TVloop Blog

Much has been made about the forecast of doom and gloom for the online advertising world in 2009.  Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Ventures recently wrote a nice post about what kind of media companies would survive an online ad recession.  I’m not sure we’re supposed to be saying the “r” word but let’s go with it and see where it takes us.  One of Jeremy’ key points is that brands want to purchase standard IAB advertising, and as the economy slows down, the first thing to go are budgets for experimental advertising solutions. From the Lightspeed blog:

2. Experimental budgets are the first to get cut.

In an ad recession, advertisers appetite for experimentation is low. They like to stick to the established ad standards. New forms of advertising are hard. Startups whose sales processes feel more like business development than selling off of a rate card may have a tougher time.

Companies selling standard ad units will weather the recession better than those that have unique ad units.

While I don’t necessarily disagree with the general sentiment for portals and content sites, I think social media publishers have to question whether serving nothing but 300×250 medrecs is really in the best interest of our advertisers.   IAB units absolutely have a role in what we do, because reach and frequency will always have a place in advertising. But for social media advertising to be successful, brands have to become part of the user conversation in a meaningful and engaging way, and that’s where we’re really focusing our efforts here at Watercooler.  Besides, who wants to see your favorite social media sites get completely cluttered with IAB advertising?

To meet the needs of our advertisers, we’re always looking for ways to inject their brands into the user experience.  More importantly, the more that we can associate brands with positive features and functionality throughout our social networking applications, the more successful those campaigns tend to be.  For instance, we’re currently running a campaign for the Scrubs Season 7 DVD throughout the TVLoop fan communities.  Standard IAB units are playing a big role, but the rubber really meets the road in the Addicted to Scrubs application. where sponsored trivia is able to get a highly relevant audience (die-hard Scrubs fans) to specifically interact with the brand and product.   What’s the solution?  We developed customized trivia questions related to the Season 7 DVD and and put them right in the middle of the user experience.  Trivia is the most popular feature for Watercooler applications, and sponsors have the unique opportunity of having users specifically interact with their brands as part of the normal user experience.  While I don’t have results for the Scrubs campaign just yet, past sponsored trivia campaigns have shown the ability to improve message comprehension and retention, and that’s what social media advertising is all about.  Stay tuned for a future post on a detailed case study for sponsored trivia campaigns.