DIGITAL MARKETING
Digital Marketing 31 March
31-03-2006
by Ciara O'Brien
Google may deliver local ads with Wi-Fi | IAB releases video ad guidelines
Google may deliver local ads with Wi-Fi: Google is planning to use its new Wi-Fi hotspots to target advertising and lodged a patent on the method. The patent was filed some 18 months ago, but was only published by the US patent office in March.
According to the patent application, filed by three Google employees in September 2004, it will cover, "a method comprising: placing advertisements in a view of an end user accessing a wireless access point (WAP), the advertisements being related to the WAP based on a predetermined criterion".
This means that people who connect with Google's WiFi hotspots could have ads targeted to them based on their geographical location, profile, etc.
This has obvious benefits for advertisers, who could stand to gain from more focused advertising.
IAB releases video ad guidelines: The Interactive Advertising Bureau has released its guidelines on broadband video commercial measurement for public comment. The guidelines will determine at what stage a broadband video ad is counted as an ad impression.
They also address online browser or browser-equivalent based internet activity involving streaming video and audio ads. The new guidelines will apply mostly to internet media companies and ad-serving organisations.
The guidelines states that, "a valid broadband ad impression may only be counted when an ad counter (logging server) receives and responds to an HTTP request for a tracking asset from a client". The count must happen after the initiation of the stream, post-buffering, and measurement should occur when the ad begins to appear on the user's browser.
The guidelines are somewhat of a landmark for the advertising industry. It not only represents the first time a medium has developed a measurement standard that measures the ad itself, as delivered to a consumer, the IAB is also the first medium to launch a "global" standard.
"With the aggressive growth of broadband, a need for measurement guidelines for video commercials within a broadband content experience became clear," said Greg Stuart, CEO, IAB.
Video ads may be an emerging advertising medium, but they have made their mark on the advertising world in a short space of time. Mark Tarbatt, MD of Generator.ie, explains that although there aren't a lot of companies using video ads at present, the new medium has become a useful way for advertisers to reach a market that is more likely to be online than in front of the TV, with falling TV audiences counter-balanced by a rise in internet audiences.
"Companies that are planning to use video on the internet are trying to reach the non-TV watching audience," he said, adding that he is already seeing, "Major brands that are looking at moving one or two percent of their TV budget to internet advertising."
The guidelines can be found in full here [PDF].
Building your list: Denise Cox says that in order to build a subscription list you need to be proactive about securing subscriber attention.
