Can Twitter save the banner ad?

Cameron Yuill, CEO of AdGent 007, predicts that 2010 is “going to be an amazing break out year in which all our ‘experiments’ with social and real time media become permanent fixtures”…

“Twitter has given us the real time web.  Social media has seized everyone’s imagination.  It’s now all about “engagement”, “context” and “conversations”.  Fair enough.  It’s easy to see the appeal for brands, which want to build better and closer relationships with their customers. Better understanding means more sales.  But for publishers, whether they’re a famous name or a recently arrived web only business, the question remains, “how the hell are we going to make any money?”  Pay walls, with one or two exceptions, don’t work so monetising via advertising remains the key to success.  But how do we make online advertising pay more?  And how do we use the new social tools to engage our audiences?  What will we see in 2010?

Last weekend, as the Davos economic forum took place, we saw a glimpse of the future. The ACCA, the global body for professional accountants ran what might be described as the next generation of banner ads.  Across the finance pages of The Times, The Telegraph and The Economist they harnessed the power of “tweetedia” – the world’s first twitter management system to integrate tweets with online advertising. Throughout the weekend, the ACCA reported live from Davos, via Twitter, with their tweets appearing in real time in a format that sits in the space of a banner across these sites.

Think about this for a second: accountants used Twitter to push live content to three of the oldest ‘old world’ publishers and that content arrived on the pages of those venerable publishers unedited.  It’s not so long ago that the idea of content placed on news publisher pages untouched by editors would have been unthinkable.  And now we have accountants using Twitter in an ad format; who would imagined that?

We are now seeing digital media companies harness the explosion of social media, delivering to both brands and publishers ways to make advertising more engaging and more monetisable. Formats like tweetedia, which was developed by AdGent 007, are delivering rates of engagement that really deserve to be called ‘impressive’.  It’s early days but if current engagement metrics hold we have a bright future: 1 in 5 people actually interact with the widget.  It is social media making online advertising so much more effective.

Of course tweetedia will not be the only ad format to harness the power of social media in 2010. We expect to have plenty of competition. Twitter is introducing its own ad platform, and the creation of apps for mobile will continue unabated. Real time (live) streaming is also on its way to mainstream news websites, and likely from citizen journalists too. This really is going to be an amazing break out year in which all our “experiments” with social and real time media become permanent fixtures . The possibility that Facebook will become a public company this year may also give us the first opportunity to really scrutinise how the largest social network makes money. That will give us plenty of new things to think about.

Everyone in advertising has had a tough time recently and digital media came under particular scrutiny. It didn’t deliver enough for brands and it certainly didn’t deliver enough revenue for publishers. But it only takes a bit of vision and a bit of courage to see that we have a great future ahead of us. New technologies will continue to increase our ability to harness the power of social media to deliver great brand messages that engage communities and deliver more sales. Moreover, these will be in formats that publishers can monetise. In 2010, we will find our rightful place in the marketing mix and increase our contribution to publisher revenues. I can’t wait!”