Latest Articles

Alexander McCall-Smith Engages Web 2.0

The Daily Telegraph is in the middle of a 20-week serialisation of an online book created by author Alexander McCall-Smith, his first such project. New Media Knowledge caught up with the organisers to discuss ‘Corduroy Mansions’.

more

Business Brief: Video Advertising Looks to Future

Google has announced it will incentivise advertisers on its video properties as well as launching research programmes into how Web users consume Internet video material. New Media Knowledge spoke to a number of industry players to gauge their views on where the video advertising market is going.

more

‘Virtual Home’ for Ex-Pats in London Established

A social network aimed at providing information for ex-pats living in London has been established. New Media Knowledge met the site’s co-founder to find out more.

more

• Rough Guide to: Social Media and the Law
• Record Visits for UK Blog Sites
• Clearing Congestion
• Rough Guide to: Pay-Per-Click Advertising
• Opinion: What Happens to Newspapers?
• LinkedIn Adds Business Applications
• What Happens to Newspapers?

Related Articles

• Business Brief: Video Advertising Looks to Future

  Google has announced it will incentivise advertisers on its video properties as well as launching research programmes into how Web users consume Internet video material. New Media Knowledge spoke to a number of industry players to gauge their views on where the video advertising market is going. more

• Rough Guide to: Pay-Per-Click Advertising

  Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on the Web has been one of the major growth sectors in marketing. Last year, Internet search engine Google overtook ITV for monies received from advertising and nearly $2 billion was spent on PPC globally. New Media Knowledge spoke to a PPC consultant to gauge what companies looking at the technology should consider. more

• Winning Over The “Ad-weary”

  With research in the US appearing to show that consumers respond increasingly to product placement and word-of-mouth before making purchases, New Media Knowledge's Chris Lee met with an online ad network to discuss how advertisers can use the web to better effect. more

• Industry Welcomes 4iP

  Channel 4 launched its 4iP initiative this week which aims to stimulate public service digital media across the UK. New Media Knowledge engaged the UK digital media community to see what it thought of 4iP. more

• Online Advertising Bucks Flagging Market

  The industry received a welcome boost this week with the news that Internet advertising revenues rose significantly in the first half of 2008, despite tough economic conditions. NMK quizzed the industry on what we can expect for the next year. more

ITV’s Overlay Advertising Trial Panned

Troubled ITV is experimenting with ‘automatically placed overlay advertising’ to help revive flagging revenues. NMK’s Chris Lee canvassed opinion from around the new media industry about the move.

ITV is trialling advertising technology on its online news site which it hopes will help it reverse falling ad sales. The ‘automatically placed overlay advertising’ technology, developed by Californian firm Keystream, intuitively seeks out empty space on the screen – such as walls, roads or sky – and fills it with unavoidable advertising, such as branded images, logos and company messaging.

Simon Fell, head of future technology at ITV, told The Times newspaper that the technology had a lot of potential. “If there’s a scene in a programme where there’s time, then it could give us a chance to get an ad away. But obviously on television you won’t be seeing one of these appearing at a crunch point in a drama,” he said.

Keystream’s tool does not require an editor to find space, it does it automatically. It can even allow viewers to click through to a vendor’s site via the advert.

“We’re trialling it online, where it’s a manageable area and allows us to get feedback from both advertisers and viewers. It gives us another tool in the arsenal, and it’s subtle,” Fell added.

Ad Enough

Consumers have been able to by-pass advertising during programmes since the inception of the video recorder, making it harder for brands to capture their audience’s full attention. Technology is going to be crucial for advertisers to avoid being skirted over by viewers, experts agree, although subliminal advertising is banned in the UK.

The new media industry gave a lukewarm reception to news of ITV’s trial, with some sceptical as to how much message absorption viewers can really stomach.

Ed Bartlett, UK Vice-President of in-game advertising provider, IGA, told NMK that ITV’s plan was nothing new and could, in the long term, prove detrimental. “Hollywood has done this for years in post-production as a veiled form of product placement. Such obvious, unnatural inclusion of unrelated information is almost certain to look forced, and is likely to lead to complaints from viewers and a further reduction in audience figures,” he said.

“This move smacks of desperation in a time where advertisers are looking for engagement, context and measurable ROI, and ITV would be better off focusing efforts in this direction rather than simply trying to fill space with logos,” Bartlett continued. “If ITV wants the kind of revenue it is hoping its new scheme will generate, it needs to ensure any advertisements create impact, not intrusion.”

One Big Turn Off

IMD (Independent Media Distribution) works with many of the UK’s top creative and media agencies, post production houses and broadcasters. The company’s CEO Simon Cox believes that embedding ad content raises important practical questions and content providers needed to be careful not to ruin programmes.

“Overlay leaves advertisers far too exposed to causing an adverse impact on their target audiences – why risk doing something audiences could feel is intrusive? There are currently other ways advertisers and broadcasters can up their game and they should be looking at those,” he said.

For Cox, being more intuitive is the key to attracting viewers to advertising.

“Broadcasters should be working on solutions like enabling last minute changes to ad content to reflect changing market conditions and making the advertising more relevant and powerful for consumers. For example - giving advertisers the ability to insert an ad last-minute to counteract a competitor’s price cut, or congratulate fans right at the end of a match. The key is in improving the ability and efficiency of existing advertising opportunities.”

A Watershed for online advertising?

Paul Harris, a partner at law firm Speechly Bircham, has seen automatically placed overlay advertising in action and believes that it also occurs elsewhere. He doesn’t, however, conclude that ITV’s trial of Keystream’s technology necessarily signals a sea change for the new media industry.

“[ITV’s use of automated placed overlay advertising] is not novel at all and certainly isn't a ‘sea change’ in advertising itself,” Harris told NMK. “What might be is that ITV contemplates having programmes that are uninterrupted on terrestrial/digital TV, which would be a very different approach for them.”

ITV’s experience could very much dictate how other media outlets decide their advertising strategy, Harris argued.

“Some will [follow suit] and some won't. It depends on how it is managed. For example, Channel 4 and Sky Sports have been successful in dealing with cricket coverage, such that they get in (arguably) sufficient adverts per hour, without upsetting what are probably fairly conservative viewers previously used to the BBC's coverage. So it can be done,” he added.