Ring In the New Year with Media
By Becca Vittetoe, Media Director
Our Media and Customer Insights department is making a lot of noise about 3 unique new media vehicles that present opportunities for high performance:
1. The CoolIris interface
2. Aggregate Knowledge’s dynamic retargeting solution
3. The StumbleUpon network
+ COOLIRIS
CoolIris (www.cooliris.com) is a unique interface that enables users to consume content on the web in a “cinematic” manner, via a 3D wall of pictures and videos. CoolIris aggregates content from across the web including Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Google, and public RSS feeds from top tier publishers. Consumers can launch the interface while on a partnered site, or use the freestanding application to search for content, browse topics, and even save their favorite pictures and videos. With over 500,000 new users every day and over 4.5 million users, this audience is very attractive to advertisers.
Advertisers can target by channel (sports, technology, entertainment, business, movies/TV, etc.) and can run traditional flash or static banners as well as video ads to enhance the consumer experience. Ads are dispersed throughout the wall, and when selected, expand for easier viewing, in addition to loading ad copy in the selected window. With selection rates between 3.5% and 5%, consumers have proven CoolIris to be an engaging media. Click-thru-rates also fall right in line with the standard industry average, driving a healthy percentage of consumers to 3rd party sites. CoolIris is ideal for advertisers seeking a social media play, without sacrificing performance. The interface is likewise a strong opportunity for clients associated with pictures and video.
+ AGGREGATE KNOWLEDGE
It is known throughout the industry that retargeting/remarketing increases click-thru-rates on display ads. But more importantly, retargeting increases conversion rates, making better use of marketing dollars spent to drive traffic to a website. Retargeting works on a pixel system, tracking individual web users and their on-site behaviors, and subsequently recognizing the user when they arrive on select sites within a partner network. When the consumer arrives on site, a unique ad is served to the user, leveraging the detailed profile kept on the consumer. By serving consumers highly relevant banner ads, click-thru and conversion rates increase dramatically.
It sounds simple enough to launch a retargeting program, but have you ever thought about how many unique combinations of ads you would need to truly serve the best set of creative images, offers, and calls to action to your consumers? The inefficiency of paying thousands of dollars to generate every ad combination is a barrier to entry for many advertisers. Fortunately, Aggregate Knowledge (http://www.aggregateknowledge.com/) has a solution: dynamic ad creation on the fly.
Ideal for e-commerce clients, Aggregate Knowledge places tags across a site to track specific product pages and images viewed by consumers. A unique cookie is then applied to the consumer, according to their purchase behavior, which tracks precisely what product was of interest and what stage in the buying cycle the consumer subsequently dropped off. For example, knowing that a consumer purchased a wallet, Aggregate Knowledge will dynamically serve the consumer an ad for a matching purse at a discounted rate later that day when they are recognized on a select ad network. Furthermore, ad creation with Aggregate Knowledge is a breeze. Aggregate Knowledge pulls from images currently on the advertiser’s website, leveraging pre-defined templates that can be customized to suit clients’ needs. The advertiser establishes parameters for the ads, and the system then pulls from a bank of calls to action, product images, offers and discounts, all set to be served under a unique set of circumstances according to consumer behavior. Try it out today!
+ STUMBLEUPON
With the dawn of Web 2.0, consumers no longer surf the web in a traditional manner. Instead, they rely on friends, family, and peers with common interests to recommend websites. StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/), a unique recommendation network, helps users discover and share websites with others who have similar interests.
StumbleUpon is run via a downloadable toolbar. When users are interested in surfing for a website about a topic like photography, he/she selects the category of interest on the toolbar. The engine then references a portion of the 6.5 Million StumbleUpon users who have similar interests and 
rankings before serving a recommended webpage. The engine buckets like-minded individuals according to personal data submitted, to ensure that consumers are taken to sites that are most likely to interest them, increasing the positive association with each website.
Red Bricks Media has tapped into the StumbleUpon recommendations network to successfully increase traffic to our clients’ websites at a low cost per click, only $0.05 per visitor. Discovering the ideal combination of targeting parameters enables advertisers to receive high volumes of traffic at a rate well below other media vehicles. Due to the targeting capabilities and the array of topics within the network, all advertisers are likely to see success across the network. Increase your web traffic at a low CPC now.
The holidays are behind us and the New Year has come and gone; we have boxed up our holiday decorations, cashed in our gift certificates, and tossed the mistletoe. But don’t be upset, because you can still continue the holiday cheer by taking advantage of these exciting new media opportunities to reach your customers and increase ROI in 2009.
May 29th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
[...] will be led by our Media and Consumer Insights Director, Becca Vittetoe. In our last issue, Becca introduced the StumbleUpon network as an exciting new vehicle for advertisers to consider as part of their marketing strategies. This [...]