Telecommunications was the most prominent industry in the list of categories of UK advertisers on social networking sites. Telefonica O2, Deutsche Telekom, and British Telecommunications, delivered altogether close to 950 million display ad impressions in the month of August.

Ranking second in the list of top advertisers was the retail industry, where leading brands such as Tesco, John Lewis and DFS, generated 753 million ad impressions during the same month, followed by banking brands with 248 million, travel with 213 million and last but not least, entertainment with 181 million ad views.

In addition the research also revealed that 15-24-year-olds were served the most ads, accounting for 29% of social network display ad impressions while representing 23% of the total audience. The leading marketing agency also found that, despite the demographics aiming towards younger users, all ages were reached.

comScore’s Managing Director Europe, Mike Read comments on the results: “These data suggest that every demographic segment is reached via social networking sites and that no particular age segment accounts for an overwhelming percentage of ads delivered.”

He continued, “Given the overall reach and volume of ads delivered on social networking sites, brand advertisers who ignore this channel may be missing a significant opportunity and enabling their competitors to gain a dominant share of voice in the channel.”

Google, the online search giant, is trying to boost the appeal of its graphic ads and is enabling advertisers to better reach internet users in specific geographic areas at specific times, as well as, offer a new interface that’s simple to use.

This new integration is only coming about a year and a half after Google’s $3 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, the auctions site which connects web page owners with advertisers. Even though Google attracts more than 70% of  search ads  in the U.S. market, it still lags behind Yahoo and others in direct revenue from pictorial ads.

On one hand, this new alternative offers Google the opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell to its advertisers, while advertisers have a much better chance to effectively target their audience and precisely craft their advertising message seamlessly across the web. For web users, ads will be more engaging and load much faster.

Google says that in addition, ad space on Google’s third-party AdSense publisher sites, representing over 76% of U.S. online audiences and 73% of global online audiences (according to ComScore), is being made available through the new exchange.

The new exchange is designed for both ad networks and agency networks, which already includes over 40 ad networks across North America and Europe. Also, AdWords advertisers will be able to run ads on sites in the Ad Exchange, using their existing AdWords interface.

Google’s three main objectives for this integration are:

1. To simplify the system for buying and selling display ads

2. To deliver better performance that advertisers can measure

3. To open up the eco system for all users, publishers and advertisers to participate

Watch this video for more information on Google’s Display Advertising Graph:

The objective of raising brand awareness is sometimes difficult to tabulate, however raising brand awareness will help increase consumer confidence which is key to the success of any brand wishing to have a spot in the online marketplace.

Studies have shown that running online display campaigns together with other online marketing activities will boost traffic and this is mainly due to the fact that digital marketers are turning to online display advertising as an effective and cheap ad medium.

The latest from Nielsen shows us that the number of UK online advertisers has increased with the number of online display ad campaigns growing 11% in the second quarter compared to the same period last year (up from 20,360 to 22,794).

At the same time, online banners ads grew 16% while advertsiers testing the new medium increased 10%.

Alex Burmaster, communications director for the UK and EMEA at Nielsen, on the increase in online display ads:

“These two factors can be quite tempting to advertisers who haven’t tried online before and think that this is actually a good time to experiment with it. With online you can still do quite a bit even if you don’t have a huge budget – particularly if you buy advertising on a cost per acquisition basis.”

It seems TV is no longer an appealing advertising vehicle for marketers, in fact the TV audience hasn’t shown much growth in the past few years, whereas the number of online campaigns and advertisers have grown significantly.

According to NMA, the biggest increase in online display activity came from the gaming category (39%) and general ecommerce (25%).

Marketers, as we know, are always seeking for new and impactful ways of engaging the audience with their ads. This is why the OPA is opting to offer these new ’standardized blocks of space’ for advertisers and marketers to send their messages more effectively and a lot more visibly. We’re talking oversized boxes that can reach over 900 pixels wide.

Websites such as the New York Times (NYT), Wall Street Journal (NWS) and CNN.com are amongst the 37 publisher sites that will begin running super-sized ads in July.

This is what a super-sized ad would look like on your desktop:

This new ad format will effectively ensure the ads will not go unseen by anyone and it’s mainly thanks to their unusual presentation. However, and judging by the size, advertisers will most likely come up with some really creative pieces. Question is, are they adaptable for all kinds of brands?

