Online ad sales: How to make the best media packs

Oli Haill — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 17:08:34 +0000

Media packs may not seem an exciting subject but they are among the most important marketing and promotion tools for publishers and media owners. We canvassed insights from our own online advertising sales experts and several London ad agencies to provide some top tips about what separates a compelling media pack from a useless one. What is a media pack? In the advertising sales world, a media pack is a means for a publisher to tell advertisers about their website and why they should advertise there. Ideally, a media pack is a short document that grabs attention in order to attract advertising for your publication. They generally explain what content is featured on the website, the size and demographics of the site’s audience, plus some ideas of sponsorship opportunities. You can keep it snappy or extend it with various other pages that dig down or expand these elements. Format: PDF or online microsite For a long time media kits were in Powerpoint presentation form (often with the final document known as a deck), as they were generally the prelude to a meeting and even printed out in ye olden days. They are commonly put into pdf format these days, but to make them more...

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The diary of a media agency intern

Oli Haill — Fri, 02 Dec 2016 17:04:07 +0000

Hi there, I’m Matthew, The Internet Works’ intern. I’m just putting the finishing touches to this, my first diary entry, on a Friday after attending a traditional ‘media Thursday’ last night – boozing and schmoozing at a Carat drinks do. But I felt fine this morning – which is one of the reasons I think I got this gig! On the other hand, I reckon I got hired because of my name. There were two Johns in the office and only one Matt before I arrived to balance things out. It was the shortest interview ever: with what I assume are some typical media agency questions like how much alcohol I can handle on a Thursday and come in fresh on Friday. The less typical part was to fly a virtual reality plane in the Red Bull Air Race computer game, which is one of the sales projects the company is working on with the game’s publisher. And my interview was pretty much done… That’s just agency life in London – well I thought it was a breeze until I had to go to my first media agency party, thanks to Cloth Court media agency. It was an eye opener...

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New flexible online ad formats help fight adblockers

Oli Haill — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 17:31:39 +0000

A new range of recommended sizes and flexible formats of online adverts has been launched by the internet advertising industry to improve the web experience for consumers and publishers, adapt to changes in mobile technology and counter the rise of ad-blockers. In this article we’ll explain the new online ad formats in more detail, give our opinion and look at the technical transition for publishers and advertisers. To counteract the rising use of ad-blockers, online advertisers and publishers need to recognise that people go to websites to consume content. Yes, the adverts pay for that content but if the adverts are putting people off or getting blocked, nobody’s winning. Therefore, to try and make websites a more pleasant place to browse and surf, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), the trade association for online and mobile advertising, has designed a new ‘standard ad unit portfolio’ that aims to improve user experience and reduce the use of adblockers. The new ad formats are based on HTML5 technology to be flexible, or responsive, across various sizes of screen — desktop to tablet to mobile. Just as importantly, all ads should begin to conform to the principles of the ‘LEAN’ initiative which calls for ads to have a Light file size,...

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Virtual reality: funding models and VR in-game advertising

Oli Haill — Sat, 01 Oct 2016 15:40:52 +0000

What has virtual reality got to do with TheInternetWorks? Simple: in-game advertising within the Red Bull Air Race game is a development that enables it to be the first ever AAA-rated VR game to be offered free October 2016 is a big month for virtual reality, or VR, as it is when the world’s biggest and most successful games console maker, Sony, follows market pioneer Oculus Rift and rival HTC Vive and launches its PlayStation VR headset. The addition of Sony, who have sold around 325 million of their various PlayStation consoles over the years, into the VR mix will certainly bring possibly millions of new gamers into the VR market – especially as the headset is designed to be used with the PS4 console, of which there are around 43 millions in homes around the globe. Facebook-owned Oculus also has a pipeline of developments that will seriously swell its user numbers in coming months and years, including a completely wireless Oculus Rift headset and alterations to allow a wider base of PC users to operate VR headsets. Further forward, Xbox Project Scorpio is designed to be Microsoft’s VR-enabling console, while Apple has filed patents, hired VR experts and seen the rumours set off like wildfire. Virtual...

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Google Chrome blocks Flash ads from 1 September 2015

Berta Franco — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 12:26:29 +0000

Flash ads are now being blocked on Google Chrome. Examining how this change will affect your ad campaigns, and what you can do to adapt, is TIW ad ops manager Berta Franco. After the so-called ‘Mobilegeddon’ we thought Google had had its fill of updates for 2015, but we’re afraid not. From 1 September 2015, Google will introduce an update to its Chrome browser that will effectively ‘pause’ all Adobe Flash ads on Google Chrome. What is the objective of blocking Flash? To make the page load faster To improve the battery life of our laptops To make browsing the web a little easier on the eye And ultimately, to improve the user’s experience; as Google has been getting a bit of a bad reputation for being a battery-hog, compared to its competitor browsers. When the update was announced back on 4 June, Google said in a update: “When you’re on a webpage that runs Flash, we’ll intelligently pause content that aren’t central to the webpage. This update significantly reduces power consumption, allowing you to surf the web longer before having to hunt for a power outlet” The functionality is enabled by default in the Chrome Beta desktop app. Chrome Beta desktop it will...

