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.”

As a result, an increasing number of businesses are venturing out into the realm of social media and the recent numbers unveiled by Forrester Research give evidence to this.

The US Interactive Marketing Forecast 2009 to 2014 predicts that social media spend will increase to $3bn in five years time, but prior to that, it will be hitting $716m before the end of this year.

In like manner, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for social media is predicted to be the highest at 34% compared to all other types of interactive strategies. Following right behind is mobile marketing (27%), Display advertising (17%) and Search marketing (15%).

In addition, search marketing makes up more than one-half of all interactive investment, and will remain as the format of choice through 2014.

As we have previously discussed, marketers are increasing interactive budgets by shifting spend from traditional outlets.

Such statement is backed up by Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk when she comments that “with dollars moving out of traditional media toward less expensive and more efficient interactive tools, marketers will actually need less money to accomplish their current advertising goals.”

As marketers all over the world face budget cuts and shift from traditional media to more efficient digital strategies to market their products and services, implementing the right media mix will definitely be the key to success.

Recession. Downturn. Redundancies. It’s fair to say that the news couldn’t be more depressing – frankly it can make you want to give it all up and live in cave for a year or two! But I prefer to take a more positive view. From an online advertising perspective I honestly believe that the opportunities presented by new technologies couldn’t be greater. Working in the Ad Exchange space I get to see first hand how open, efficient technologies can be used to not only reduce friction in existing business models but also to create (and sustain) new models entirely.

Let’s be clear – fundamentally changing a business model to align more closely with market trends isn’t something that happens everyday. But the world of online advertising shifts so rapidly that those who merely attempt to maintain the status quo are already ‘behind the line’. So often we see businesses whose model is entrenched in ‘the old way’ – in online that could be as far back as 10 years or as recent as last week.

Technology enables us all to change and adapt – eventually the momentum and weight of change forces us to sit up and take notice but it’s those companies who see the trends early and remodel accordingly who will find themselves positioned at the head of the game.

In our market, specifically the trading of display inventory on Advertising Exchanges, this ‘change’ manifests itself in a number of ways. More and more we’re seeing Agencies and Publishers wanting to build Networks, whilst the traditional Networks are increasingly differentiating through a combination of data and bespoke technology. Whereas before the barriers to entry were too high or the inefficiencies too great, the new open technologies of today have created a level playing field where intelligence, data, market knowledge and technical expertise wins out.

The days of winning because you’re the biggest, oldest, most established haven’t died out entirely but increasingly more nimble, technology enabled competitors are gaining market share where before they wouldn’t even have made it through the front door.

It’s still early days and many of the companies who have already made the shift remain ‘under the radar’. However, as the market inevitably evolves it is these companies who are well placed to capitalize, often at the expense of traditional, more well established players. A positive approach in this time of great negativity could be the difference between future success or failure.

According to Martin Sorrell, WPP’s CEO and advertising guru, in an recent interview for one of Italy’s most read journals, Corriere della Sera, the first half of 2009 will be one of the hardest as traditional media will see the worst declines particularly newspapers, radio and TV specially in USA and Europe.

Perhaps the most comforting remark he made throughout the interview was that he didn’t believe the economic recession would simulate that of an ‘Apocalypse Now.’

However, the online shows a strong performance for 2009 as email, search and social media show the highest expected change in budget allocation with an increase of 58.5%, 54.4% and 43.9% respectively while offline media is expected to reduce at a 34.9%.

As part of the selected advertising goals for 2009 the highest degree of importance went to new customer acquisition, followed by increased customer retention and increased brand favorability- all of which could be effectively attainable through the implementation of the right online strategies and social media as a marketing/networking tool.

Towards the end of the interview, Sorrell switched to a more optimistic view of what the Internet landscape will be like post-crisis affirming it will increase its market share from 12% to 20-25%.

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.

Today Amazon.com announced the launch of its Video on Demand online store where users will be able to pick over an array of 40,000 movies and television programs right off the bat.

