September 21st 2009
Yahoo may be getting out of the search business, but now Google is gunning for the company’s stronghold: display advertising.
The search giant announced the DoubleClick Ad Exchange Friday, which will function like a stock exchange for display advertising online. Google is hoping that this auction market will help automate the process of buying display ads and break the code for display the way that Google tapped into the search market.
Google may have 70% of the search market, but in display it has a paltry 1.3% of ad views. Will the DoubleClick Ad Exchange change all that?
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September 16th 2009
Do you believe the economy is now ready to recover or that we’re in for a double-dip recession? Have you been worried about your business’s survival? Are you simply looking forward to consumers becoming happier to spend their cash again?
Whatever your opinions and concerns, it’s time to give some very real thought to your online marketing strategy and what you will do once the economy does finally pick up.
So how can you ensure your organisation is ready to market online within a recovering financial environment? Well, here are a few areas I think are important to look at. As always, if you have any to add then please use the comment facility and share your advice.
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August 25th 2009
Overview
The V Festival was set to come to Cape Town and Johannesburg in December 2008, playing 12 hours of music to 60 000 fans. 18 bands including Snoop Dog, Eddy Grant and One Republic were scheduled to perform. After much marketing, promotion and outstanding ticket sales, the festival was postponed.
The V Festival originally gained its popularity in the UK with the first festival being played in 1996. The V Festival is still one of the largest and most popular in the UK held annually at two major venues. It attracted over 180 000 fans in 2008 alone. The ‘V’ represents the Virgin Group and began as another means for promoting Richard Branson’s companies.
Aim of Campaign
• To establish and build the Virgin Festival brand in South Africa
• To sell 55 000 tickets (35 000 Johannesburg, 20 000 Cape Town)
Target Market:
• Young urbanites aged 18-35 and the young at heart urbanites aged 30-40
Challenges
• The main challenge here was driving ROI for this campaign. While generating large amounts of traffic to the Virgin Festival Microsite was important, the ultimate goal of the campaign was to sell tickets.
• Unfortunately, the concert was cancelled which meant that tickets sales were excluded from the final KPIs (Key performance indicators).
Tactics
Used a combination of music, entertainment and social networking sites including:
• Channel24.co.za (Media 24 Entertainment)
• iafrica Entertainment
• MSN.com
• Thunda.com
• Facebook.com
Outcome
• The campaign delivered over one million impressions in just two weeks.
• The average response rate for all sites combined was 0.56%, which exceeded the industry average for online marketing.
• Individual site placements performed even better with response rates as high as 0.68%.
• Because the concert was cancelled, the campaign was more a branding exercise for future Virgin Festivals
August 24th 2009
Stonewall + Media, the digital media agency, was recently appointed by Dial a Nerd, the computer support company dedicated to homes and small businesses, to assist them in increasing brand awareness, encourage more traffic to the website and promote their computer hardware and software sales division.
The challenge for Stonewall + Media was to apply a combination of digital tactics that would optimally position Dial a Nerd in a digital landscape that had direct access its target market, namely small business owners, professionals, men and women over 60, tech-savvy students and young moms. Incorporating interactive Rich Media, applying aggregate trends and using larger creative sizes and overlay banners helped to create a bolder presence and emphasize branding and direct response. In order to make precise optimization decisions, Stonewall + Media were able to identify all touch points the user engaged throughout the campaign allowing them to better determine the brand’s overall exposure.
Says Aaron Van Schaik: ‘It’s very pleasing to see that, in practice, the strategies we employ in our digital media campaigns are as successful as they are. In this case the Dial a Nerd campaign returned figures that are four times the industry average in terms of CTR’s (Click Through Rates) proving that the way Stonewall+ Media approaches digital media is effective and provides our clients the benefit of well conceived and executed strategies.’
Dial a Nerd is a national company with multiple branches in Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town and Durban. Each branch has mobile technicians that are able to repair, build, upgrade or even replace PC`s at the customer’s premises. The company has been servicing thousands of personal computers since 1998, and has helped many small businesses and home users get up and stay up with the hardware and software solution that suits them best. Another division of the company called, Dial a Nerd Business, specialises in advanced network support for clients requiring business solutions.
Says Grayson Rainier, Marketing Manager of Dial a Nerd: ‘It’s been a great pleasure working with Stonewall + Media. We have been particularly impressed with the manner in which they handled our serving and tracking requirements when carrying out this campaign. Having them involved from day one ensured us that the eye catching Rich Media banners they created were not lost in the mass of online advertising. Through the tracking analysis applied they were able to provide us with key insights into how the market was interacting with our adverts and in areas where the ads were not performing Stonewall + Media were quick to derive a solution.”
Functioning as an independent digital media agency, Stonewall + Media meets the ever-growing, industry-wide need for integrated digital media services that is not only consistent with its international counterparts but is forward thinking in its service and delivery.
August 18th 2009
OVERVIEW
Lexus is the world’s answer to sustainable transport that while as a hybrid vehicle it’s both environmentally and economically friendly it does not compromise performance and luxury attributes sought after by Lexus customers worldwide.
AIM OF CAMPAIGN
To manage the digital component of the New Generation Lexus RX350 and RX450h launch to the South African market in July this year.
TARGET MARKET
• Free spirited, budget conscious and adventurous consumers, relatively unaware of Lexus as a brand
• 60 % male and 40% female
• 80% English speaking between the ages of 30 and 55 years old, with an income of R45k a month
CHALLENGES
• Position Lexus online as the brand at the forefront of sustainable motor vehicle technology in South Africa and capture information on users who were interested in booking a test drive on Lexus.co.za. Finding the balance between website branding and direct response through booking the test drives was the key to the campaign succeeding.
• Finding innovative ways to apply award-winning creative in key publishing environments that would distinguish Lexus within the digital landscape already overloaded with competing automotive brands.
• Balancing online measurements with offline leads
• Applying the appropriate digital tools that would not only measure direct response activities such as impression delivery, reach and frequency and composition metrics, but also measure brand awareness, favourability and other attitudinal variables.
TACTICS
• Stonewall + Media applied engaging and interactive Rich Media ads making use of interactive expandable banners where users could view different features of the cars thus providing a platform for brand engagement.
• To ensure users were signing up for the Lexus test drives, ‘call to action’ messages prompting users to ‘book a test drive’ appeared regularly while they were interacting with the banners.
• A homepage takeover was initiated, making it the first of its kind done in South Africa, requiring a relatively large budget, stellar coordination between brand, agency and publisher, and creative worth talking about.
OUTCOME
• The campaign has seen excellent results in terms of click through performance, generating large amounts of web traffic to the Lexus website. In addition, results show that users interacted with the Rich Media banners for an average of 20 seconds and considering a TV ad runs for 30 seconds and doesn’t offer the viewer the choice to interact with it.
• Not only did we send loads of traffic to the website, but we turned that traffic into conversions (users who booked a test drive on the website). Thus achieving a ‘hot lead’ conversion rate of around 3% of all traffic sent to website.
