June 2013 Roundup: Most Popular Flite Blog Posts

June 2013 Roundup: Most Popular Flite Blog Posts

It's always an interesting exercise in our offices to see which blog posts sparked a flurry of reads and shares. As we approach the end of the month, let's take a look back at the most popular posts published in June.

5. Injecting Rich Media with Content - Guest Post by Michael Goldberg, Martini Media

Michael Goldberg, Senior Director of Marketing at Martini Media, explains his firm's approach for identifying, selecting, delivering, and propagating compelling content for its high-end brand clients. He shares an example of an execution Martini Media developed for the luxury marque, Bentley, as well as its impressive results.

4. Why J.Crew Is Better At Content Marketing Than You Are

J.Crew, an icon of classic American apparel, understands content marketing, something made clear in Winnie's post. Deftly leveraging its catalog legacy in the development of its "style guide," J.Crew's evolution points to important implications for display advertising.

3. 5 Factors That Should Be Influencing Your Ad Product Strategy

Why Can't Advertisers Agree on What to Call Things?

Why Can't Advertisers Agree on What to Call Things?

The online advertising ecosystem is complicated. Really complicated. Probably way too complicated.

Massive growth has fueled massive innovation, and the arrival of a smorgasbord of companies ready to deliver value at every step.

But just as quickly as new ad technologies emerge, everyone seems to disagree on how to talk about them.

Take for instance, the rise of mobile.

In describing differences between mobile devices and not-so-mobile devices — one of the most fundamental topic in web technology today — it seems hard to find a clear term for those not-so-mobile devices. Examine the following sentences for instance:

  • “Our campaign includes both desktop and mobile ads.”
  • “Our campaign includes both display and mobile ads.”
  • “Our campaign includes both web and mobile ads.”

All three are equally unclear in my opinion.

B2B Native Advertising

While the industry still works towards a meaningful consensus of what native advertising entails, native campaigns continue to flight as interest among publishers and advertisers grows. While the trailblazers have been high-traffic consumer sites, like BuzzFeed, B2B sites represent a sizeable opportunity for advertisers as well.

Why?

  1. B2B marketing heavily involves content. Webinars, white papers, decks, demos, and reports are content types that barely exist in the B2C world, but that are part and parcel of B2B digital marketing.
  2. Specialized industry magazines and blogs continue to thrive, even online.
  3. B2B buyers use the same Web as everyone else, and targeting technology has gotten a lot better at identifying them. An ad that serves an B2B audience can be served up into BuzzFeed, for example, since plenty of B2B buyers consume popular online content as well (even at work *shhhhh*!).
  4. Many sites, like YouTube, SlideShare, Forbes, and Scribd, host content that B2B buyers consume in droves. And they're advertising-supported, as well.

If you've been following native advertising, this isn't exactly revelatory, and yet native ad campaigns in B2B are still in their nascency. BuzzFeed, ever the pioneer in this space, has kicked off its first B2B native ad campaign.

Lessons from GE on Surrounding Your Brand with Greatness

This year, General Electric (GE) ranks as the 6th-largest firm in the U.S. in the Fortune 500. Yet the 111 year-old company’s online presence has all the delight and clarity of a much smaller, younger, fresher business.

GE’s core themes are imagination, innovation, and discovery — the sum of which conjure up a feeling of technological greatness.

So how does GE do such a good job of creating a feeling about their brand online?

TOMORROW: Webinar - Paid Media Publishing

Registration is filling up very quickly, but there are still some spaces available for tomorrow's webinar, Paid Media Publishing: Proactive and Reactive Display Advertising, on Tuesday (tomorrow) at 2 p.m. Eastern (11 a.m. Pacific). Giles Goodwin, Flite founder and president, will be the speaker. You won't want to miss this.

REGISTER NOW

Giles will also spend some time going over a few recent, innovative Paid Media Publishing ad creatives. If you've been wondering how the Flite Platform's toolset translates into real-world executions, be sure to register and attend the webinar.

We look forward to seeing you tomorrow!

How Bite-sized Video Content Changes Customer Expectations

Yesterday, Instagram — now part of Facebook — introduced a video feature that allows users to share 15 second clips. The functionality is similar to Twitter's Vine which offers 6 second videos.

Currently, both consumers and marketers are accustomed to sharing photos and text-based status posts. Now, these brief video snippets offer an entirely new way to tell stories.

But haven't videos existed for a while?

