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Electric Media lands eBay accounts

Edward — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 10:41:45 +0000

Ireland’s largest digital ad sales agency, Electric Media, has secured an exclusive deal to sell the combined eBay inventory for Ireland and the UK.
Irish eBay traffic stands at 800,000 unique users with 51 million page impressions per month being generated. The deal with eBay.co.uk means its Irish inventory can be offered to its clients, resulting in an additional 150,000 unique users and four million monthly page impressions.
“Electric Media can now offer its clients a figure of nearly one million unique users via eBay in Ireland and the UK,” says Dermot Hanrahan, CEO of Electric Media.

Outdoor digital advertising worth €25m

Edward — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:11:17 +0000

The combined value of the ambient and digital out of home market in Republic of Ireland for 2011 is €24.6m. ‘Traditional’ ambient media such as trolley handles, Citybox and pub based media accounts for €21.8m of this total with digital out of home media being valued at €2.8m for 2011.
These figures are part of a 2011 market review by outdoor media firm PML. Heineken Ireland was the top advertiser on ambient in terms of display value at €2,234,029. Other major advertisers on ambient in 2011 included PepsiCo, Diageo and Mars. The top 10 advertisers on ambient media in 2011 accounted for 39% of the entire ambient market.

You can own the full report by downloading it here: FULL REPORT

Apple needs to be radical to build its mobile ad business

Gerard — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 12:49:04 +0000

Apple has hired Todd Teresi, a former head of digital publishing at Adobe, to head its iAd mobile-advertising business ahead of a ‘major’ media announcement later this month.
Speculating on Apple events has become a favourite sport of bloggers and tech writers. Most believe Apple will announce a new deal between it and America’s major magazine publishers and advertisers.
The event will be held in New York, home of the biggest magazine & book publishers and ad agencies. Eddy Cue, a senior Apple executive who is in charge of Apple’s iTunes and the App Store is to lead the event.
Putting two and two together and getting four is quite easy in this case. Teresi managed Digital Publishing Suite software at Adobe, which allowed publishers like Conde Nast to create digital editions of their publications for Apple’s iPad and the various Android tablets. Teresi, at Apple, will become the key contact with Madison Avenue and New York’s biggest publishers. Eddy Cue is head of Apple’s App Store, a platform that is at the heart of the firm’s publishing business and relates directly to iAd, its mobile ad business.

iAds are too expensive
iAd has struggled to convince advertisers of its potential and is trailing Google’s mobile ad offering. The mobile ad business in the US will hit $4.4 billion by 2015 according to eMarketeer, and Apple doesn’t want to be left behind. Apple’s major problem is that iAds are too expensive to buy and they only run on iPhones and iPads. Advertisers want better value and wider reach. Google’s mobile ad system, for example, works on both Android and Apple devices.

The guess is
If I were a betting man, and I am, I’d wager Apple is going to announce a few things at this event. First, that iAds will be better value, second that iAds will run on both Apple and Android devices and third that it has signed major deals with the top US magazine publishers to sell their digital magazines and books at better discounts to consumers.

Needs to be radical
If Apple wants to carve a position for itself as a media company – offering publications, books, music, movies and ads for sale – then it’s going to have to do something radical. Forging significant and better-value partnerships with the most powerful players in the publishing and advertising businesses in the US will be just the start.

Digital Marketing Institute opens office in Dubai

Stephen — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:50:57 +0000

Dublin’s Digital Marketing Institute has launched a new operation in Dubai. The organisation aims to train and certify students in all aspects of digital marketing throughout the Middle East region.
“Any of the digital marketing professionals we have spoken to here in the region – and we have spoken to a lot of them – will tell you that their biggest challenge is just finding those local skills,” said David Carpenter, the chief executive of the newly formed Digital Marketing Institute Middle East. “There is a major problem here, and it’s only going to accelerate.”
Digital Marketing Institute estimates that the Middle East training and certification market will be worth over €2 million to the Institute within two years.

A happy Christmas by Coke

Emma — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 14:05:31 +0000

Coca-Cola Philippines recently struck the right chord with a small digital ad campaign. A short film for the brand, showing how it helped three ex-pat Filipinos fly home for Christmas, went viral after it was shared across Facebook more than 240,000 times. The film was created by McCann Erickson Philippines.
You can read more about the latest successful viral ad campaigns here.

