MediaPost recently reported that search advertisers running ads on the keyword "mesothelioma" just got a shock to the pocketbook. The going rate? $99.44 per click! That makes "mesothelioma" the most expensive keyword in search marketing history.

These high stakes will inevitably price some search advertisers out of the market—but that could actually be good news for them.

Search has become a standalone strategy for many advertisers, because it's easy and it works well. But advertisers have long been warned against putting all their eggs in one basket, with any single approach or channel, because having a well-rounded program—for example, with e-mail, social media, search, and display marketing—will necessarily reach a bigger customer audience.

It's ironic, because display advertising used to be the exclusive playground of bigger advertisers. But as technology advances (such as the AdReady platform) have eliminated much of the cost and complexity of display advertising, the situation has been turned on its head: the price of all those desirable keywords is giving smaller advertisers less and less return on their search-advertising spend, and search has turned into a competitive battleground for advertisers with big budgets.

We're in the middle of this shift (with 1.5 million advertisers still using search and less than 50,000 using display), which makes it a great time for smaller advertisers to exploit the overlooked benefits of display. With so few advertisers currently using banners, marketers won’t encounter the same level of competition they face on search engine sites, as display ads have a nearly endless number of placement options. Banner ads also give retailers the unique ability to add logos, images, and other branding features not available in search, which are proven to drive brand recall and future purchases.

To mix up your marketing program and find some strong alternatives to search, check out Cory Treffiletti's (MediaPost) story The Nine Most Overlooked Elements of Digital Marketing.

Posted by Aaron Finn on Dec 17, 2009   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

Readers of the AdReady blog might remember that we were up for a DPAC award. Guess what: we won! And just when we thought we couldn't be happier with our achievements in 2009. Last week, the Digital Publishing and Advertising Conference named AdReady's platform the "Best Ad Delivery Platform Innovation" of the year. Check out all of the winners.

A BIG thanks to the team for making this achievement possible. These types of industry honors are not only a great way to celebrate our successes, but help raise the performance bar for AdReady in the future.

Read more about our win in the press release; then check out our other awards.

Cheers to the team!

Posted by Justin Baker on Dec 14, 2009   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

Want some extra emphasis on the text in an AdReady ad template? Check out the "Hide Image" button.

If you have text in your ad—like a headline or a tagline—that needs to be more prominent but the image is getting in the way, the 'Hide Image' button can help. This lets you hide images so that you change the size of your text without running into the image. The button can be used for both the "logo" and "image" areas, giving you more flexibility where you want the logo or text to go. For example, you could hide the stationary logo image that appears in the same spot in each frame, but then place the logo on an image frame that may appear in just one frame of the flash ad.

To do this, click on your ad template and use the 'Hide Image' button located in the category "Images." You can use this feature on any picture in your ad to place more emphasis on the text. This feature gives you the flexibility to try out even more templates (the AdReady library has over 800), no matter what text you're using.

Want to learn more? Contact our sales team at: sales@adready.com.

Posted by Justin Baker on Dec 09, 2009   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

Every month, we feature a piece of "killer creative." This month’s ad comes from our collection of over 800 templates. When we say that our templates have been tested and optimized, we're not kidding: this particular example has racked up over one million impressions, with a CTR of 0.26%, an average CPM of $1.98, and an average CPC of $0.78.

Check out "South Pacific" (and other high-performing ads) in the AdReady tool. For more hands-on help with your creative, check out AdReady Premium.

Posted by Justin Baker on Dec 09, 2009   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

Kelsey Group's Interactive Local Media Conference has tapped our CEO, Aaron Finn, as a speaker for the ILM:09 conference this month in Los Angeles. ILM:09 brings together the local online media community to discuss innovation in local online, search, and mobile advertising—areas that Kelsey Group projects will generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue.

Aaron's session is on Friday, December 11, from 9:00 to 9:45 AM, at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza. He'll take the stage with Fox Interactive Media, PaperG, and iPromote to discuss the latest breakthroughs in self-serve advertising. They'll be talking about the steps that local media organizations can take to leverage self-serve advertising to tap into lower budget local sales and drive up revenue. 

Aaron will be sharing in-the-trenches info that show how self-serve offerings—available today—provide advertisers with everything they need to create, place, and manage ads, within a wide range of budgets. Say hi to Aaron if you see him there!

Posted by Justin Baker on Dec 02, 2009   |   Tweet This   |   Email This

A lot of what we do at AdReady is helping advertisers directly, so they can get the most out of their display campaigns. But we also help publishers—like The New York Times, MSNBC, and ESPN—by letting them put their brand on an "AdReady-powered" solution, so they can use our technology to deliver the same features to *their* advertisers. (Most recently, Yahoo also just joined in, launching Yahoo! My Display Ads.)

Another one of our big publisher customers is the digital division of Spanish-language media giant Univision, which started using an AdReady-powered solution for its advertisers back in April. (You might know Univision from flipping through your cable and seeing shows like ¡Sabado Gigante!)

Pictured here:  "Señor Saturday Night"

The cool news for us is that they are expanding on that offering in a big way, with the launch of the Univision Partner Group (UPG), a network of Spanish-language Websites targeting Hispanics in the U.S. The numbers for that market segment were just quantified in eMarketer: "... there are nearly 23 million Hispanics online, about 51 percent of the U.S. Hispanic population... Hispanics make up about 12.3 percent of the U.S. Internet population in 2009, and will increase to 13.9 percent in 2013." Pretty impressive reach!

To check out Univision's service for yourself, go to: univision.adready.com.

Posted by Justin Baker on Dec 1, 2009   |   Tweet This   |   Email This