Banner 2.0

I have always been a fan of the banner. I celebrated their arrival - posters can move! - and I still have the 8k non-rotating gifs I did for HP Vectra PCs. They come in useful when flash designers bemoan the measly 50K file size limit and how it is stifling their creativity.

I have also always defended them in their dark days. The reason that people no longer look at them has more to do with histrically lazy media planning and slopping creative execution than the poor 468x60 itself.

In the past few years the online ad market has been through several major technological shifts to fight back, with the introduction of behavioral, contextual and demographic targeting for to try and make them more relevant.

The next wave is driven by people like Peer39 is one whose SemanticMatch takes a holistic look at a web page, determining the overall subject and tone with technology closer than ever to human unerstanding, therfore making banners more relevant.

But I think it is deeper than that - people just don't look.

Following an interesting corridor chat with Rory Sutherland we decided that we need to retrain people to look at banners. How about a global replace banners with art day. Or Yahoo just put the local weather in banners for a week.

I think that widgetise banners could be the answer. Annoyingly I couldn't post to Blogger for some reason. OK so Nike have just chucked in their ads but this could be a precurser to bannerad.tv or something...

Tags: eyeblaster nike+widget+ad semantic+advertising giles rhys jones

The Real Disaster In Burma

Done by Ogilvy London

"In the wake of the devastating Cyclone Nargis that hit Burma on 2 May, more than one million people are homeless, up to 128,000 killed.

This natural disaster was turned into a man-made catastrophe by Burma's brutal regime. They blocked international aid and left thousands without food, shelter or medicine.

Burma is ruled by one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world. It ruthlessly persecutes, imprisons and tortures human rights and democracy activists. Thousands of men, women and children are used as slave labour. Out of sight in the jungles of Eastern Burma, more than 3,000 villages have been destroyed, rape is used as a weapon of war against ethnic women and children. Countless civilians have been killed in the regime’s war of ethnic cleansing.

The people of Burma have asked for our support. Every day they live in fear of arrest, torture and imprisonment. The Burma Campaign UK is answering their call and Ogilvy Advertising was on hand to help them do that by creating a cross media campaign.

We want the world to realise the real disaster in Burma is the government."

Tags: burma ricky gervais ogilvygiles rhys jones

New YouTube Function - Annotations

After YouTube’s integrated video advertising, they just added another cool feature: Annotations. It allows you to add text and links to your YouTube videos. You can only add links to other Youtube videos, search results or channels. It will be interesting to see what happens when they open it out to external sites with the obvious marketing opportunities that will be presented.

Here’s an interactive card trick which shows you what that looks like.

Hat tip: Fresh Creations

Tags: youtube annotations video branded content giles rhys jones

UK Digital Penetration Index

Courtesy of Deloitte's Digital Index. It measures, tracks and explains changes in the consumer take-up of 12 digital products and services, spanning technology, media and telecommunications.

Tags: uk digital penetration Deloitte Digital Index uk digital trends giles rhys jones

RDF Digital & Ogilvy Partner To Develop Entertainment

OK so abit of a press release post but I am quite chuffed about this especially as I have just taken on the role of Strategy Director for Ogilvy Entertainment...

RDF Digital and Ogilvy Entertainment have signed a development and production partnership to jointly create branded entertainment ideas and projects.

The Branded Entertainment business is particularly important for Advertising's future. It plays very much to Ogilvy's heart land as an agency as it is about story telling for brands.

Our past has been about story telling in 60 and 30 second formats. Our future will be about story telling in 60 and 30 second formats but also in 2 hour films, or 6 x 20 mini series etc...

And this will be delivered on multiple platforms including TV, mobile, IPTV, Video, and the internet.

Press coverage here.

Tags: RDF Digital ogilvy ogilvy entertainmentgiles rhys jones branded content

Report Shows UK TV Really Is Dead

Well at least in its traditional-all-sit-infront-of-the-TV-watching-scheduled-programming way, chuck in some double-dipping and you have a pretty complex living room.

A new report out shows that over half of the UK (57%) watch at least 1 hour of recorded or on demand TV a week. A third of them watch at least 3 hours.

About half of online UK residents (48%) have watched video or TV on the internet, with the vast majority using internet-based TV services for on-demand viewing (70%).

Women watch more on-demand or recorded TV than men (58% vs. 55%)

16% use internet catch up services such as the BBC iPlayer.

Most people watch internet TV or video in their home office or study (68%), followed by a communal room at home (39%) and then at work (20%). (Multiple responses allowed per user.)


The biggest drivers that would encourage more people to watch internet TV or video are more free content available (56%), quality of picture (47%) and the ability to watch internet video on a TV screen, rather than a computer (38%).

In terms of content, news (24%), entertainment (27%) and short videos (42%) are the most popular type of content to watch on computer rather than on TV.

Full PDF report tables here and slightly more digestable version here.

Tags: online tv internet tv video online giles rhys jones

Nike & Kobe Vs. Jackass

Round 2 of the "Kobe Jumps" series I guess. Round 1 was Kobe vs Aston Martin which got some bad blog press but which I liked and seemed to signal an interesting development in Nike's Basketball advertising. Doesn't really need to be deconstructued but for those of you feeling cheated; great content - media spend = great advertising.

And you have got to love anything with Wee Man...

Tags: nike+ad kobe & jackass future of advertising giles rhys jones Wee Man