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When is the best time to monetise your mobile traffic? Answer – Yesterday…

Vincent Duah-Nantwi — Thu, 30 Jul 2015 13:50:11 +0000

In his first blog post for The Internet Works, publisher relationships exec Vincent Duah-Nantwi explains why now is the time to ramp up your mobile advertising efforts. Background: Where mobile has been and where it’s continuing to go Since the release of the first iPhone in 2007, the use of smartphones has rapidly increased each year and has now overtaken desktop in terms of traffic. As the graph above shows it was actually last year when mobile really made the leap, and is now firmly fixed as a major player in the online advertising game, if not THE major player – advertisers are no longer burying their heads in the sand when it comes to mobile media spend. Where our mobile advertising is now As of June 2015, The Internet Works’ (TIW) network has over 100 million unique users generating around half a billion page sessions worldwide. A whopping 60% of these users and sessions are accessed via mobile and tablet. We find that the more technologically advanced the country, the higher the ownership of smartphones and tablets, and therefore the higher the mobile and tablet traffic. Currently the UK and the US have the highest proportion across our portfolio. What...

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Selling B2B advertising in the summer

Jordan Lee — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 14:38:08 +0000

B2B advertising campaigns in the summer – A statistical opportunity Summer is a happy time of year, especially in the UK if the sun’s shining (yes it is belting it down with rain outside as I write). On the whole, people are more sociable and, so the thinking goes, less focused on work as their minds are on holidays, beer gardens and barbecues at the weekend. As a salesperson though, it’s traditionally not a great time of year. The reason for this – no one wants to advertise. That frustration can creep into sales meetings when we refer to the “quiet” or “tough” time of the year. It’s true as well, some clients will be on holiday, some will be distracted just thinking about their holiday and so will be caught up in the idea that it’s not a good time to advertise. While it is undeniably difficult to accrue sales revenue, sales targets and the motivation to earn commission does not disappear! We don’t get different sales targets during July and August and we still are aiming to hit the same numbers as before. This is where the negative theme of this blog comes to an end. To all...

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Why you should care about title tags

Stef Mattana — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 13:00:21 +0000

When optimising a page, one of the elements I focus my attention on the most is the title tag. I can become quite obsessed over title tags: I write and re-write them many times before finding the one that may be OK. I believe you can never give enough love to your title tags, and in this article I am going to explain why you should care about title tags too. What is a title tag? The title tag is the phrase or chunk of text that describes an online page, which you edit in your meta data. Most SEOs will agree that title tags are the most important element within on-page optimisation, and I certainly do. Imagine having to give a one-sentence definition about yourself. That’s pretty much the same with title tags. They give a relevant, one-sentence definition about the content of the page. Title tags are important because they appear in three of the most key spaces in the internet: SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Positions – i.e. where you rank on a search results page), on external websites and in browsers (at the top in your page tab). Should I care more about title tags than...

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From Blog to Business with 5 Easy Tips to Make it Happen

Simran Samra — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 15:49:27 +0000

In her first post for us, our new sales manager Simran Samra writes a blog about a blog – how ironic. Fashion, business, food, beauty, technology, money-saving, art & culture – whatever the interest-point there is a sea of passion-point blogs out there. Think of anything you care about, enjoy, want to learn about, or just want to be entertained by and you will find it online. More and more people are using the freedom of the internet to create their own brands, some of which grow to rival well-established companies. Blogs can be created with money-making in mind, with the view of setting up a business; others are cultivated hobbies which have spiralled out of control into something above and beyond the blogger’s expectation. Whatever the reason, if you’re going to do it. Do it right. This isn’t going to be an overnight, easy train to success. It takes the right tools, the right people, the right content and the right help to cultivate a stand-out blog that will be compelling and engaging in order for people to connect with you. People identify with brands and other people, so its important to always keep your target audience in mind. If people reach...

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Search retargeting adds low-cost revenue stream for publishers

Rachel Walker — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 08:39:21 +0000

A lot of publishers I chat to think that the only way to monetise their website is to add more and more advertising into it – more skyscrapers, interstitials, pagewraps, and recommended articles etc – which all take up valuable real estate. WRONG! The thought of using up more space with display advertising, which could otherwise be used for content, can be frustrating for some. Little do they know, however, there are tons of ways to monetise a website without placing more display advertising on pages. One of which is through ‘search retargeting’, which is a great additional service to your existing ad formats. Search retargeting is the act of gathering ‘user intent’ data (I will explain what this is below) with the purpose of showing relevant online advertising to the user later. It is the fastest-growing segment of display advertising and programmatic buying. What is user intent data? ‘Intent data’ is data collected about a web user that possibly indicates some intent or future action. The future action may be an online action, such as when you’ve looked at a DVD on Amazon and then this will result in an ad for that product appearing on another website that...

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