One true fact that’s worth pointing out is that they will definitely increase users’ attention particularly if the ads have any relevance to the viewers.

Here are the exact specs of the new ad formats as presented by All Things Digital:

• The Fixed Panel: 336 wide x 700 tall, remains constant as the user scrolls to the top and bottom of the page

• The XXL Box: 468 wide x 648 tall, opens for seven seconds to 936 wide x 648 tall with 1/24x frequency

• The Pushdown: 970 wide x 418 tall, opens to display the advertisement and then after seven seconds rolls up to 970 wide x 66 tall, with 1/24x frequency.

The platform is meant to send the message to marketers that display advertising isn’t just for the big companies, anymore. Yahoo! My Display Ads offers an easy, affordable way to create banner ads and run them across the Yahoo! network in a matter of days, as explained on the product page.

Marketers and advertisers will not only be profiting from this service as a way to tap into Yahoo’s vast audience of 1,651 million users, they’ll be able to create and customize campaigns catering to their communication and marketing objectives.

My Display Ads provides users with a selection of more than 800 display templates, this meaning that no graphic designers will be needed for the creation of the display ads, however, own creatives may also be uploaded if desired. Users are also enabled to select whether they wish to pay per click (CPC) or pay per impression (CPM); the number of times the ad is viewed.

In general, small to medium businesses tend to bid on search advertising by choosing keywords that are most relevant to the nature of their business and not necessarily spend large amounts of money.

My guess is that Yahoo! wants to slowly migrate those companies into display ads which will in fact bring them more benefits, not to mention the opportunity to build on their online branding.

Yahoo!, however, is not by any means encouraging businesses to abandon search marketing, instead it wants to encourage marketers and advertisers to integrate both search and display ads as to get their message across to an even wider audience.

• Almost 50% of Europeans now have an internet connection

• 9 hours per week spent on the web in 2008, up 27% from 2004 – more time than people spent reading print media, watching movies or playing video games

• North South divide in Europe: Nordic countries have an internet penetration rate of 76% on average, compared to 45% in Southern Europe

• Internet consumption set to overtake traditional TV in June 2010 – 2.5 days per month spent on internet versus 2 days on traditional TV: but does not signify decline in TV- simply a shift in how it is consumed

• Online video established as most popular online audiovisual entertainment application, with more than 1 in 4 (28%) Europeans and over 300 million people worldwide watching short or full-length videos on the internet

• PC and mobile growing in popularity as alternative screens for TV and digital content: as users increasingly access the internet through IPTV, games consoles and mobile phones, so the time spent on the internet using a PC will drop from 95% today to 50% over the next 5 years

Internet usage keeps increasing worldwide and the number of people logging on is greater as is the amount of time spent online. Microsoft predicts that by 2010, the Internet will overtake traditional TV as the most used form of media. It’s important to mention, however, that this does not signify the decline in TV but the way in which people are experiencing viewing TV content.

And this leads directly to the meaning of the phrase ‘the three screens that will dominate’: TV, PC and mobile. It is due to this increase in Internet usage that people are spending more and more time viewing both broadband content as well as live and recorded TV through alternative channels.

Broadband penetration and providers offering high-speed access to the Net, have also given way to the rise of online cosumption and if we refer back to our 5th pointer in the introduction, online video is becoming one of the most popular forms of viewing entertaining with 1 in 4 or 28% of Europeans watching short or full-length videos.

There is no doubt corporate branding is as important in relation to the Internet as in all other walks of life, and the continued growth and geographic spread of the Internet is obviously important as the figures relating to e-commerce are themselves interesting.

The value of the Internet lies no longer in its use as a giant online mall but as a massive information highway where the exchange of information and feedback is free.

Yesterday afternoon 77 attended YouTube’s presentation for media agency partners and clients where the Mountain View super search giant Google discussed the myriad opportunities display advertising offers brands worldwide.

Francesca Mortari, Head of YouTube, expressed that brand’s main challenge relies on three different factors: finding the right target audience, sending relevant and effective communication, and understanding the dynamics and behavior of the target audience. All of which could be possibly tackled using a powerful instrument such as the user-generated video platform YouTube.

“Our Google Content Network has a vast audience which can be reached effectively not only through search but can also be engaged using display ads,” Mortari explained.

Today, YouTube is the 4th most visited website in the world representing a monthly audience of 9,1 million unique users which is equal to 42% of the entire online population; facts which prove to be a good enough reason for advertisers to invest in such medium.

