As we kick off the year of the dragon, it’s clear that the display advertising industry is experiencing a renaissance. Once dominated by static banner-size images, display ads today are far richer, more dynamic, and more interactive than their early ancestors. They run on a wide range of devices like smartphones and tablets. And unlike the pop-ups we all remember, today’s display ads increasingly engage and entertain: which means people actually want to watch them.
At the same time, it’s also clear that the industry has only started to flex its muscles. Currently, display is a US$25 billion-a-year business. But it could be much bigger. In fact, Google estimates that the display industry has the potential to grow to as much as $200 billion a year. Getting there is not only going to take new technologies, but also a new mindset on the part of agencies and advertisers everywhere, focused on showing the right ad to the right person at the right time.
With nearly 1 billion Internet users in Asia-Pacific and more coming online every day, it’s safe to say that 2012 is going to be a banner year for the Asia’s advertisers, publishers, and users. As we enter the year in earnest, here are three predictions to help us ring in a Dragon Year of display.
1. ...Asia’s advertisers will start thinking about buying audiences rather than just buying placement. Right now, many advertisers in Asia think that in order to get their message out to the right audience, they have to get it on a narrow list of “premium” sites. That was true in the old days of offline advertising -- buying placement was the only way to target an audience.
In the digital world, that’s no longer the case. Modern display lets advertisers define their audience and then reach them across the web--rather than making guesses about what types of websites they’re likely to visit and hoping that consumers will stop in to see their ads. That means advertisers have to start thinking in terms of the wider web, which is after all the biggest business opportunity.
2. ...consumers will grow even more demanding about the content that they are exposed to online--expecting to be engaged and entertained with personalized, targeted marketing messages. These days, the right ad at the right time isn’t just a marketing strategy; it’s the only way to make sure your message gets out online. On the web, consumers decide what to watch and increasingly, when.
The good news is that marketers can use a variety of technologies to tailor and personalise their display campaigns. For example, technologies that allow remarketing (which allows you to continue reach your website visitors with relevant messages as they browse other sites across the web), demographics, and interest categories. And, advertisers can take advantage of rich, beautiful ad formats and technologies like HTML5 to create ads to make ads that people actually want to engage with.
3. ...advertisers will be able to see the full impact of their display campaigns, through tools that prove how much display ads contribute to their business. The final piece of showing the right ad to the right people is knowing beyond a doubt that you did so at the right time. For our part, Google believes that display, which was traditionally sold on cost-per-impression basis, should be as measurable as search advertising is today. Fortunately, as display moves towards a world where consumers influence and even choose how they’ll experience digital ads, marketers are gaining new sources of insights on consumer behavior and preference.
Advertisers can take advantage of this information to learn more about how and what kind of marketing people want to see. For example: technologies like Google’s Ad Preferences Manager ask consumers what kind of ads they’d like to see, letting advertisers reach them on that basis. New ad formats like YouTube TrueView let people choose whether or not to finish watching an ad before their video, granting marketers insight into what works and what doesn’t--and decreasing video rates by an average of 40%.
At the end of the day, getting to $200 billion is going to take hard work, and we’re not going to make it there in just one year. But the way forward is simple: show the right ad at the right time and place to the right person, no matter where they are on the web, and everyone wins.