DRG launches real-time ad solution – Admarket.ie

Edward — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 12:37:34 +0000

Kevin Foley, commercial director, DRG

Digital Reach Group (DRG) has launched a new, real-time mobile and web advertising solution.
Admarket.ie is a real-time bidding service that allows advertising to be purchased and served on the fly. Advertisers can bid on ad impressions as they are served rather than buying bulk ad impressions by category.
This “brings a highly targeted approach to advertising that shifts advertisers’ focus from purchasing website pages to buying actual audiences based on audience profiles”, claims Kevin Foley, commercial director, DRG.
Real time bidding is becoming popular in the US and will grow to a $5 billion business by 2015, a five-fold increase on the $1 billion forecasted spend this year.
When users visit a website, an auction is conducted between multiple advertisers for impressions on that site. The advertisers bid for those impressions based on the value of the users (behavioural and demographic data), the context in which the ads are shown (e.g. the subject matter of the website) and the types of ad unit (dimensions, scope for rich media). The highest paying advertisers win the auctions and it is their ads that are shown to website visitors. This whole auction process takes place in milliseconds, which is why the process is referred to as “real-time.”
Admarket.ie has already signed agreements with a number of web and mobile publishers in the Irish market.
“For Irish website owners, big and small, it allows for high inventory sell out rates which can also run alongside their premium offering without affecting their current market rates,” says Foley.

WordPress launches WordAds – high quality ads for blogs

Gerard — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 13:25:00 +0000

Blogging. A waste of time or just a form of self expression that some people crave? Either way there are very few bloggers who make money from their efforts. Why? Because most big advertisers don’t advertise on blogs (unless you create the next Mashable or aspire to be PerezHilton).
Now, the planet’s most popular blogging tool WordPress.com says this is about to change. WordPress has just launched an ad serving platform in partnership with Federate Media. It’s called WordAds.
“You pour a lot of time and effort into your blog and you deserve better than AdSense,” states the WordPress blog. “If you’re going to have advertising on your site, it darn well better be good. You deserve better than AdSense. Well we think we’ve cracked it, and we’re calling it WordAds.
“WordAds is 100% optional and is designed for bloggers who would like to earn money from their blogs by showing high quality ads from brand advertisers.”

See more here.

Some powerful blogs (from The Guardian).

Electric Media partners with world’s largest video ad network

Edward — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:38:59 +0000

Electric Media, Ireland’s largest digital advertising company, has announced a partnership with the world’s largest video ad network, BrightRoll.
With a global reach of 120+ million unique viewers, and 38% of all online viewers in the UK, BrightRoll has access to more unique viewers online in the UK than YouTube, Sky and ITV combined.
“Brightroll’s reach in the United States and the UK will add to what Electric Media can offer clients in the Irish digital advertising market,” says Dermot Hanrahan, CEO Electric Media. “Video-on-Demand or ‘VOD’ will see ad revenue growth over the next year and we have added BrightRoll to our VOD line-up along with Entertainment.ie and TV3′s 3Player.”
Over seven million streams per month will now be accessible to Irish advertisers. Electric Media can also provide audience targeting methods. Online now takes over 13% of all total ad spend in the Irish market and is growing year-on-year.

Pop-up shops for bloggers

Emma — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:48:24 +0000

Here at DT we really like this innovation from Swedish interior design retailer Lagerhaus (nothing to do with beer). Meet the world’s first pop-up shops for blogs.
Rather than creating a pop-up shop on its Facebook page, Lagerhaus created a pop-up shop widget for blogs and then gave it to some influential interior design bloggers.
The bloggers embedded the widget on their blogs and then started to customize the ‘stores’ with their favourite Lagerhaus products.
The campaign is clever on many levels not least because it engages with key influencers and has a far greater reach than just opening a store on one company Facebook page.
The campaign was run by a PR firm, PrimePR and has been shortlisted for the European Excellence Awards. The results are impressive, the campaign generated 13,000 peer-to-peer invitations to the fan-only opening of the online store, increased Facebook fans by 226% and interactions 360% (see video).

Blue Cube’s Lottery win

Stephen — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 15:17:43 +0000

(l-r) Jonathan Heron, Blue Cube; Ronan Hayes, National Lottery; Ronan Leech, National Lottery; Eric Sexton, National Lottery; Jenny Paetzold, Blue Cube and Sébastien Sicot, Blue Cube.

Blue Cube Interactive has won the digital strategy, project management, creative and design account for Lottery.ie after a competitive five way pitch.
The digital agency will assist in the strategic development of the lottery on web, mobile and social channels. It will also project manage all elements of the web site development and hosting and will build the National Lottery brand online – through web design, advertising banners, micro-sites, emails, mobile phones and tablets.
Lottery.ie recently re-launched with a transactional website where visitors can register an account and play National Lottery draw games (Lotto and EuroMillions) and instant win games online.
The website receives approximately 40,000 visitors a day and can reach up to 125,000 visitors on days where jackpots are high. The iPhone app has over 100,000 downloads.
“Play Online is a real growth opportunity for the National Lottery,” says Ronan Leech, National Lottery marketing development manager.
“The National Lottery’s connection with all its consumers is unique and we look forward to deepening that connection online,” says Sébastien Sicot, managing and creative director for Blue Cube Dublin.