Earning Attention

Links, news and thoughts on how marketers can leverage new and emerging media

When an ad lets you down

Here’s a case where an advertiser did something impressive: they grabbed my attention with a simple white headline on black background. No video, no animation, no strong call to action. Just an intriguing headline and logo. This was in a newsletter from AdAge, so theoretically it was contextually targeted.

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But it just clicks through to the MTV homepage:

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I was disappointed. I was expecting something cool from MTV ad sales. Maybe they just wanted to re-introduce me to MTV.com and get me experiencing it as a consumer, but I spent about 10 seconds on the site and left, because it didn’t meet my expectations.

As I reflected on what this meant, it reminded me of the importance of context. Nothing in the ad suggested that there was information forthcoming about MTV’s ad opportunities. I inferred that entirely because of the media placement. Even simple copy and headlines can take on new meaning and set new expectations in certain contexts. Which leads me to this: the importance of synchronicity between media and creative in the new digital landscape cannot be overstated.

Or am I missing something?

Crisp Wireless launches new mobile ad placement technology, supports rich media

Lots of publishers and third parties have been experimenting with different rich media ad formats for smartphones. Crisp has entered the fray with a compelling unit that seems to strike a good balance between exposure for the advertiser and user experience. I especially like how it can be configured to disappear while scrolling to prevent accidental clicks, and the expanding menu is a nice touch.

With the launch of the iPad, this and other smartphone rich media units become much more important. Lack of Flash support will limit an advertiser's ability to deploy their existing Flash-based rich media units. These formats that were born for smartphones can easily be adapted for the iPad, and may well be key to early ad success on the platform.

Press release here.