Real-Time Politics - Guest Post by Vivianna Blanch, L'Oreal USA

Flite's Guest Blogger series features the industry's top thought-leaders to share insights on display advertising, agile marketing, and innovation.

Vivianna Blanch is the Vice President of Media Innovation at L'Oreal USA. 

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Campaigning has come a long way from the “It's Morning Again in America" bumper stickers that I remember as a child. The campaigns from the past that were once broadly targeted by region, network, time and show, are being replaced by better produced, specific and hyper-targeted online ads and social media updates. 

We saw signs of a digital election in 2008 — better looking sites, text message updates, and the start of mobile marketing. But even if 2008 was foreshadowing things to come, no one could have predicted the digital explosion that is driving this year’s election. And for many of today's three-screen media consumers, this election is certainly more fun to watch, easier to debate and more accessible to engage with than ever before.

Great isn’t good enough. You have to make it memorable.

When was the last time you read a “Top 10 tips” or “5 ways to” post? I mean read it, not skimmed it. If you’re like me, you probably give them a cursory glance to confirm that your opinions are shared by other experts, and then go on to the next thing.

AJ Kohn discussed this in his excellent post this week 124 Reasons This Post Could Save the Internet in 7 Seconds. Kohn’s article isn’t exactly about what the tongue-in-cheek title asserts; It’s actually a fabulously-written reminder about the importance of content-recall in our culture of content overload.

Kohn says it’s not enough to create great content, or noticeable content. You have to create memorable content.

To take his ideas one step further, I assert that content-driven display ads have a lot to learn from other areas of marketing where content creation has traditionally played a larger role. When display ads then work in tandem with owned and earned media, memorable content strategically binds the narrative together, which keeps messaging consistent across all digital touch-points.

So let’s apply some of Kohn’s ideas to display advertising.

The Waning Days of the VP of Marketing -- Guest Post by Lars Leckie, Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

 

Flite's Guest Blogger series features the industry's top thought-leaders to share insights on display advertising, agile marketing, and innovation.

Lars Leckie is the Managing Director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm focused on the software industry. 

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Technology and obsolescence have always done a ruthless dance with each other. That’s why the best technology watchers know that it is as important to forecast when trends will die as it is to predict how long they will flourish. If you happen to maintain an obsolescence calendar, then you should add a particular person to it: the VP of Marketing.

That’s right, start clearing out that corner office.  The traditional VP of Marketing belongs to a dying breed, and technology is driving this.

Flite Featured in AdExchanger

David Kaplan of AdExchanger recently published two excellent interviews with Flite customers, Conde Nast and Forbes.

David's interview with Josh Stinchcomb, Conde's VP for Corporate Partnerships, provides in-depth insight into how and why Conde Nast uses Flite to realize value.  Josh reviews how Flite supports Conde Nast's premium ad product strategy, enables both innovation and scale, and provides comprehensive metrics to help drive insights and optimizations.

MovieConnect Component -- Now Better Than Ever

We are pleased to announce that the next generation of the MovieConnect component is now available through Flite Hub, the premier web app integration program for ads.

MovieConnect enhances any online movie banner ad with movie ticket search, purchase, and social sharing.

The component automatically locates a consumer's current location and displays the closest theaters within the ad unit, so viewers can easily click through to buy tickets from any major online ticketing agency.

MovieConnect also lets you send show times to any mobile device, Twitter or Facebook account from the ad.

 

 

 

 

 

The new version has the following updates:

  • Buy Behavior Streamlined:  Buy button now sends user to ticket purchase with a single click
  • Geolocation:  Automatically detects a user's location and displays movie times for local theaters
  • Vendor Select:  Configure which site to sell tickets through -- Fandango, MovieTickets or MovieFone
  • AS3:  MovieConnect is now built is in AS3 and runs in the v3 Desktop Ad Studio

Learn more about MovieConnect and other Flite Hub Apps at flitehub.com.

