Ad LogoSince the dawn of online display ads in 1993, advertisers have struggled to reach web surfers. In 1993, ads were served on portal websites such as Yahoo! and AOL. At that time display ads were simply digital versions of print ads and they were available to everyone who visited the page. Fortunately, today’s ads are more engaging and work harder for your attention. In this post, I’ll share how advertising has changed and where we’re headed.

While the destination-oriented approach to serving ad units has not gone away completely, it has been eroded by the rise of search. Search allows people to view ads through search engine results pages. These ads offer better relevance because they are targeted based on search keywords (intent). In addition, new ad serving technologies have been developed to serve ads with greater relevance based on page content (contextual targeting) and browsing history (behavioral targeting). If you’re interested in learning more about ad targeting, read my post about how online display ads are served.

Today, companies like Sprout are finding ways to improve relevance even more through social targeting. Social targeting will become more prominent as online display advertising evolves away from traditional ad units and towards interactive brand experiences. Social targeting is currently possible within social networks and other online communities where profile data can be incorporated into the targeting schema. The big change, however, is that socially targeted brand experiences can increasingly be shared from one individual to another rather than through ad networks. For this to happen, these brand experiences must become more interactive and engaging while finding ways to deliver value. If successful, this benefits both brands and consumers because brand experiences are much more quantifiable (in terms of interaction), targetable, social, relevant, and engaging.

For example, Sprout created a campaign for Intel called Fan Plan, which is running on Facebook through Cyber Monday (November 30th, 2009). It encourages fans to share the campaign with their friends in exchange for a significant product discount.

The more friends that join Intel’s fan page, the greater the discount. Thus, it’s in all the fans’ interest to share the campaign as broadly as possible if they’re looking to purchase a laptop.

This is a good example of an in-network brand experience where profile data is accessed (friend networks) to make sharing possible. Of course, social data is also used to target interactive ad placements as well. The examples of Facebook ads shown on the right include polls, poll results, and information about friends in the viewer’s network who are fans of the Fan Plan. By combining an engaging brand experience with awareness oriented ad placements, this campaign has driven more than 3,800 news fans to join Intel’s fan page is the first two days alone.

One of the benefits of establishing fan relationships is that Intel can rely more on the viral spread of brand experiences and less on ad placements. Because Intel is starting from scratch with this campaign, they require an ad placement to get the campaign going. However, in the future they’ll be able to use their existing fans to a greater extent.

This is a re-post of an article that was originally posted on Sproutinc.com

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