This handy app can help you create ads with impact but with very little effort.
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
An app called Plotaverse helps marketers to create great ads without the dreaded and costly content creation process. Quickly bypassing established app giants, the young startup’s iOS app made the list of Facebook’s top 10 mobile apps.
The photo app’s animation features allow businesses of any calibre to create impactful ads fast and on a budget. More or less, you can choose from many artistically appealling gifs and put your message over them. The artwork on the site is truly eye-catching.
But how did Plotaverse’s 8 months old mobile app manage to disrupt visual advertising, going up against 8 billion video views a day on Facebook alone?
Images animated with Plotaverse, formerly known as Plotagraph, are the key to its success. The app ads movement to any single still photo. This creates ads that stand out in saturated media feeds.
Brands like Coca Cola, Wella, Chevrolet and Red Bull were seen boosting their brand with captivating Plotagraphs. There is no need for video, multiple photos or video editing skills to turn a photograph into a Plotagraph. Users of any skill level can quickly animate and post uniquely moving images to their business and social page.
On Instagram and Facebook, Plotagraphs have proven to attract up to 5 times the amount of views and engagement than surrounding images.
Every day, 4.5 million business pages on Facebook are trying to cut through 1.32 billion daily active users according to WordStream. As expected, Adobe’s titan apps, Photoshop Express and Spark Post head Facebook’s list of Photo Enhancing apps. But the tiny startup’s photo animation app has unexpectedly spearheaded the looping content industry.
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A new experiment suggests that pop-up ads can have an adverse effect on consumers’ perceptions of the content.
By MediaStreet Staff Writers
Scrolls ads, a newer style of advertisement designed for mobile screens, show signs of being more effective than older forms of digital advertising. This is according to a new experimental study conducted by The Media Insight Project, a collaboration between the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. This new research has significant implications for a news industry that is constantly searching for new revenue models to finance journalism.
(For the unitiated, a scroll ad is an interactive ad format which is adapted to the reading behavior of your visitors. The ad opens at the bottom right only when the visitor scrolls down. This ad format will close automatically or can closed directly from the visitor.)
An example is here:
“Banner and pop-up ads have been the standard way to advertise online for decades, though they have met consumer resistance, especially in mobile,” said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute. “Our research into online advertisements finds that formats designed more recently, and with mobile in mind, strike users as less intrusive and more pleasing. To our surprise, compared with ad formats designed for other web environments, scroll ads can also improve recall of the product being advertised and enhance trust in the article where the ad appears.”
These are some of the results of the online survey experiment conducted with 1,489 participants between November 9 and December 6, 2016, using AmeriSpeak, NORC’s nationally representative survey panel. The online panel interface allows respondents to see and respond to content presented to them digitally, something that is not possible with traditional phone surveys.
Key findings:
The experiment finds that people are more likely to recall the product accurately if it appears in a scroll ad than if it appears in either a pop-up or static ad. Indeed, 34 percent of users accurately recalled the product from the scroll ad versus 26 percent in static ads and 25 percent in pop-up ads. The differences were even more pronounced if you take just those people who say they noticed the ad at all. The majority of all respondents, 57 percent, fell into this group.
People are no more likely to notice pop-up ads than they are scroll ads (61 percent vs. 62 percent for scroll) and are less likely to recall the product in pop-up ads, just 41 percent versus 55 percent in scroll ads and 53 percent in static ads. Pop-up ads also have several negative effects. For instance, 61 percent of people say pop-up ads make the article more difficult to read (vs. 37 percent for scroll ads and 19 percent for static ads).
When readers are interested in the topic of the ad, they are more likely to express some positive evaluations of the article and engage with that article. Overall, people who are interested in the topic of the ad provide more positive evaluations of the article, including that it provides diverse points of view (28 percent vs. 19 percent) and that it is entertaining (32 percent vs. 25 percent). However, those interested in the subject of the ad are no more likely to say the article got the facts right, had a professional appearance, that it was easy to find important information, or that the information was trustworthy.
“Scroll ads should play an even bigger role in online advertising because they appear to be more effective on a range of metrics than pop-up ads and static banners,” said Trevor Tompson, director of The AP-NORC Center. “These ads optimised for mobile produce benefits to the advertiser and the news outlet compared to older styles of digital advertising.”
