Tag Archives: digital advertising

Nerdery webinar on banner ads, Aug 31 and Sept 2

Some people find banner ads maddening, sometimes with probable cause. Some are conditioned to never ever click a banner ad, but with the right design you can get them to have a look. And we can help. RSVP at http://www.nerdery.com/banners to check out one of our two free webinars on banner ads – Tuesday August 31 at 10:15 a.m. Central and Thursday September 2 at 3:15 p.m. Central.

We’ll address two primary kinds of banner ads: those designed as a call to action (the ones that beg to be clicked, made to drive traffic) and those that just sit pretty for the sake of brand awareness. We’ll cover development best practices favored by media service providers and the standards of rich media service providers regarding tech specs, sizes, bells and whistles.

If you want your banner ad to really make a scene, we can make that happen – but buyer beware that placement costs rise, as do risks of being more distraction than attraction to some online consumers voting with dollars of their own. Maybe a game is the right play for your banner, but maybe not. Nerdery developers are good at weighing in on what will work, and really good at working directly with media and rich media service providers to implement the ideas of our agency partners.

Good seats (of your choosing) are still available, please RSVP.

The tabs on Facebook they are a-changin’

Facebook is reducing the width of custom profile tabs to 520 pixels (down from 760). If you’ve created a custom tab (think landing page of a Facebook app) it’s gonna get 32% slimmer next week.

Imagine if someone came along and lopped off “are a-changin’” from the headline of this post. Bob Dylan and I would be pissed about losing context and leaving you hanging like that. Now, picture that Facebook tab you so lovingly designed, and imagine watching helplessly as that awful Leatherface severed it by one-third with his chainsaw. How does it feel?

Words and images, if not cut off, may be scrambled instead. Clickable links might lose their interactivity. Scary stuff.

Obviously, from here forward we’re building within the 520 frame, and we’re ready to help you adjust existing Facebook tabs – whether we developed the original or not. So fear not, agency partners and clients. The Nerdery will protect you from Leatherface.

Friday Links: More iPhone 4 drama, social media crack, and some stuff about typewriters

• Meet Brian J. Hogan, the dude who stole the iPhone 4 and sold it Gizmodo.
• Also, a handy flow chart of the whole Gizmodo iPhone 4 drama.
• And, finally, because I have to: Steve Jobs’ kiss off letter to Flash.
• Much like crack, students go through withdrawal when they can’t access social media.
• An interview with Threadless’ VP of Marketing on the eve of their 10th Anniversary.
• The worst of sci-fi/fantasy book covers. The best of the worst? I Sing the Body Electric.
• Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the world for 2010. Once again they forgot me. (and Yahoo collects the five people from the list you’ve never heard of).
• Website teaches kids not to get suckered by ads. This reminds me of the girls I nannied for while I was in college. They begged for some Chips Ahoy cookies of some sort because there was supposed to be a party in each bite. “Uh, there’s no party in my mouth,” one of them said upon tasting the regular old cookie. She was crushed.
• Rock it old school: stickers to make your mac look like a typewriter. I wonder if they can make it so you get that delicious clicking sound and a ding when you reach the end of a line.
• Related to the last: beautiful, beautiful advertisements for Olivetti typewriters.
• Leslie Buck, designer of the iconic NY Greek coffee cup, died.
• The saga of forgotten brands and their logos.

Agency Primer Notes: 1 Up, Gaming & Advertising

If you missed last week’s Agency Primer about gaming & advertising, there’s no need to worry you get an extra life right here. We’ve got video and the slide deck from our one-hour conversation with SnowOwl Studio, a game design company on the topic of gaming as advertising. Some of the things covered in the presentation include:

• 10 reasons gaming is good advertising
• Who’s playing: an overview of modern gamer demographics
• A survey of gaming platforms and their relative development costs

Agency Primer: Gaming and Advertising from The Nerdery on Vimeo.

Friday Links: Is collectivism ruining the Internet?

