Phrase of the week:  Roadblock

What does it mean? An advertising roadblock occurs when an advertiser purchases all of the available ad space on a specific web page. Roadblocks are typically purchased as one unit, and advertisers are guaranteed to have 100% share of voice on the page – meaning they are the sole advertiser on the page.

A roadblock is often used for branding campaigns and for increasing brand awareness.

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Maytag Commercial Laundry has been running search advertising through Google AdWords since the beginning of January. The campaign is divided into three main targets or categories: Coin Operations, On-Premise Laundry, and the Maytag Commercial Laundry brand.

So far, the Coin Operations target has proven the most successful in generating sales leads for Maytag Commercial Laundry distributors. After clicking on the Maytag search ad, users are directed to MCLaundry.com, where they are able to submit their contact details and download informational brochures. Maytag distributors can then obtain the contact information and reach out to the prospective coin-operation owners.

For the first six months of the campaign, these search ads generated 607 sales leads for Maytag’s local distributors. The campaign continues to perform well for the brand and has the potential to reach even more users.

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Think of this week’s vocab lesson as an exercise plan for your advertising.

Phrase of the week:  Advertising Wear-Out

What does it mean? When an advertisement runs repeatedly for a certain period of time, the user response tends to decrease and will eventually plateau. Adding new creative to the mix, or switching out older banners for new ones, prevents advertising wear-out.

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This week’s phrase is more of a snack than a meal – just one quick phrase for you to digest.

Phrase of the week:  Call to Action

What does it mean? A call to action is messaging that urges the target to take immediate action, such as “click here” or “roll over to expand.”

A call to action is very beneficial in generating user clicks on a banner, and it’s extremely important for rich media ads where the ad actually offers a chance for interaction.

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BioStorage Technologies is running its first-ever advertising campaign in 2010, including both print and online ads.

A 336×280 banner ad on Outsourcing-Pharma.com – one of the top publications for this industry — is proving to be very successful for the company. The banner generated a 0.36% click-through rate in June, up from the 0.24% click-through rate generated by the same ad in May. The banner is featured on news-article pages within the site, and it maintains the top positioning for the 336×280 banners on the page.

The banner ran from April through June, then it will go live again in September and run through November. This is the only website featuring the 336×280 ad for BioStorage Technologies; all other online media runs through enewsletters. The success of this banner offers a great benchmark and learning opportunity for the 2011 online media plan.

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Let’s focus on video this week.

Phrases of the week: Video Pre-Roll and Video Post-Roll

What do they mean? Pre-roll refers to a short section of video shown before the main video. Video pre-roll times vary, but they’re commonly 15 to 30 seconds long.

Post-roll is similar to pre-roll, but the post-roll appears at the end of the main video rather than before it.

Here’s a 15-second Diet Coke pre-roll ad to give you an example of what you might see. Now as you watch videos on YouTube, Hulu, etc., you’ll know what these little video clips are called!

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Ready for some more information about rich media?

Phrases of the week: Rich Media Interaction Rate and Rich Media Expandable Banner

What do they mean? A rich media interaction rate is the proportion of users who interact with an ad. Interaction rate is calculated by dividing the total rich media impressions by the number of rich media interactions. (An interaction is an ad impression where the user has interacted with the ad. An interaction can be a user-initiated roll-over, panel activity, or click-through on a banner.)

Rich media expandable banners are creative units that have two main states: collapsed and expanded. The collapsed portion – which you’ll see first – expands with user interaction.

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Whirlpool launched an expandable rich media banner on GreenBuilderMag.com in June that will run for three months. This high-impact unit is a 920×60 that expands downward to a 920×400 and contains various hot spots that the user can hover over for more information about that specific product.

This kind of rich media banner comes with many reporting metrics, in addition to the standard media metrics such as number of impressions, number of clicks, and click-through rate.

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In my post on June 8, I outlined the differences between standard and rich media. Today, let’s take that topic a little further and delve into more details about rich media.

Phrases of the week: Rich Media Impressions and Rich Media Interactions

What do they mean? Rich media impressions are impressions delivered by a rich media ad unit. Often, when a rich media unit runs on a website, both rich media impressions and standard impressions are counted. The reason for this is when a user’s computer does not comply with the rich media unit, a standard banner will run in its place, thus counting a standard media impression. It is very common for standard impressions to be counted when running rich media units, especially for users who are running older computers and outdated browsers.

Rich media interactions are the ad impressions in which there has been an interaction by a user. An interaction can be a user-initiated roll-over, panel activity, or click-through on a banner.

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In a previous post, I described the difference between standard online media advertisements and rich media and the advantages of each. One benefit to the rich media advertiser is an increased amount of time the user spends with the ad.

The Propane Education and Research Council (PERC) launched an online advertising campaign in March, and the campaign includes a rich media banner on Remodeling and BuilderOnline. The banner is a 300×250 interactive quiz that prompts users to answer five questions regarding propane. They’re then informed if their answer is correct or incorrect.

The banner launched in mid-April, and the results are now coming in. The news is good! The average time spent with the rich media unit on Remodeling and BuilderOnline is 29.62 seconds and 23.35 seconds respectively. The rich media banner had a combined total of just under 2,000 interactions and a total of 42,785 rich media impressions delivered.

Think about the amount of time you spend looking at a standard online advertisement, then consider the nearly half a minute spent here. Interesting, isn’t it?

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