Beauty services provider Marie France, which previously relied on print and television for Hong Kong campaigns, has launched a three-week campaign on Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily's website. It is running a 15-second version of its television commercial in an 'interstitial' ad format.
Unlike a pop-up ad, internet users see the ad in between pages, according to Kevin Huang, chief executive officer of internet sales and marketing specialist Pixel Media.
"These are services-based products and the ads are to drive sales leads. The full-page interstitial ad runs like a TVC and so it is well integrated with the offline (effort). It uses a larger ad format, which is becoming more popular with advertisers," said Huang.
He added that internet users would see the ad after viewing five pages of content on the site. The company also capped the ad's frequency at one display per user to lessen the annoyance factor.
The campaign reportedly achieved more than one million impressions over a five-day period and was spurred by the city's broadband adoption rate of 81 per cent.
In Taiwan, where 226 million households have broadband access, MSN launched a mini-site for Nescafe, and used Unicast Superstitial's technology to showcase the brand's new TVC online.
Donna Hindson, MSN regional marketing manager, said the technology - the internet's equivalent of TVCs - "provided Nescafe with the canvas to create compelling online ads". She added that the CMP for online was about one half of TV, but "compared with TVCs, the rich-media ad can be interactive with users".
Users were encouraged to vote for their top choice from three versions of the TVC and print out coupons to redeem gifts at offline events. Hindson added that the click-through on the ads reached 167,560, with 120,000 downloads or plays of the TVC.
In India, PepsiCo showcased its new TVC for flagship brand Pepsi on the web, an unprecedented move by the cola major in the Indian market. Pepsi Foods India, which created a set of four commercials as part of its 'What's there?' campaign, featuring four Bollywood stars, launched the commercial on Yahoo India's homepage two days ahead of its release on television.
Shashi Kalathil, executive director (marketing) of Pepsi Foods, said the web added "a new and vibrant dimension to the mainline TV campaign for the brand".
- Additional reporting by Divesh Gupta.
