December 01, 2004
New J&J Baby EyeWonder Ad
In-Game Video Ad with Zoom and send to Friend
Posted by richard ting at December 01, 2004, 03:44 PM
June 10, 2004
Eyeblaster Debuts New Video-Based Ad Product
Rich media provider Eyeblaster today launches a new video-based advertising solution for video content streams. Eyeblaster's VideoClip Module (VCM) is positioned as a format that can offer additional ad inventory for publishers, and presents advertisers with a TV spot-like buy with interactivity to boot.
Eyeblaster says the new format will allow national brand advertisers that are often reluctant to allocate funds to interactive media to re-purpose existing video assets and TV commercials online, thereby reducing production costs. The VCM also enables advertisers to add interactive elements such as clickable Flash animations, data capture, dynamic email, file transfers, and links to promotions. Unicast recently debuted an upgrade to its Video Commercial that offers a similar interactive overlay that can run adjacent to the unit, or at the end of the spot.
Posted by richard ting at June 10, 2004, 01:50 PM
May 17, 2004
PointRoll Spawns A New Child--TomBoy
Who in the interactive industry isn't familiar with the PointRoll children: FatBoy, BadBoy, and TowelBoy? Today, PointRoll gives birth to its fourth child TomBoy, a gender-neutral enabling technology aptly named for its ad unit-neutrality.
PointRoll claims that TomBoy's value proposition to advertisers and agencies lies in the fact it can be deployed using any Web design tool, to any existing ad space, and file sizes can be unlimited.
PointRoll says TomBoy ads may contain any combination of messaging or imagery--video, audio, animation, Flash, Java, Gif, or JPEG. Within a TomBoy ad, says Jules Gardner, president-CEO, PointRoll, "you can build your own Web site if you want," in addition to being able to "track every conceivable action inside the ad."
According to Gardner, TomBoy won't expand, unlike other PointRoll offerings, because he says there's no need for it to. PointRoll's new ad campaign for the format says TomBoy offers advertisers "more K than you know what to do with."
Posted by richard ting at May 17, 2004, 05:26 PM
March 18, 2004
Eyewonder's New Format Offerings Indicate Broader Adoption of Video Ads
Wednesday, Mar 17, 2004
by Kate Kaye
The online video ad space just got a bit more crowded---sort of. Streaming video technology firm Eyewonder, Inc. has rounded out its player-less streaming video ad offerings with new formats and a host of interactive features. The expansion indicates a broader commitment to Web video among advertisers and agencies, and represents a competitive shift in strategy for Eyewonder.
“Up until six months ago we didn’t feel the market for online video advertising was ready to handle and proactively support all these different features and formats,” explains Mike Griffin, executive-VP sales and marketing at Eyewonder. The company made its decision to expand its format menu after gauging advertiser client interest, which has grown gradually.
Until now, says Griffin, advertisers “have been walking before they run” when it comes to experimenting with streaming video. “They’ve walked a long way,” he concludes.
Banner ads, multilayer ads, expandable ads, floating ads, pop-up ads, and pop-out ads are among the latest additions to Eyewonder’s format lineup. In the past, Eyewonder’s streaming technology has enabled audio and video mainly within standard in-page units. Eyewonder has also developed a custom format that plays video directly within the latest version of America Online’s Instant Messenger client, AIM. Eyewonder’s technology deploys video automatically with no need for a player or plug-in, and detects user bandwidth to optimize the viewing experience.
And there is another significant switch for the company, according to Griffin: Eyewonder’s official relationships as streaming video partner with ad tech providers Eyeblaster and PointRoll are kaput now that Eyewonder is offering competing formats. Griffin emphasizes, however, that a future pairing of Eyewonder video with Eyeblaster or PointRoll formats is not ruled out.
Like its streaming video competitor, Klipmart, which offers similar ad formats, Eyewonder hopes to guide advertisers away from simply streaming its television ads online, toward integrating interactive capabilities to take full advantage of the what the Web has to offer. In conjunction with its new formats, Eyewonder has unveiled features that can be mixed and matched, including video zoom, a zip code locator, email collection, file downloads, video replay, slide shows, and frequency capping, as well as polling with real-time results. In addition, the dynamic data feature links ads directly to databases, to enable access to such things as up-to-the-minute weather reports or real-time stock tickers.
“These features allow the advertiser to create a dialogue with consumers, and allow the user to have more control over the experience to get more information out of the ad unit,” adds Griffin.
Ads for Intel’s Centrino chip and Motorola that use the new formats are currently running. The Intel ad using Eyewonder’s video pop-out format launches a separate window featuring additional video clips, and allows the user to submit an email address for more information. An expandable ad for Motorola that launches a small video window from a skyscraper-style ad unit can be seen currently on ITV, a U.K.-based commercial TV network Web site.
Eyewonder recently made a foray into video content publishing through relationships with online teen community site Bolt.com and health care information provider Choice Media. Both are using the company’s technology to deliver video content, as well as selling Eyewonder-enabled in-stream video ads that run within that content. “Using our technology for in-stream ads as well as in-page ads opens up inventory levels for video ads online,” suggests Griffin, who believes that in-stream video ads could help bring about the promise of attracting TV-like ad budgets to the Web.
