Telling Brand Stories Online

Posted by Jeff Lu on March 4, 2009

credit: VideoEgg

VideoEgg’s Chief Marketing Officer, Troy Young posted an interesting presentation on the company blog last week about online brand advertising which I found simple yet insightful.

VideoEgg is one of the largest and most innovative ad networks, and are thought leaders in the world of rich media advertising.  There’s been a lot of dreary discussions going on about the future on online advertising, so when Troy has something to say about the topic, I try and listen (read).

“While we can get deeply apocalyptic about the future of advertising, at the end of the day we will continue to have thousands of marketers vying for limited mental shelf space. They will continue to buy rights to the mental spectrum. Hard bits matter less, soft matter more. We need to tell stories more than ever.

The following may sound a bit simplistic and maybe even backward, but here’s where we are at… The three of the biggest things that will push brands online in more meaningful ways in the next couple of years: 1) more interruptive formats (pre-roll, interstitials, full page), 2) bigger, slicker, cooler and easier rich media and 3) a media currency that values attention.”

This sounds easy enough.  Online ads need to be more like TV ads: disruptive and engaging; and we need to measure engagement rather than impressions.

The reason why I wanted to re-post Troy’s points is because, although the current system isn’t broken, it definitely can be improved and it’ll take a collaborative effort.  In this economic climate, ad networks and publishers that want to succeed need to team up with advertising agencies.  This means 1) educating their clients (social media is evolving faster than agencies can educate) and 2) focusing on ROI metrics that matter.  Advertising agencies and their clients are not looking to go back to what is “tried and true” but rather increased accountability from companies with which they invest their precious ad dollars.  An example of #2 is VideoEgg’s AdFrame product, which adopts a pay-per-engagement model (pay only when users are engaged with the ad unit) for brand marketers, bridging the gap between direct response and brand marketing.

View the rest of Troy’s presentation here.