Marketing Pilgrim

Remember being a kid and hearing the words “We’re having leftovers for dinner tonight.”? There was that sinking feeling that comes with the “Ok, I am not getting the best of the best here” realization.

Now take that mindset over to advertising. When a sales rep is trying to sell their leftovers it implies that what he or she is pushing has been passed over by those who are picky about their ad placements. As a result, there are inventory gaps that occur and you get to choose from the crumbs leftover on the display table.

Not very appealing, huh? Well, now imagine that Microsoft, Aol, and Yahoo have announced that they are looking to empty their ad refrigerators, if you will, as a team effort. It’s kind of like a garage sale for leftover display ad space. Let’s just say that the response is not exactly overwhelming.

Yahoo has launched two new ad services designed to engage consumers in a more meaningful and fun way.

First is the Social Sentiment Slider. The slider is a sponsored poll that is attached to a piece of content on Yahoo’s site.

Here’s what it looks like:

We can’t see the article, but presumably it’s a news feature about the rise in luxury item sales, or something along those lines. People move the slider to express their opinion, the percentages change and then they can post that opinion directly to Facebook.

There’s no doubt that social engagement will help brand awareness, but there’s also a potential pitfall. The ad sponsor doesn’t get to choose the slider question, Yahoo does. In the above case, it can be disconcerting to see a high percentage to the negative side (Status) when you’re promoting a luxury car right underneath.

AOL Radio relaunched today with new features, easier navigation, and 50% less commercials.

Bloomberg reports that AOL is cutting back to 3 minutes of commercials per hour. If they were previously running 6 minutes per hour, it’s no wonder they had trouble keeping listeners tuned in.

AOL Radio’s General Manager Lisa Namerow says that too many ads was the most common complaint among listeners. Not surprising, as we’ve learned that consumers have very different feelings about ads in different formats.

For example, TV watchers tolerate, and sometimes even enjoy, the commercials that run during their favorite shows. But surveys have shown that people don’t like seeing ads when they watch those same shows online. Maybe it’s simply a case of not knowing how to complain when it’s a TV or radio ad. With online, it’s easy to hit that contact us button and grouse.

The people have spoken and Consumerist has tallied the votes. The Worst Ad in America 2011 is Luv’s Diapers “Poop, There it is.” And they couldn’t have made a better choice.

It can be hard to advertise diapers without going into the realm of bodily functions, but this nasty commercial takes the. . . dare I say. . . cake? It’s even worse than last year’s offensive ad by Huggies where they implied that babies were sexy when they wore their new line of jeans diapers. Yikes.

Other best of the worst ads includes the new AT&T commercial where the wife (whom I thought was the man’s mother) goes off on her geeky husband when he tells her he signed up for a new texting plan and the AT&T spider spot. Yuck.

You know how two heads are better than one? Apparently, three screens top that when it comes to advertising recall.

Google and Nielsen got together on this study to determine the effectiveness of multi-screen marketing. They gathered groups of people and had them watch a 15-second video ad for a Volvo S60 sedan. Some saw the ad only on TV. Some saw it on TV and on a smartphone. Then they mixed up more combos including ads on PCs and tablets.

Here’s what they got:

Look at that nice hike in recall. Now, my first thought was, of course recall was better because they saw the ad four times where the base-level group only saw it once. Then I noted this line in the results, “different combinations of screens controlling for frequency.” So, I guess that means that the TV only people also saw the ad four times.

Internet ad revenues are climbing, which must mean people are buying. (Or at least, I hope so.) According to new numbers from the Interactive Advertising Bureau, ad revenues hit $14.9 billion in the first half of this year. That’s a growth rate of 23.2%.

The second quarter of 2011 was record breaking, with a reported $7.7 billion over $6.2 billion from the same time last year.

Small Screen, Big Payoff

Although growth was good in all segments, video took top honors with growth equal to 42.1% over last year. Video is slowly becoming a viable option for advertisers of all sizes since video hosts such as YouTube have made it easier to do. You also have to look at the sheer number of videos that are popping up online. Now advertisers can choose from a wide variety of short form videos or hook their wagon to full-length TV shows and movies.

AOL’s Project Devil was supposed to be the key to the company’s future financial success but things haven’t gone as well as they’d hoped. Everyone likes the bold, interactive ad units but not everyone is in a position to fork over the kind of cash it takes to run one.

The big boys like Ford, Coca-Cola and Campbell’s are using the program, and AOL’s Tim Armstrong says that the response to the ads themselves has been good. He says folks stay on Project Devil ads almost four times longer than the industry average. In this case, time really is money, because longer engagement times usually result in conversions and better brand recognition.