A new study that includes a University of Kansas researcher has found that the level of smile intensity in marketing photos influences how consumers perceive the marketer’s competence and warmth, which can lead to different results depending on the context.
“We found that broad smiles lead people to be perceived as warmer but less competent,” said Jessica Li, a KU assistant professor of marketing in the School of Business. “We ask how that can influence consumer behaviour and in what situations might marketers want to smile more broadly.”
The study by Li and her co-authors was published online recently and will be in the January issue of the Journal of Consumer Research, one of the leading journals on marketing academic research.
Participants in the study viewed images of marketing photos that depicted the marketer either smiling broadly or only slightly. The researchers found that in advertisements for services that carry higher risk, consumers were more likely to assign competence to marketers that smiled only slightly rather than more broadly, which was associated with warmth but not necessarily competence. Credit :Journal of Consumer Research
The researchers conducted experiments in which respondents viewed marketing images that included marketers with either broad or slight smiles. Also, they conducted a content analysis of postings on a crowdfunding website, Kickstarter.com, where people commonly seek donations for causes or business ventures.
Past marketing and psychological research has focused on smiles leading consumers to perceive people as being friendly and viewed in a more positive light. However, Li said the research team’s new study shows that is true but that there can be a trade-off in how a smile might elicit action from a consumer.
Li said one consideration is the context of the service the marketer is providing and whether or not there is potential risk associated with it.
The intensity of someone’s smile in a marketing image elicits two fundamental dimensions of social judgements – warmth and competence, the researchers found.
Li said broader smiles that tend to elicit more warmth seem to be more effective in promotional ads for a service that would carry less risk. But photos with a slight smile did better in marketing scenarios where services were higher risk, such as a medical procedure, legal representation or investment in a startup company.
“If I see an ad with a heart surgeon who smiles really broadly at me, I might think she is really warm, but not choose her to be my doctor because she seems less competent than a surgeon with a slight smile,” Li said. “If the risk is really low, such as going to the store to get a new shirt, then the competence of the salesperson isn’t as important and I respond more positively to the broad smile.”
In their analysis of Kickstarter.com, when the page creator’s profile photo exhibited a broad smile that tended to elicit perceptions of warmth, the total amount of money pledged decreased by more than 50 percent, and the average contribution per backer was 30 percent less than when the creator’s photo included only a slight smile.
“Project creators with a slight smile are perceived as more competent,” Li said. “More people wanted to donate to their project because they believe this competent person is able to deliver the product.”
However, a more intense smile does appear to elicit more buzz on social media or other low-cost behaviours. Profile photos with a broader smile received twice as many Facebook shares than someone with a slight smile.
“It’s intuitive that if you seem to be friendly but not competent, people will want to help you in low-cost ways but not necessarily be willing to give you a lot of money,” she said.
The study could be valuable for marketers as they strategise on how to best elicit a response for their products. “Warmth and competence are such important judgements,” Li said. “We want to make sure we are giving people the right signal.”
Millennial attention spans require ads that are just 5 to 6 seconds in length, according to a new study by comScore.
Millennials spent 61 percent of their online time in smartphone apps, 8 percent on the mobile web, 25 percent on desktop, and just 5 percent on tablets.
If you’re an advertiser who wants to market a product to millennials, you’re going to have to make it quick.
A new study by comScore revealed online ads targeted toward millennials have to be around 5 to 6 seconds to be effective, a sharp contrast from the traditional 30-second commercial seen on TV.
“The length of time of an episode or a viewing period is really important and has got to be short, otherwise you just won’t keep the attention of millennials,” comScore CEO Gian Fulgoni told CNBC’s “Squawk Alley.”
The format of advertising may have to be radically changed to reach millennials, he suggested.
“You’re going to have to make your case literally in a matter of seconds and make sure you grab somebody’s attention, Fulgoni said.
Millennials are spending the majority of their online time on mobile, according to the new study. Millennials said they spent 61 percent in smartphone apps and 8 percent on the mobile web. A quarter of their time was on desktop, and just 5 percent was spent on tablets.
As many other studies have shown, Snapchat was found to be extremely popular. Two out of 3 millennials were using the app, with 80 percent of the youngest millennials surveyed on Snapchat. It was also growing in popularity among older millennials.