You choose, you order, it streams.

Clearly it’s a lot better than most internet video stores, won’t name call, which require you to chill in front of your computer for hours before you succeed to download onto your hard drive. You’ll find that the majority of people don’t have the time or patience to sit around and wait for downloads to complete.

“Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can’t help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button,” claims Amazon’s digital media VP, Bill Carr. I couldn’t have explained it better.

To support high quality streaming and downloading, Amazon.com has partnered up with Sony as a start, in order to enable its Internet video store into the Sony Bravia TVs, through Sony Bravia’s Video link device. Other deals will be on their way in conjunction with other manufacturers and Internet devices.

Some cool features:

Less downloading time

You can store all your video selections in “Your Video Library”

You can log on to any computer, anywhere, or device and be able to access the desired video

2-minute previews will begin running the moment you visit the title of your selection

No Commercials!

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.

Wow! three partnerships in such short notice. Seems like Yahoo!’s intentions are to build up on resources and maximize its services to be able to squeeze all the possible juice out of the next ‘buy out’ offer (be it Microsoft or whomever comes next).

As you may have already heard, amongst the various deals Yahoo! has recently closed is that of Walmart.com which involves selling online display and video advertising for them, this making Yahoo! the exclusive portal to resell Walmart.com’s display inventory. Now with Walmart on their portfolio of brands, Yahoo! is able to present its online users a variety of new offers while handing new marketing opportunities to advertisers.

Havas Digital and Yahoo! also partnered up for a global advertising agreement in which Havas objective is to adopt Yahoo!’s soon to arrive AMP!, the new advertising management platform designed to significantly simplify the process of buying and selling ads online, and join capabilities for a highly effective results.

And finally, the latest alliance, CBS. ‘The deal will have Yahoo! join the CBS Audience Network, which already includes major outlets like Google Inc’s YouTube, Time Warner Inc’s AOL and Microsoft Corp’s MSN, as well as sites like Joost, Veoh, and Bebo.’ Basically CBS is convinced with the idea ‘the more the merrier’ that is why its not being too picky in terms of where they display their content, and it understands that in order to reach over 90% of the web,(prior to Yahoo!) it must hook up to networks such as Yahoo! so a wider consumer base is reached.

Come to think of it online video has become the new form of entertainment for many and now with concrete user-generated content initiatives such as Al Gore’s Current TV, they appeal more to the masses cause its basically attainable by anyone and everyone, moreover, it gives an opportunity to be a part of something.

In addition, what’s even better about this modality, which TV has never been able to offer, is being able to have on-the-spot interaction with people within your community, or other surfers and other networks in general. Its the beauty of online video; it can be virally spread, easily, by giving viewers the choice to diffuse, comment, share and spread the ‘brand’ to the internet universe. It’s an advantageous way to maximize your budget since you can reach vast audiences, at a relatively lost-cost.

I actually wanted to show you something I ran into while taking a stroll along cyberspace. What caught my attention was that this type of art, ‘street art’ has been known for ages. We’ve seen it represented in the form of graffiti just that this type of ‘art’ conveys a different message to that of just plain words sprayed painted on a wall. In fact, street art, as the name discloses, is indeed an art. And sometimes it can be overseen, but thanks to the innate social nature of the Internet, artists such as BLU, an Italian street animation artist, have been able to step out from behind the scenes and indulge us with creations such as these:

I just think its brilliant how the artist managed to bring his art to life by incorporating it with the online aspect of it. This individual’s work is no longer stagnantly sitting on a wall, instead, its out there, seen and enjoyed by everyone and shared amongst friends, which is exactly how I came across it.

What I’m trying to say is, nowadays you can exploit just about anything through online video advertising. From an individual basis to mass products to just about everything that exists today; it can all be massively and effortlessly diffused wherever, targeted to your exact audience, exact demographics…its all about becoming ‘digital’, and it will certainly continue to grow and evolve.