DIGITAL
Lori Goldberg,
SVP of client services,
IQ: Traffiq Professional Services
Agencies should anticipate
their clients’ digital needs
Just a few years ago, many client requests were rather ge- neric, buzzword-driven inquiries like, “What’s up with mobile?” or “I want to build a social presence.” Today,
clients are smarter and looking to improve their ROI beyond
the novelty stage to extract real, tangible value from their
digital strategies. To meet these more sophisticated needs,
agencies and technology providers must evolve and even anticipate clients’ needs before they inquire by staying one step
ahead in their expertise and offerings.
Scott Symonds, GM of media, search
and analytics at AKQA, says online
video has vast growth potential
Q: Several recent forecasts have
predicted that online advertising
spending will rival TV spending
within the next four years. Is that
what you’re seeing?
A: We’re definitely seeing a trend towards brand
spending moving online.
It’s something I thought
we’d see three or four years
ago, but now it’s coming on
as the richness of online’s
capability from video to
rich media and even mobile
is getting the attention of
brand advertisers. Even
Apple’s iAd had helped drive
a brand awareness capability
in mobile.
Q: AKQA has a lot of automotive clients, and that industry
includes some of the largest brand
advertisers. Based on your
experience with those clients,
do you think online spend will
rival TV spend by 2015, as the
forecasts indicate?
A: Auto definitely has been
an early and robust supporter of digital media. Auto-makers saw high efficacy in
banners that led to configuration, dealer appointments
and car purchases. Auto has
been a driver. The industry
has been an early adopter of
mobile as well.
We’re
seeing
clients
move
budgets
from TV
to online
video.
The hard part of predicting 2015 is what is the difference between digital and
TV if Apple TV, Netflix,
on-demand and a digitized
version of Comcast comes
around. We’re certainly
➜
Scott Symonds,
AKQA
seeing clients move budgets
from TV to online video,
and online video’s only
about $1.2 billion of digital
advertising. So I think it has
massive growth potential
versus what TV spend has.
Q: But it doesn’t seem like
advertisers are taking advantage
of all the interactive capabilities
of online video ads.
A: That’s true. We see that
TV ads are getting repur-
posed in online video. That
can be fine, but there’s room
for a lot more interactiv-
ity and different lengths.
The good news for those in
the digital business is that
we’re seeing money move to
online video. The bad news
is a repurposed TV ad is not
the best use of online.
Q: Is it possible for an advertiser
like The Coca-Cola Co. which
sponsors American Idol, to encode
its product in an online streaming
version of the show so that a
consumer could click on a Coke
can and receive a digital coupon
or sign up for a sweepstakes?
A: It’s called hotspotting,
where you can identify
portions of the video that
can be dynamically click-
able. That’s one example
of things you can do with
video. You can even control
your own destiny and have
multiple ends or events that
you can track differently
within video. Or you can
even serve video dynami-
cally based on the user,
whether he is a known or
new user and whether he
is in a hot climate or a cold
climate. You can do that
with TV a little bit, but
there’s a lot more dynamic
capability with online. n
— Tim Peterson