It's true that marketers have mastered YouTube as a platform. Established brands routinely post their television spots online to make content available to a broader audience. Once in a while, these videos achieve the holy grail of digital marketing: virality. This was the case recently with the typically conservative retailer Kmart, whose semi-controversial Ship My Pants campaign got over 18 million views.

4 Lessons about Marketing from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Willy  Wonka imbued his chocolates with fun, innovative, and magical peculiarities, delighting both children and adults around the  world. His chocolate world evoked the world of imagination and  wonder: little orange men called Oompa-Loompas, geese that lay  chocolate eggs, and chocolate bars that could be delivered via television.

But Wonka was not only a master innovator. He was a brilliant marketer. Here are four marketing lessons we can learn from the peculiar yet indubitably memorable Willy Wonka.

Injecting Rich Media with Content - Guest Post by Michael Goldberg, Martini Media

Why Brands Should Align Messaging with Content

With consumer engagement at a premium, it's been a battle for marketers to win a user’s undivided attention. Perhaps that’s because advertisers have been overly focused on selling vs. engaging. 

Consumers are not looking for the next great sales pitch, they are looking to be informed and entertained. By aligning brand messaging with relevant and compelling content, you are giving them the type of material that encourages them to read and share.

Webinar Registration Now Open! Paid Media Publishing: Proactive and Reactive Display Advertising

Content  marketing continues to grow as an essential element of digital  marketers' toolkit, as clickthroughs on digital ads continue their  downward spiral (over 70% of online users don't feel comfortable clicking on any ads). How do you deliver the power of content marketing  through the scale of the paid media channel?  What are the key success  metrics of content marketing through display ads?

Join us for our webinar, Paid Media Publishing: Proactive and Reactive Display Advertising, on Tuesday, June 25th at 2 p.m. Eastern (11 a.m. Pacific) as we explore this promising new trend and how it's reinvigorating display.

REGISTER NOW

Here is a sample of the insights this webinar will explore:

  • How marketing content can find new life in paid media placements
  • How you can go beyond clickthrough, and instead focus on delivering meaningful value to advertisers
  • How Paid Media Publishing allows your digital advertising to be as responsive and relevant as your social media
  • How instant ad updates and real-time metrics allow continuous optimization without the need for new ad tags
  • How to fully take advantage of high-impact Rising Star ad formats, at scale

We hope you can join us. Register today.

Speaker: Giles Goodwin

Giles Goodwin is the Co-founder and President of Product and Engineering at Flite. Giles has over 14 years experience in building innovative software products and managing computer technologies.

How Design is Changing How Publishers Approach Advertising

A digital renaissance is underway. The web has never looked so good.

The last nine months have seen transformations from many of the web's top publishers with a focus on usability, aesthetics and content. It's quite remarkable. 

Like butterflies coming out of their cocoons, many sites are shaking off their functional past and heading into an elegant future.

A few key characteristics are shared across this transformation.

Responsive, touch-friendly design

2013 has been said to be "the Year of Responsive Design."

Why Brand Marketers Need to Do Rapid Prototyping

Legend has it that if you visit the Facebook corporate headquarters, you'll see a sign painted on the wall.

It says: "Done is better than perfect."

Sounds easy, right? Maybe not. At least, not for a brand manager like you, who has millions of dollars of brand equity on the line.

Many large companies might agree that the idea of getting something out quickly is interesting in theory but risky in practice, per the quote below from Fast Company.

Case Study: Livingly Media's Design Process Now More Efficient

A design team's creative spark is at the heart of successful display ad executions. But what happens when designers' creativity outpaces the toolset they're using to build ads?

Our newest case study, which profiles Flite customer Livingly Media, explores the Livingly Media design team's experience using Flite to turn around high-impact display ads for their clients quickly. Jorge Reyna, Livingly Media's design director, describes how the intuitive interface and sensible action scripting allow designers to support multiple campaigns at the same time, something that wasn't possible using traditional Flash ad development environments.

VivaKi and Flite Announce Partnership

VivaKi and Flite Announce Partnership

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Today we are extremely excited to be announcing our new partnership with VivaKi, the global leader in digital advertising solutions.

This milestone event extends the successful relationship we’ve had with Starcom MediaVest Group out to the entire VivaKi family of agencies.

This also coincides with a round of investment lead by Iris Capital — the investment joint venture of Publicis Groupe and Orange Telecom — which had participation from all of our existing investors.