 

Related Posts:

MovieConnect And Flite Partnership: Interview With The Aura Group CEO Dave Bailey

Purchase Movie Tickets Directly In Banner Ads - MovieConnect Flite Hub Partnership

 

Flite CEO Talks Innovation at Portfolio Day

On Monday, Flite CEO Will Price presented at the first ever Advance Publications Portfolio Day. Other Advance Publications portfolio companies such as Friendbuy, Backplane and Tripple Lift joined Flite at the inaugural event.

Flite’s presence at Portfolio Day follows Condé Nast’s investment in Flite this August.

Will Price speaks at Flite Summit: Agile Marketing earlier this year

One event highlight was an interview with prolific author Ken Auletta by the editors of the New Yorker and NewYorker.com. Auletta spoke about the future of online media, whether pubs should embrace Facebook, and the significance of China and India as markets.

Later that afternoon, Price addressed the audience of Advance Publications companies’ executives about the direction of innovation in the publisher and digital paid media space.

Play to Where Your Audience is Going to Be -- Guest Post by Brian Wilhite, Virtual Fan Network

Rows of Seats - Photo by Turba 

Flite's Guest Blogger series features the industry's top thought-leaders to share insights on display advertising, agile marketing, and innovation.

Brian Wilhite is the CEO and founder of Virtual Fan Network / VFN Zone, a digital sports marketing platform that connects athletes, fans, brands, and publishers with engaging experiences. 

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In the current digital world, it is now possible to reach millions of people quickly and efficiently.  A message or a piece of content can instantly be broadcast across any number of social channels. 

With this ability, the power and influence previously held by the traditional broadcast networks has shifted to the content creator.  Based on the trends of the last few years, I do not expect this to reverse course. The impact of this power shift will affect the way content is used by consumers, broadcasters, owners and creators.

In the past, people were forced to go to a specific broadcast network’s channel to tune in, at a possibly inconvenient time. Now they are able to be entertained directly from the content creator.  By simply choosing to “follow” or “Like” their favorite entertainer or sports hero, the consumer is instantly entertained through their favorite social channel, their consumer devices, and at anytime or place.

It's important to think about how this affects advertising efforts, especially when you can no longer reach the broadcast audience. The audience is a moving target, and becoming increasingly difficult to hit.

5 Trends That Will Change Marketing Forever

Slide 14 from The Menu: What Excites us for 2012

AdAge.com featured an article last week penned by Darren Herman of The Media Kitchen titled Meet the Five Big Trends Changing Marketing. Peppered throughout Heman's article one theme keeps rising to the top -- Devices. Here’s the abridged version of what Herman had to say:

 

Communication across many social platforms will be seamless.

“We're starting to see the emergence of technology providers that make it easier to not just maintain and create workflow solutions across these social platforms, but also launch media-driven campaigns.”

 

Location will play an increasingly important role for targeting.

“With the proliferation of mobile devices including phones and tablets, we are seeing an increasingly amount of digital media inventory tagged with location data (latitude and longitude).”

 

Cross-platform plans will be driven by data. 

Kinetic Creativity -- Guest Post by Rishad Tobaccowala, VivaKi

 

Flite's Guest Blogger series features the industry's top thought-leaders to share insights on display advertising, agile marketing, and innovation.

Rishad Tobaccowala is the Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer of VivaKi.  He can be followed on Twitter.

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Creativity is the lifeblood of brands.

While there are many definitions of creativity, I define creativity as “connecting dots in new ways that resonate with consumers, culture and brands.”

Traditionally the “dots” that Brands have used to deliver creative messages have combined audio, videos, images and words. These essential elements still matter a great deal, but due to advances in technology, we now have three new dots.

Why Flite is a SaaS Company in a CPM-centric World

Flite is revolutionizing both the technical and business models of the ad tech industry. This post will focus on the power of our business model, software-as-a-service and why it matters.

Since inception, the ad tech industry has operated on a CPM basis. Vendors negotiate MSAs and rate cards, drive revenue via ads served, and work to constantly remind customers to use them in upcoming campaigns. Sound familiar?

Vendors generally perform the work associated with a campaign and the customer therefore buys the output of the vendor's platform rather than the platform itself.