Internet advertising revenue totaled $5.8 billion in the first quarter of 2008, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. That’s an 18.2% lift over the same three months a year ago and represents the second highest quarter ever recorded, after the fourth quarter in 2007, which totaled $5.9 billion. “We continue to experience significant growth and vitality in interactive marketing, media and advertising,” said Randall Rothenberg, IAB president/CEO in a prepared statement. “We expect growth to continue, as consumers spend more and more time online, and marketers find more – and more innovative – ways to reach them through digital media.”
Advertising on multiple platforms results in a significant increase in a campaign’s conversion rate -- the percentage of consumers exposed to ads who actually purchase the product or service being advertised -- according to new data released by Integrated Media Measurement Inc. (IMMI) at The Advertising Research Foundation's Audience Measurement conference. "Understanding The True Value Of Multi-Platform Advertising," uses ad campaigns for television programming and theatrical releases as examples of how advertising that spans multiple media platforms drives conversion well beyond the effects of increased frequency, recentness and targeting.
"Until now, the value of a multi-platform advertising campaign was thought to be just an increase in reach," said Amanda Welsh, head of research of IMMI, in a prepared statement. "This new data shows the increase in reach is real, but the impact of advertising on multiple platforms on conversion and getting consumers to engage in the target behavior is potentially more important."
ARRIS and BlackArrow, a provider of multiplatform ad-management systems for viewer-controlled video, said they have completed testing the interoperability between the two companies' respective VOD delivery and addressable advertising systems. This follows similar testing ARRIS undertook earlier this year with other SCTE 130-enabled providers. "As audiences embrace time-shifted content, content providers and advertisers are looking for associated addressability and accountability across all programming, particularly for cable on-demand systems," said Joe Matarese, ARRIS vice president/general manger on demand business unit, in a prepared statement. "The integration of BlackArrow's ad-management technology expands our core VOD delivery solutions, and helps customers add revenue and differentiate their services through targeted advertising. Additionally, since both the ARRIS and BlackArrow systems are based on standard SCTE 130 interfaces, the integrated system offers a more streamlined deployment with other SCTE 130 compliant systems."
TRA Inc., a developer of a scalable advertising research system that creates intelligent media data by measuring and reporting ROI accountability and transparency for advertising spending, will license and market TiVo Inc.’s Audience Research Metrics as a bundled offering with TRA's Media TRAnalytics. TRA expects to draw anonymous viewing data from TiVo's base of 1.7 million stand-alone subscribers and will enable TRA to effectively evaluate ROI of media spend, the company said. The partnership will also accelerate TRA's goal of having 1 million households nationwide of anonymous single-source data (TV viewership associated with household purchase data). TRA has agreements with three MSOs and has been producing anonymous, aggregate reports associating TV viewership with household purchasing data based on cable data since October 2007. The company said it expects to expand its use of cable TV data and harmonize cable and TiVo data to produce the largest and most representative anonymous sampling of the U.S. TV audience. "We are at a pivotal time for the advertising community, as new technologies open new research avenues for the industry to get more in-depth insight into who is viewing which programs and then purchasing products based on advertising," said Mark Lieberman, TRA chairman/CEO, said in a prepared statement.
