications. See the before and after ads in action here.

Price discusses Flite’s platform and the market need in this video interview from the IAB event with Ekapat Chareonlarp, director of client development at IDG:

Steve Hall of Yahoo! Scene also covered Price’s discussion on new technologies in display advertising, with his article, “Ad Banners Becoming Miniature Website Destinations.”

Flite Hosts Ad Innovation Series: Trends in Cross-Platform Advertising

We held our third Ad Innovation Series event at Flite on May 25 on Trends in Cross-Platform Advertising, and drew a great crowd interested in advertising, marketing and tech trends.  We were fortunate enough to be joined by a fantastic panel moderated by Anthony Ha, Senior Editor at VentureBeat, with Stephen Burke, VP of Mobile at Resource Interactive, Andrew Conway, Director of Product Marketing at CBS Interactive, and Will Price, CEO of Flite, as panelists. After mingling over cocktails and snacks, our panelists covered challenges facing advertisers, along with best practices for how to succeed in this ever-evolving market.

A few highlights from the event:

• Andrew Conway spoke to the audience about why media brands must be aggressive in distributing their content far and wide across an existing variety of platforms in order to attract new audiences while offering new and effective advertising opportunities. 

• Stephen Burke discussed the future of mobile marketing and how agencies need to evolve to offer innovative strategies for brands and retailers.

• Flite CEO Will Price touched upon the need for “agile vs. waterfall brand marketing,” noting that today’s marketers can quickly update social media tools, yet they remain constrained by a manual and slow process when it comes to launching brand campaigns. Will also spoke about the future of the ad agency, discussing the need for ad agencies to operate more like technology companies with programmers and analysts next to copywriters.

• And Anthony Ha led a rousing discussion of everything from Farmville (Will claims not to play, but who can be sure?) to in-ad games (some brands like them, some don’t) to bringing Twitter and Facebook commentary into branded ads (very engaging).

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