The Google folks also presented a study ran by OTX with the collaboration of GM, Mindshare and Motorola which revealed interesting data with regards to users attention in relation based on advertising via YouTube versus that on TV.

Numbers revealed that video ads that are streamed online are far more effective in terms of brand recall when compared to their Television counterpart.  User attention regarding YouTube display advertising is 1.5 times more than TV ads. Equally so, brand recall through YouTube ads is amplified approximately 140% compared to TV.

In addition, a brand promoted on YouTube is perceived as young and dynamic.

To conclude, the combination of advertising on YouTube and TV increases the efficiency of an ad up to four times.

No need to hire designers anymore, the new feature enables advertisers to create, design and customize display ads easily and eventually drive traffic into your site. Steps are as follows: select a template, customize the template and in theory, your ad is done and ready for display!

As explained on the Google blog, the ad builder tool allows for ad sizes to be scaled to fit any possible placement across the Google content network including video and in-game ad placement.

The video below shows you how to get started:

Four new features have been added since the launch of the Display Ad Builder thanks to user’s feedback–

The image picker allows you to choose from the selection of previously uploaded images. Real-time editing lets you see text as you’re writing it without having to hit the ‘update preview’ button. Another added feature is that of being able to see the available ad sizes your ad can run in without having to complete the whole ad creation process, which now has new templates to offer for customizing your ad.

You wonder how to make your display advertising worthwhile- especially in times of crisis? We know advertisers and publishers are usually looking for the best way to improve the performance of display advertising campaigns so as to increase consumer engagement, CTR and conversions.

Recently, Weebly, the free web creation site, rolled out a new ad-serving platform which optimizes the content of any display ad. Instead of having the usual untargeted banners, SnapAds increases the quality, performance and relevancy of your campaign without much effort.

This new platform is based on genetic algorithm technology that automatically optimizes individual creative components such as images, colors and taglines in a fast and efficient manner. TechCrunch explains that in order to create a campaign,‘advertisers provide SnapAds with a special Photoshop file containing a number of specially-tagged layers with all of the art and text assets they’’d like to potentially display in their banner,‘ then the user must specify which layers to make visible and which not.

Once this is done, TechCrunch continues, ‘the process initially begins by displaying ads with a smattering of random combinations of the assets. As time goes by, the system identifies the most successful ads and allows these to “live on”, further modifying them towards perfection as the failures die off.’

So basically, ads with better performance that manage to capture viewer’s attention, make it through, the rest are voted out of the system.

This new technology could be an interestingly easy way to continuously optimize innovative ad campaigns for your business, while at the same time appealing more to consumers and generating high click-through rates.

for more information visit www.snapads.com.

One relevant factor for getting (potential) customer’s attention is knowing and anticipating their reactions. Advertisers know that there is nothing like an infallible ad. Every ad could be appealing for someone as it can also have the opposite effect on others. Women’s reactions are different from men’s reaction, as well as young people can react in a different way compared to the elderly.

Consequently, an advertiser should make a choice between developing a single ad that could be interesting for everybody, and/or creating several different ads, each one fit for every potential type of customer.

Thanks to the digital technology, the adversing industry is starting to invest in tools capable of recognizing customers, understanding which “customer category” they belong to, hence displaying the right ads for them.

This concept has been partially explored online, with the “behavioral targeting”, but now it has also become an off-line reality.

Let’s take, for instance, the French company Quividi: they are using a very interesting kind of billboard, backed by a video camera and a computer: with this technology – as stated on Times by Paolo Prandoni, Quividi’s chief scientific officer – “we know how many people have walked in front of the screen, how many turned to face the ad, and how long they looked at it”.

The Quividi system can also distinguish the gender and the age of the viewer, so it is possible to get a demographic background about a particular ad.

On my behalf, Quividi’s tools (and tools similar to such), could provide a really deep analysis about viewer’s behaviour, not just to figure out how much time a viewer has spent in front of the screen, but even to make a proper database of “actions” performed by potential customers, in order to provide the right ad for the right person.

Imagine yourself approaching a screen display; and straight away the display recognizes your gender and your age followed by the advertisement that, according to the data, would suit you entirely.

Quinvidi’s idea evidently describes the way the advertising industry will be pointing towards in the coming years. The key is to catch the consumer’s attention in a personalized way, from data entirely gathered from the consumers themselves.