“Next Generation Storytelling is a key focus for Publicis Groupe, and Flite will allow our clients to publish content and tell stories that leverage social, mobile and API's, and do so in a cost effective and agile way.”

— Rishad Tobaccowala, VivaKi Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer

We look forward to enabling the Publicis Groupe agencies to create and scale new brand experiences in online advertising. It's a true validation of our vision of an internet with more meaningful, more effective advertising.

Read the full press release here.

3 Ways Publishers Mirror the Way Consumers Discover, Consume, and Share Content

Publishers are overhauling the way they present content on the web based on the changing needs and behaviors of consumers. The resulting sites are fresh, visually-engaging, and updated for their current tech-savvy readership.

Most of all, publishers are increasingly focused on having content take center-stage. With this shift, publishers are rethinking what immersive content and advertising experiences could look like.

Here are a few trends that we're seeing from forward-thinking publishers.

1. Focus on individual articles instead of homepages.

Five or ten years ago, publisher websites were all about the homepage. A user would have Yahoo! set as their default browser homepage and see text news, a carousel of photos with headlines, and consume content in a fairly canned way.

What Display Advertisers Can Learn from Content Marketing

Some of the best marketing ideas today are about content marketing.

Through content, marketers provide value to consumers, and hopefully get their business as well. It’s something everyone can feel good about.

But it’s popular for content marketers to disparage online advertising these days.

There is this thinking that advertising and content marketing are disparate ideas — standing in polar opposition to each other — as if inbound, value-driven content, and outbound advertising don’t mix well.

The idea that ads online have to cater to a kind of attention deficit theatre is something we’ve artificially imposed upon ourselves.

Why J.Crew Is Better At Content Marketing Than You Are

A best practice in social media is to avoid talking only about yourself. That's the old way of media: one-sided, push-driven, no dialogue, self-serving.

But how do you talk about yourself and your product? Luckily, there are ways to do this without being off-putting.

When creating content, it's important to keep in mind what your users want most: relevance. They want your advertising, marketing, and content to be useful.

If you offer relevant information and context, it provides leeway to talk about yourself without violating the new norm of two-way conversations in digital marketing.

Here are 4 ways to do this.

Countdown Clocks in Display Ads

Countdown Clocks in Display Ads

Given their ability to scale across digital media, display ads are excellent vehicles for propagating important announcements to online audiences. Ads can alert consumers to upcoming sales, events, and important deadlines. And one of the most effective ways to get a user's attention and convey the urgency of an upcoming date and time is through the use of a countdown clock.

Naturally, as dynamic elements, countdown clocks can't be configured to run in static files. However, using a platform like Flite, in which ads can be configured to run new functionality or content on the fly, it's a simple matter of inserting the countdown clock component into an ad unit.

Using the Flite Ad Studio, there are a few simple steps involved:

The Future of Social Media - Guest post by Meghan Keaney Anderson, HubSpot

At this very moment there are more than 181 thousand people claiming to be social media ninjas, gurus, or mavens on Twitter. Each of them will happily talk to you, in 140 character increments, about the strength of social as a channel. 

In many ways they’re right.  U.S. Internet users spend three times longer on social media and blogs than email today. And social media use has seen a 356% increase since 2006. 

But in other ways, we’re just at the beginning of figuring out this social media thing and learning ways to use it to best realize its potential as a scalable and personal communications channel.

Let’s take a look at the current state of what we’ve been able to achieve with social media marketing and trends that indicate where it may be headed in the future. 

Social Media Posting

Current State: Heavy on Media, Light on Social 

Today’s social media marketing has a tendency to be high on media but low on social. All too often corporate feeds read more like a series of direct-mail subject lines than conversation prompts.

Read this. Click here. Like me! 

5 Factors That Should Be Influencing Your Ad Product Strategy

5 Factors That Should Be Influencing Your Ad Product Strategy

Publishers have long felt the pain of selling audience against standard creative where it hurts most — in undervalued CPMs — because audience-based buying fails to capture the premium nature of the web’s top websites.  

That's why today's top publishers are turning to directly sold premium advertising in the form of ad products, which allows them to realize the full value of their audience without seeing it commoditized and undervalued.

Instead of selling inventory simply as audience, ad product strategies deliver true value to advertisers — content, context, a premium experience...and an audience.

But as the market for premium advertising heats up, publishers are looking for ways to differentiate their inventory and win media buys. For those trying to get ahead, five key trends are heavily influencing ad product development this year.