Still, Facebook was the leader, with 95 percent of millennials surveyed on the platform.
“It’s going to be interesting to see what happens over time, especially as these millennials age into the older segment,” Fulgoni said.
When choosy parents choose Folláin jam and sports fans who call themselves sports fans subscribe to SkySports, identity marketing is hard at work. But what happens when this type of advertising misses the mark?
According to a study in the Journal of Consumer Research, when a person’s sense of ownership and freedom is threatened they are less likely to respond positively to identity marketing campaigns.
“While people may be drawn to brands that fit their identity, they are also more likely to desire a sense of ownership and freedom in how they express that identity. Identity marketing that explicitly links a person’s identity with a brand purchase may actually undermine that sense of freedom and backfire,” write authors Amit Bhattacharjee (Dartmouth College), Jonah Berger (Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania), and Geeta Menon (New York University).
The researchers ran a series of five studies that compared two types of identity marketing, messages that simply referenced consumer identity or messages that explicitly tied consumer identity to a brand purchase. Participants were first asked to answer questions about the importance of a given identity in their overall life. They then viewed an advertisement for a brand that appealed to that specific identity. The advertisement used a headline that either referenced the identity or explicitly linked it to a brand. Participants then rated their likelihood to purchase a product from within the brand.
Study results showed that explicit identity marketing messages backfired with consumers who cared about the specific identity and resulted in a lower likelihood to purchase the product. This information may help brands understand why some people react negatively to products used in important areas of their lives.
“Contrary to the traditional thinking about identity marketing, our research shows that people who care deeply about an identity are not receptive to messages that explicitly communicate how a brand fits with their lifestyle,” the authors conclude. “In fact, to restore their sense of freedom, some people may avoid purchasing a product that otherwise appeals to them and fits with who they are.”
There you go marketers. You can suggest your product to your customer using their identity, but not tell your customer that if they are a certain type of person that they will buy it for sure. Humans: we hate being told what to do.
n the mid-1990s, Ethan Zuckerman worked for Tripod.com, one of the first free web-hosting services for creating personal websites. Zuckerman, now director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, believed deeply in the ethos of the early internet, a global public square where every voice had equal footing. But keeping Tripod free to users meant that revenue had to come from somewhere else. Like millions of other web companies, they chose advertising.
Soon Tripod was selling online ad space directly on Tripod-hosted personal websites, which worked fine until a major car company noticed that one of its ads was posted on a site celebrating anal sex. Zuckerman, believing he was acting in the best interest of both the advertiser and internet users alike, wrote some code to display the car ad in a separate browser window instead of on the kinky sex page.
Pop-up ads spread across the nascent internet like a plague. Pop-ups were beloved by advertisers because they flung the company’s message in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Even better, users had to physically close the window, which forced them to interact with the ad, if only for a second. Blinded by the novelty and blanket exposure of the pop-up format, advertisers didn’t foresee the user backlash.
It didn’t take long for pop-ups to become the most universally hated part of online life. By the early 2000s, pop-up blockers were standard on most web browsers and the worst of the pop-up era was over. But that doesn’t mean that advertisers stopped looking for “creative” ways to grab our attention online.
Why Annoying Ads Work
While old-school pop-ups are rare nowadays, there are plenty of ways that advertisers still hold us hostage for content. There are “prestitial” ads that block the whole screen as a website loads, forcing you to wait 15 seconds before clicking “continue to site.” There are “interstitial” ads that display after you visit the site. Some preloading ads on videos can be skipped after five seconds, others can’t (has 30 seconds ever felt so long?). And there are videos that expand — with sound! — if you accidentally hover your mouse over the ad.
Why would advertisers and content providers continue to risk alienating users with ads that most people try to skip or close as quickly as possible?
One reason is that they work. In general, “rich media” ads that contain video or other interactive elements are more engaging to online consumers, says John Dinsmore, a marketing professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. That expanding video screen that launches when you hover your mouse over an ad for two seconds is called a lightbox ad or hover ad. Google, which created the lightbox format, claims that they are “six to eight times more engaging than a static video box,” says Dinsmore.
One study showed that the top 10 highest-performing pop-up ads had an impressive conversion rate of 9.28 percent (conversion rate means a person took action — such as going to the advertised website — after viewing the ad). One marketing expert found that adding a hover ad to his site increased sales by 162 percent and newsletter subscriptions by 86 percent.
