The Implications Of The Adplication

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I found an interesting article about “Adplications” at Clikz. While I'm not thrilled with the label "adplications", until I can come up with an alternative way to refer to deeply interactive, rich-media web display ads, I guess I'll have to live with it.    Brian Massey points out some familiar constraints in using these assets on the advertiser side, including conflicts with IT departments:

Imagine it's a few weeks before Father's Day. You are a wife with a little time to kill, and are surfing some of your favorite sites. Father's Day is at the back of your mind, when your eye is drawn to a 300x250 ad showing you a selection of men's slacks. "Stylish Gifts for Fathers Day," extols the headline.

But this one is different. It has scroll buttons. It's clear that you can scan through an assortment of options without leaving the page you're on. It may even allow you to select those that interest you before you're brought to a page with more details.

You may not find anything of interest, but you've probably spent considerable time interacting with the brand.

The concept sounds good, doesn't it?

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There are some challenges to creating a digital concierge. First of all, the creative is no longer a GIF file and a Flash animation. It is an application. As such, it needs to accept interaction from a visitor and react appropriately. A new skill set is required on the team.

For product selection applications, like the one envisioned above, the ad may need to access the advertiser's product database. This means that an effort on the part of the information technology department would be required. Marketers know that IT has killed more promising campaigns than budget cutters.

AdBean is working to solve those problems for advertisers. Its' what we do.   But what about on the publisher / ad network side? There, its not quite under our control. We have worked with publishers that push new ads to their server “every two weeks”. We have worked with publishers that accept rich media ads but do not allow them with any external resources, like XML feeds. Some publishers will not even accept an iFrame or a file over 30k in this broadband world!

Forget about the uncooperative IT guy for a minute - how can we invest in building "adplications” when there seem to be so many constraints on the publisher's side?  Not that there shouldn't be caution, of course.  There have been episodes in our industry where malware was in the SWF files, where ads generated fake impressions, and other technical hoaxes have occurred with dubious advertisers and publishers.

That's one way our industry is a lot like every other part of the digital revolution.

The adplication is possible today but requires two-way communication between the publisher and the advertiser.  This would be a boon for publishers and advertisers, because it would allow the entire industry to shift away from traduitional metrics to a clearer, pay-for-performance model. Cost Per Transaction, not CPM.  Publishers can get out of the outdated “click” metric – and advertisers would get their AdWords-esque direct accountability.

Has anybody seen publishers offering this kind of service?  I haven't yet.  Let me know if you have - steve@adbean.net.