The Future of Online Advertisements

We spent many blogs with you discussing what outlets online advertising has taken and the advantages/disadvantages of those routes. We have ranted on YOUTUBE, praised Facebook for its cheap and effective form of advertising and even followed the effects of online advertising through business value chains. But, what about the future? There are a few advertising directions that we see many business starting to utilize and these businesses will continue to broaden the horizons of these directions throughout the next few years.

According to Business Wire, a study conducted by Break Media, 70% of advertisers were going to increase their spending on digital video advertising. Although the spending amount on digital videos will vary with each company, this is, and will continue to be, a huge outlet for advertising. (In 2010 Google at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference in New York, entitled “Display 2015: Smart and Sexy.” explained why it sees the display advertising as "the biggest and most important revolution" in Ad's history. It made some predictions about already existed the cost-per-view and real-time bidding technologies as well as introduced some new ones as “TrueView.”, Google Goggles and ect. The more information about the Conference and related video can be found here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/what-does-future-of-display-advertising.html ) 
The study also revealed that pre-roll over videos still dominate video advertisment formatting options at a whopping 60% and most advertisers prefer it. Pre-roll over videos are those advertisements that play before you can watch the video of your intent. Advertisers are partial to this form of advertising because the viewer is forced to watch the ad versus clicking "stop ad" [ See YOUTUBE post for more insight into this].
Another outlet for advertising that we foresee increasing in the future is the utilization of social media. Forbes magazine published an article in 2009 addressing this topic that, we feel, is still relevant today. One thing that stuck out was the encouragement of consumers to become the advertisement. You see this every day in clothing- the polo figure for Ralph Lauren or Hollister writing their name across all of their shirts. Forbes discussed this as the future for 2010 online advertising, but that was to early. For this to take hold like they were imagining, is going to take a few years. However, this is the future! If you look on Facebook, advertising is becoming huge. Pages are free. Various food chains like Chili's will post advertisements such as "like this for a free appetizer- offer ends this weekend". When the consumer likes the page, they get the freebie, but that page will show up on all of their friends walls- encouraging more to like the page. Once they like the page, Chili has an automatic market that they can keep up to date on specials etc. Advertisements like these are just starting to gain popularity, but we think that this will be one of the biggest outlets.
Overall, we see a great future in online advertisements. We see the consumer playing a much larger role and working collaboratively with the company to create larger marketing campaigns, for example the "likes" on Facebook. An opportunistic company by the name of Story Worldwide has even gone a step further and placed its advertising directly in the hands of the consumer. They focus more on the "story telling" approach of advertising and expect that users will contribute to the ad space with their own stories, pictures, videos. Some users have even re-created the stories posted by Story Worldwide and placed their own twist on the tale. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NyXzir2yKg&feature=related


Now that we've summed up many topics in the online advertising world, we would like to open the blog to you, the viewers. What do you see in the future of online advertising?


Reference:


Forbes article:http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/09/matt-dercole-cmo-network-digitas.html
Break Media Report:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101216005445/en/Break-Media-Releases-2011-Video-Advertising-Study

Advantages and Disadvantages of Advertising on YouTube.

  In this blog, we are going to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of advertising on YouTube. YouTube offers five different types of advertisement for business' to choose from: Video ads, reach ads (ex. homepage), display ads (on during entire video), brand channel (your own YouTube page) and mobile ads. They also allow you to customize using those five choices. According to YouTube, 400 million videos are watched every day. That's a huge market for advertisers to tap into. However, advertising with YouTube has many advantages and disadvantages that we are going to explore further.

   We will start with the advantages. Advertisers or everyday people can partner with YouTube and create a channel. They will pay a certain sum upfront for the partnership with YouTube but then are eligible to receive revenue from people clicking the ad/page and/or liking the ad/page. Also, after watching a video, YouTube suggest what other videos the viewer may like. As an advertiser you can benefit from this by selecting a target audience for the advertisement. The suggestions are based off preference so your ad can appear in multiple videos alongside of the initial video viewed. Advertisements can appear within the actual videos, before the videos, and in the background of the video, so there is a good chance the ad will be seen and more likely a chance that it will be clicked on. Finally, if you are a small company and do not have the money for the partnership, just make a creative and funny video and let it go viral. If done correctly, this will gather a lot more attention then just having a small ad on the side.

   Now for the disadvantages. Viewers are sometimes forced to watch a certain ad before they can watch the YouTube video. This appears to be an advantage to the advertiser but in fact it can work against them as well. If a viewer is consistently being forced to watch a certain ad every time they click a video, it will make them disgruntled and create a bad image for the advertiser. Also, some video channels allow you to skip the ad completely and other times they cannot which can irritate the viewer. We, as viewers, will skip the videos with advertisement if we can find a comparable video without. As with the videos prior to the ad, the ads on the side of the computer screen or below the video can also become distracting and annoying to the viewer. Since the videos and advertisements are based off preference there is no variety with the advertising on YouTube. No matter what video you are watching, the same ad will pop up over and over again.

Advantages:
- Videos with like and people more likely to receive money with every other click.
- At the end of every YouTube video there are suggestions as to what other videos you may like.
- Advertisements appear within actual videos and around the background so as an advertiser, there is a good chance your ad will be seen and more likely a chance that it will be clicked on.

Disadvantages:
- Sometimes you are forced to watch a certain ad before you can actually watch your YouTube video.
- The ads on the side of the computer screen can be distracting and annoying.
- Sometimes you are able to skip the ad completely, but every other time you cannot.
- There is no variety with advertising on YouTube. No matter what video you are watching, the same ad will pop up over and over again.
- If I as a consumer see that this video has an add with it, I will click out of it and just go watch another video without any ads. From an advertisers perspective, this is a disadvantage.