• Your must read of the week, Caterina Fake’s response to Jaron Lanier’s claim in the Wall Street Journal that collectivism is ruining the Internet.
• Time test: Pen v keyboard v Newton v Graffiti v Treo v iPhone. Which one do you think will be the fastest when it comes to entering text?
• The evolution of the Super Bowl logo. I’m partial to the XI myself. I like that kicky little swirl.
• Ad Week has posted all 66 commercials in the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” series. You know, in case you missed one.
• Take a look at the controversial new logo for the New York City Opera. It looks like a circle inside a rectangle to me. I don’t get it. If you do, please explain.
• Infographic of the Week: Charting the Beatles.
• The Ford logo that almost was.

Thursday Links, because tomorrow is a holiday

• Worst Gadgets of the Decade
• AT&T says New York City is not ready for the iPhone.
• This one’s only for the hardcore. Wipe The Slate Clean For 2010, Commit Web 2.0 Suicide which is program that deletes your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and LinkedIn friends/tweets/updates and then changes your login information so you can’t get back in. Wow.
• Top Digital trends from 2010, predictions from AdWeek.
• The Decade summed up in icons.
• Where Digital Marketing Is Heading in 2010 (Part 1).
• The Batman villain project.

Friday Links: Understanding designers, holiday newsletter MadLibs, and more greatness

• The 10 Commandments of Brand.
• Must See! Infographic showing browser share from 2002-2009.
• Evolution of Horror Movie Poster Designs from 1922-2009
• 72% Of Advertisers See More Digital Spending In 2010.
• It’s been awhile since I’ve pointed out a stunningly beautiful print ad campaign, so take a gander at Words Create Worlds for a bookshop in Prague.
• Check this one out when you’re not on the billable clock, Merry Newsinator. It’s an awesome holiday e-newsletter generator that’s kind of like playing MadLibs.
• 7 rules to understanding designers.
• The World’s 10 most-successful logo designers.

Friday Links: Feeling grumpy is good for you, and other news

• The Nerdery wants to recruit you.
• Why digital agencies aren’t ready to lead: “Digital agencies are having a ton of fun experimenting with ideas, technologies and strategies to find new alternatives superior to obsolete ways of doing marketing. That’s what they do best. The problem is, this is the only thing they are doing.” (make sure you check out the 78 comments)
• You need to read the saga of the poor American Airlines UX guy who was fired
• Three Rowlf moon t-shirt
• Feeling grumpy is good for you
• Succeed Blog, for when you need some positivity in your life.
• iPhone vs. BlackBerry Owners:
  Your Phone Tells All
• Public Image Unlimited: Consumerism and Anonymity’s End
• The Elements: A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe
• How business is adopting design thinking
• The post might be in Spanish, but this Beatles USB drive translates to awesome.
• Win an iPod Touch and a dream job at The Nerdery.

A birthday you probably ignored, the banner ad is now 15

Over at AdvertisingAge Frank D’Angelo celebrates the 15th birthday of digital advertising. In the article D’Angelo explains how they were tasked with creating some sort of graphical ad unit to explore the new medium, specifically to create ads for HotWired, the first commercial web magazine.

If it helps you set this story more firmly in history one of the initial six companies to jump into the uncharted digital advertising waters was Zima. Oh, 1994 were the good old days weren’t they? (The other five were MCI, Volvo, Club Med, AT&T, and 1-800-Collect).

Read the article to find out what two words of copy managed to generate a 78% click-through rate on one of those ads.

Interactive marketing expected to trump traditional advertising by 2014

Everyone who works in the interactive/digital marketing space is sort of fluttery with anticipation and hope today. Why? Because of two studies released this week pointing to a huge increase in the interactive space over the next five years.

First came the Forrester Research that predicts interactive marketing in the US will grow to $55 billion by 2014 and includes this delightful nugget:

Unlike the last recession, digital marketing is no longer experimental. Now it looks more like advertising is inefficient, relative to digital. More than half of the marketers we surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, TV, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.

Following on the heels of the AdAge comes news from Forbes on Outsell, Inc.’s prediction that $65 billion will shift from traditional advertising to interactive.

Both articles are absolute must-reads for anyone who works in the interactive space — marketer, sales person, designer, developer, executive.