Posted by richard ting at March 18, 2004, 02:57 PM
Eyeblaster Teams Up With Yahoo! To Promote 100K Banner Format
Thursday, Mar 18, 2004
by Kate Kaye
In its advent, rich media advertising spelled doom for the plain vanilla banner ad. Now, it just might come to the banner’s rescue. Ad technology firm Eyeblaster has teamed up with Yahoo! to promote Eyeblaster’s 100K Polite Banner unit. In addition to running a 100K banner campaign in trade publications, Eyeblaster is hoping that Yahoo!’s decision to slash additional technology fees will coax more advertisers to try the gradually loading unit.
“Awareness of the 100K banner is not as high as we’d like it to be, so we’ll be stepping up the marketing of the format,” affirms Paul Kadin, executive-VP, marketing and strategy, Eyeblaster.
Typically, site publishers won’t accept banners with file sizes exceeding 30K in order to ensure quick page loads. The 100K Polite Banner, however, has a maximum file size of 100K, and is accepted by Yahoo! as well as publishers that accept other Eyeblaster formats. Because the larger Eyeblaster banners load in stages, they don’t slow down page loading. In addition to ensuring a non-disrupted user experience, the units allow for more creative leeway. The Polite Banner technology can be incorporated into any of Yahoo!’s standard banner formats, including monster ads, north banners, rectangles, skyscrapers, and super banners.
“Advertisers can create a richer experience, and the polite loading won’t affect user experience,” a Yahoo! spokesperson says. “It’s a win for both consumers and advertisers.”
And that could translate into more banner ad sales for Yahoo!, especially in conjunction with the new pricing incentive. Eyeblaster, like other rich media technology providers, charges publishers a fee to use its ad technologies. Publishers usually pass that cost on to advertisers by tacking technology fees onto media fees. Although Yahoo! is playing down the price reduction, its decision to remove the technology fee from the cost of running 100K Polite Banners on its site indicates that the Internet giant is willing to put its money where its mouth is. The pricing change is effective immediately, according to Eyeblaster’s Kadin.
To help promote the format, Eyeblaster will launch a campaign employing the 100K Polite Banner unit. Ads that read: “All banners on Yahoo! now support 100K, powered by Eyeblaster” will run in ad industry trade publications.
Posted by richard ting at March 18, 2004, 02:40 PM
Times Co.'s New York Times Digital Embraces The Fatboy; Signs With PointRoll
Thursday, Mar 18, 2004
by Ross Fadner
Since it began offering its services to content providers’ bottom line at no additional serving fee to advertisers, PointRoll has reeled publishers in right and left. In its latest coup, PointRoll today said it added the New York Times Digital, the digital unit of The New York Times Co., and its NYTimes.com and Boston.com properties, to its PointRoll Included network.
The PointRoll Included network consists of advertising tech-serving relationships with national and international publishers, portals, and networks including America Online, Microsoft Corp.’s MSN, and Yahoo! The idea behind the network is to propagate advertisers’ usage of PointRoll’s rich media products both by making the cost of using PointRoll comparable to that of standard banner and leaderboard ads, and by simplifying the buying process. PointRoll’s Included network gave advertisers incentives to use more rich media advertising; rich media was often viewed as cost-prohibitive by some advertisers.
Jason Krebs, VP-sales and marketing, NYTimes.com, says that NYTimes.com has worked successfully with PointRoll in the past, and that progressing to the next level was simply economical. “In the past we saw many repeat purchases of PointRoll,” he says. “Then they came to us with a more economical equation that improves our bottom line.”
Krebs observes that rich media ads like PointRoll’s are beneficial to publishers, advertisers, and consumers. “We’re thinking about the needs of our readers first and foremost. Certain forms of rich media ads are absolutely beneficial to our readers because it gives them more information within the banner,” he says. He adds that advertisers are also served because readers don’t have to leave the site to interact with ads.
Robert Levitan, chief marketing officer, PointRoll, notes that Yahoo! was the first major content publisher to enter the PointRoll Included network. “Before,” he says, “all the major publishers accepted PointRoll, but it was never included in their media kit.” Yahoo! joined PointRoll Included in July of 2002. Levitan says that the new business model was “honed and perfected by Yahoo!” in the fall of 2003.
PointRoll’s ads are mini, stand-alone HTML Web pages, notes Jules Gardner, CEO-PointRoll. “Any technology you can use on a Web page can be used inside a PointRoll ad,” he says. He says that the business model shift reflects the natural evolution of the PointRoll product and rich media in general. “The more PointRoll’s ads are served up, the less dependent agencies will have to be on their ad server,” Gardner says, adding that “ad serving from an agency perspective may cease to exist.”
PointRoll’s ad technologies consist of the floating BadBoy, the banner snap-out TowelBoy, and its most popular, the rollover FatBoy. PointRoll claims that 10 percent of consumers presented with a FatBoy rollover actually scroll over the ad for more information. Consumers who scroll over the ads interact with them for an average of eight seconds. Since PointRoll ads don’t show up in a new window, pop-up blockers can’t block them.
The addition of the NYTimes.com properties caps a successful week for PointRoll, which landed another big fish on Monday--CBSMarketWatch.com. “We’re adding ten more vertical category leaders in the next month,” Levitan says. PointRoll executives also told MediaDailyNews that a new advertising technology is on the horizon--one without any size restrictions--in the near future.
In cutting back the cost of its ad technologies both to publishers and advertisers, PointRoll has shown that it’s willing to sacrifice revenue for exposure and ultimately, increased volume. But offering rich media at no additional cost could backfire. The rest of the rich media community could soon follow PointRoll in lowering costs to advertisers in order to generate increased sales and awareness for the interactive ad formats.