Addictive Advertising Placement within Practice!

Now I have created an addictive advertising concept I got to thinking about the placement of this product within current practice. I began thinking about what kind of advertising I had created and whether there was a current category it could be placed under. This is when I thought about the idea of Interactive advertising and realised there were strong similarities between this concept and addictive advertising and that perhaps it could become a sub set of this marketing tool.

I found a paper outlining 'Interactive Advertising and Presence: A Framework' by Matthew Lomboard and Jennifer Snyder-Duch. Some of the key points within the paper that draw similarities to addictive advertising are:

- That the central goal of advertising is still the same - to persuade consumers - the media environment where advertising is placed is changing and therefore advertising is changing as well.

- Everyday users face 100s of adverts on the Internet. As a result of this exposure some argue that consumers have developed a more sophisticated understanding of advertising, creating a greater challenge as to how to attract attention.

- Advertising has become more colourful, vibrant, bigger, faster, louder and more obnoxious.

- Although this trend often associated with TV now happening on the Internet.

- A new approach takes advantage of technological possibilities to provide a customised and personalised experience (fitzgeral, 1999).

- Incorporating the idea of user control, consumer engagement and interaction with the banner.

- Interactive advertising = choices and experience that stimulates a one - one interaction.

- Central idea is is the concept of control. Information seen depends on where the user wants to go.

- Number of Variables - inputs allowed from the user, characteristics modified by the user, amount of change possible, speed of input and input and response.

- As technologies evolve and are becoming more interactive, personal and sophisticated advertising is forced to evolve.

Furthering this research i came across another advertising concept of Advergaming, where branded games are created to capture the user. Key aspects of Advergaming are:

- Majority of advertising is interrupting advergames successfully entice the user to play with advertising messages and even pass them on! (viral possibilities).

- Flash games one of the most widely consumed online medias.

- One recent advergame 'Celebrity Pedigree' had an average view time of 10 minutes.

- Despite success still low on the marketing scene as misconstrued as a new 'risky' concept, even though they have been around for years.

- As audiences become more empowered and sophisticated the potential to engage and entertain will become far more important.

- The average advergame receives over 1.6 million visits in the first 3 months.

- 7/10 Internet users play online games casually = advergames reaches all demographics. Its well known women play a lot of casual games.

- Some natural existence from users to branded games, if compelling enough will win users over.

- Advergames = low cost, engaging, entertaining, lasting piece of content.

- Persuasive to engage in users downtime = good click through rates (5%-20%).

- allows users to create there own brand experience.

- Careful consideration = integral part of the overall marketing funnel, driving awareness, consideration and word of mouth.

So due to the incorporation of gaming traits i would place my concept as an advancement on the Advergaming Field.

Artefact 6! Testing and Findings

Banner Testing

The banner will be placed within a ‘fake’ page layout and will be available for participants to view online. Analytics will be run on the page to establish amount and frequency of visits.

It is predicted that there will be a 10% re-visit to the online banner.

A link to the online address of the banner was sent to 32 contacts with a social prompt (‘check it out’) encouraging them to view it. This allowed the successful addictive trait of social influence which was established during artefact four testing to appear within the final banner.


Banner Findings

Analytics on the page demonstrated an overall average of 34 page views. This showed that social influence is highly effective in encouraging engagement and possibilities of addiction. Further banner circulation was highlighted due to more page views than initial contacts. The majority of users only viewed the page once (23/34), a considerable amount however did revisit (8/34). The overall revisit of 24% is significantly higher than the 10% I predicted; suggesting the banner displayed a moderate level of addictive potential.

User engagement times are also being lengthened beyond average which according to Internet Marketer: Justin Michie is around 2 seconds. The banner view duration displays an average time of 57 seconds an extreme difference suggesting successful addictive engagement.

Immediate banner addiction was difficult to achieve due to interest being dependent on the user and personal preferences, a recurrent obstacle marketing strategies often come up against. The banner could achieve a higher addictive potential through further testing and a banner campaign could strengthen addiction and develop a stronger addictive relationship.

Artefact 6! The ULTIMATE advertising banner?

Only you can decide.....check out the best banner around!

http://kirstysheehan.co.uk/piratesofthecaribbean.html

Artefact 6! Development Stages...

Developing the banner has had its fair share of ups and down and a few things have been cut as a result.

Banner movement was achieved with a drop down effect as artefact 1 found that this was a liked element within advertising banners online. The transparency tutorial i found worked perfectly and the banner overlaps the background information and the larger dropdown overlay is transparent on the smaller initial banner width.

The negative reinforcement was successfully incorporated into the banner with the music soundclip playing until the banner is rolled over. Intially as in artefact 2 I wanted the soundclip to restart if the user moved away from the banner and back onto the page. However with the complex use of scenes and timer handlers i was unable to achieve this. So once the banner has expanded the soundclip stops all together. Negative reinforcement was still successfull though as it encourages the users to engage with the banner.

A countdown timer was included on each level of the banner as in testing users reacted well to timers and enjoyed replaying the banner to beat their times. Initially i wanted to include an extension reward (time paused) on each of the levels. However when implementing the code this proved unachievable, so it was decided that the extension reward would only appear on the final level. This Placement was chosen as this level is the hardest and users should be rewarded for getting that far!

The levels that were included in the banner were designed and followed the same maze layout as those tested in artefact 5 as these proved to be the most successful. They require the most level of concentration encouraging longer interaction time and also the designed aspect gives the user a definate feeling of progression.

A social aspect was incorporated using facebook and email to send a link saying how much i like a banner i found to encourage them to use it. I will also post a wall link of facebook to encourage others to use the banner.

The banner is now complete and ready for testing!

Artefact 4 cont! Findings

The results showed that females displayed the expected gender specifics (shooter times: 2min 47sec/2min 37sec. role-play times: 4min 37sec/7min 7sec). However the male’s results showed movement away from the gender specific games with one participant interacting with the role play game for 8min 35sec and the shooter for only 1min 38sec. All participants interacted with the puzzle (non gender specific) game for considerable amounts of time. Leading to the conclusion that there are no ‘gender specifics’ just personal preferences.

Overall time results found that combined interaction times with all games were higher with females then males (female: 12min 48sec/14min 44sec. male: 12min 17sec/12min 30sec). This further challenges the male stereotype with results indicating higher levels of interaction and therefore addiction from females over males. A finding that proves the current stereotype is outdated.

Artefact6! Transparent Backgrounds and banner sizes

Ok time to get working on artefact 6. I have decided on a theme of 'Pirates of the Caribbean ' as I feel this is a gender specific theme as both males and females like these films. It also allows a strong negative reinforcement with the incorporation of the theme tune. The design will follow a designed level game structure similar to the maze used in artefact 5. There will be a time limit for completion of the levels with the incorporation of a time extension reward button.

The banner size will follow the standard leaderboard to begin with but will be expandable to reveal the game on rollover by the user.

To achieve this I will be making the background transparent and I have found a tutorial to achieve this http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/524/cpsid_52418.html#flash.

I have decided to use an expandable banner as artefact1 found that users liked movement within a banner so this is a way of incorporating this element. User interaction was also an element highly liked within advertising banners and this is displayed with the use of a game. One of the banners tested in artefact1 found that the users didn't like tit when a banner started without their input. The negative reinforcer goes against this finding but artefact2 found that this negative reinforcement helped encourage engagement.