The Better Way to Do Internet Advertising
Michael McNulty is the product marketing manager for rich media for Sizmek, a marketing company that gives advertisers a huge selection of online ad formats to play with, from standard banner ads to full-screen “expandables” (ads that expand to cover the whole screen when clicked on) and “pushdowns” (ads that push the site content down as they expand).
As with any piece of technology, McNulty explains, there are smart ways and careless ways to deploy it. It starts with targeting. Like it or not, your every move on the internet is likely being tracked and sold to advertisers. By analyzing your search terms and browsing history, for example, Google might know that you’re in the market for a new vehicle, preferably a hybrid SUV that can seat seven. While McNulty would never advise a carmaker to blast a flashy video ad at every random web user, in your specific case, a high-impact ad for a seven-seater hybrid SUV could really pay off.
“If you have marketing agencies that go the extra mile to know what users want and what they respond to, you’re giving them a reason to watch something you’re putting in front of them whether it’s obtrusive or not,” McNulty says.
McNulty says at Sizmek, the default setting for all rich media ads is to only launch if it’s user-initiated. Meaning, the user has to click “expand” before the interactive video window will launch — no videos that automatically play or pop-ups. But ultimately, he doesn’t control what the client and their creative team want to do with the tools that Sizmek provides. Those settings can be tweaked to deliver whatever ad experience the client wants, including the bad kind.
Annoying, untargeted, unwanted ads poses a big threat to the future of the entire ad-supported internet. Instead of just turning on pop-up blockers in their browsers, more people are installing ad-blocking software that kills all ads, even the relatively benign ones.
If a content website can’t serve you ads, it can’t pay the bills. And that could mean less “free” internet and more charges for consumers to access a website, read a blog post, or watch a video.
Social media marketing is currently a very popular practice for businesses. But it isn’t all success and roses. A recent Temple study shows that businesses must find a proper balance in order to avoid negative results. So for businesses who currently rely on social media marketing to attract new customers, listen up.
While the potential for social media marketing seems almost limitless, a study led by Ph.D. candidate Shuting Wang and senior associate dean of research Paul Pavlou reveals the exact opposite. The Temple professionals recently conducted a study which looked to determine the specific value of social media marketing in relation to data from WeChat and a Chinese shoe retailer.
The study revealed that while social media advertising had a positive impact on increasing customer sales in the short term, it actually created a negative impact on the business in the long term.
When looking at the specific figures, the business witnessed a 5% increase in sales on the same day following a social media post. However, this same post increased the chance that customers would unfollow the business by 300%. Within five months, the retailer experienced a 5% decreased in sales paired with a 20% loss of online followers within a year.
With regard to these findings, Shuting Wang notes that people often “get annoyed” by a company’s post in the long term compared to the short term. “In that case, they will unfollow, which will lead to a long-term decrease in purchases,” Wang said.
Researcher Paul Pavlou believes this phenomenon can be contributed to the way in which companies often “over-do” social media.
“They see that the more posts they put out there, the more sales they’re going to see,” Pavlou notes. “Companies should be more careful with this and focus more on their long-term goals. Social media marketing is so quick, so immediate that companies say, ‘Well, let me leverage this as much as possible in the short term,’ and they may actually miss the big picture.”
While the study findings support the idea that too much social media advertising can hurt a company’s sales production, there are contextual factors which also play a role. Professor Paul Greenwood notes that these factors include, “What time of day it is, and where people are located.” In addition, the professor notes that people in large cities “Unfollow a lot faster…and if you post during rush hour, people unfollow a lot faster, but if you post at off-peak hours or smaller locations, that effect seems to go away.”
While the full extent of social media marketing trends have yet to be identified, Greenwood believes that future research will look to address whether dissatisfied customers go to competing firms or simply stop purchasing in general. This information will drastically help businesses fine-tune their social media strategies going forward.
While the Temple study revealed the potentially harmful effects of social media advertising, it is important to note this only took place when attempting to sell products. Businesses who have a balanced social media approach, or one which incorporates potential sales with public relations, are much more likely to create productive customer relationships in the long run.
For some interesting case studies on this topic, click here.
