DoubleClick, Google Content Network and YouTube at OMMA Global

This week OMMA Global takes over the San Francisco Marriott Marquis, and Google will be there. Here's an overview of what's in store.

On March 17th, get a complete view of the art and science of rich media advertising from Google's resident rich media experts, Peter Crofut and Chip Scovic.

Next day listen to Neal Mohan, Vice President of Product Management, deliver his keynote presentation on opportunities in online display advertising. He'll cover changes in the display ecosystem, and how everyone can embrace these changes and achieve their goals. If you miss his keynote, be sure to catch the panel right after on Online Advertising - Rapid Recovery or Recession 2.0?, or the late morning session Connect with the Google Content Network with Jason Miller, Group Product Manager, Google Content Network.

Later in the day, Baljeet Singh, Senior Product Manager, Video Monetization will participate in the panel Can Online Video Reach Scale for Clients Budgets in 2010? Hear what he, and other experts, have to say about definition, scale and measurement when it comes to online video.

Our DoubleClick, YouTube and Google Content Network teams will also be at the Trade Show to let you know what's new and to answer your product questions.

Interested in attending? Register here, and if you're a MediaPost member, your full-conference pass is FREE. You can also sign up for private networking sessions here. Use the code OGSF20 for a 20% discount.

Posted by Sally Cole

Recap from the 4th Annual Digital Movie Advertising Creative Showcase (DMACS)

Yesterday, we celebrated the best creative work in digital movie marketing with top creative agencies and movie studios at the 4th Annual DMACS event. If you recall from our call for entries, this awards program invited submissions across four awards categories: Home Entertainment Rich Media Display Ad, Multi-Channel Cross Media Campaign, YouTube Creative Award and Theatrical Release Rich Media Display Ad. Take a look at the videos below to see the amazing creative work from the top nominees in each category then read on to find out who won.

Best Home Entertainment Rich Media Display Ad Nominees

Congratulations to:

• Fast & Furious by Ignited, LLC and NBC Universal
• WALL-E by Deadline Advertising and Walt Disney Studios
• Watchmen by AvatarLabs and Warner Bros.

YouTube Creative Award Nominees

Congratulations to:

• G-Force by BLT & Associates and Walt Disney Studios
• The Haunting in Connecticut by Division 13 Design Group and Lionsgate
• My Bloody Valentine by The Visionaire Group and Lionsgate

Best Multi-Channel Cross Media Campaign Nominees

Congratulations to:

• Fast & Furious by The Visionaire Group and Universal Pictures
• I Love You, Beth Cooper by Earthbound Media Group and 20th Century Fox
• Coraline by Wieden+Kennedy and Laika Studios/Focus Features

Best Theatrical Release Rich Media Display Ad Nominees

Congratulations to:

• Bruno by The Visionaire Group and Universal Pictures
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by AvatarLabs and Warner Bros.
• Star Trek by AvatarLabs and Paramount Pictures
• The Haunting in Connecticut by Division 13 Design Group and Lionsgate
• Valkyrie by Palisades Interactive and MGM

And the winners Are...

• WALL-E by Deadline Advertising and Walt Disney Studios for Best Home Entertainment Rich Media Ad
• My Bloody Valentine by The Visionaire Group and Lionsgate for the YouTube Creative Award
• Coraline by Wieden+Kennedy and Laika Studios/Focus Features for Best Multi-Channel Cross Media Campaign
• Star Trek by AvatarLabs and Paramount Pictures for Best Theatrical Release Rich Media Display Ad

We heartily congratulate the winners for their spectacular creative executions and dedication to the craft of movie marketing.

Posted by Sally Cole

Call for Entries to the Digital Movie Advertising Creative Showcase

Online campaigns for theatrical and home video movie releases have some of the most creative and innovative executions. To celebrate the best of movie marketing, we're opening up a call for entries to our 4th Annual Digital Movie Advertising Creative Showcase awards program. Movie marketers and creative agencies are invited to submit up to three entries per category. This year's categories are:

Theatrical Release Rich Media Display Ad(s): Any rich media ad or set of rich media ads used to promote a theatrical movie release.

Home Entertainment Rich Media Display Ad(s): Any rich media ad or set of rich media ads used to promote a home video movie release.

Multi-Channel Cross Media Campaign: Any home video or theatrical movie campaign that involves at least three interactive digital elements (one of which must be rich media ads) as part of a holistic campaign including, but not limited to:

• Website
• Rich media ads
• Search campaign
• Alternate reality game (ARG)
• Mobile
• Viral video or webisodes
• Virtual world
• User-Generated content
• Social networking
• Online game(s)
• Digital outdoor
• DVD/Blue-Ray interactive experience/extras

Multi-channel, cross media digital campaign submissions may involve more than one creative agency, but all agencies must be listed and give permission for submission.

YouTube Creative Award: Any home entertainment or theatrical movie campaign creative that included YouTube in its execution -- YouTube homepage "masthead" creative, brand channels, contests, or original video creative uploaded to YouTube to engage the community.

The winners of each category will receive recognition by their industry peers, the opportunity to present to a live audience at the Director's Guild of America in Los Angeles, inclusion in the event's video reel, two award trophies (one each for the movie studio and creative agency) and two Flip Mino mini digital camcorders!

The deadline for entries is Friday, September 18 -- so don't delay if you plan to enter. We look forward to seeing the amazing work in this space.

Posted by Sally Cole

Notes from the Digital Media Measurement and Pricing Summit

For the past two days, I've been the chairperson of the Strategy Institute's Digital Media Measurement and Pricing Summit. Throughout the event it was clear that measurement challenges go hand-in-hand with the increasing number of digital advertising opportunities today. In the 16 sessions of the conference, we covered topics including user generated content, social networking, paid search, in-game advertising, mobile campaigns, three types of widgets, digital signage, in-stream advertising, in-banner video, rich media advertising, podcast advertising and more.

This fragmentation is hitting agencies and marketers, which accounted for about 80% of attendees, the hardest. Their challenge is setting the right media mix across digital and traditional media. One comment on the marketing mix that really stood out is that one marketer was asked to provide a single line of pricing and measurement data to represent all their digital advertising initiatives for the company's media mix modeling analysis. The reality is that 10 or 20 lines of digital advertising data could be used.

I've noticed at the event, and day-to-day in my role at DoubleClick, that agencies and advertisers are very aware that one form of media affects the other. One attendee shared that they noticed a decrease in search results when they lowered their display spending. We do quite a bit of work in our research department to provide clients with insight into the correlation between search and display. We've also built advanced reports into DART to provide insight on topics like these. For example, our Exposure to Conversion report shows how media exposures beyond the last click or impression affect conversions. We're hoping to share some of this work at future events such as this one.

Posted by Rick Bruner

Word of Mouth Write Up

In the last month-plus, I’ve been lucky to participate in two conferences that are worth commenting on – and shortlisting for your potential attendance next year.

In early October, I participated in Forrester Research’s 2007 Consumer Forum. The agenda focused heavily on social media and potential applications for marketers and advertisers. I was particularly intrigued and inspired by Josh Bernoff’s call for a strategic approach to social media, Richard Edelman’s perspective on the role of corporate communications in the Web 2.0 world, and Henry Jenkins’s comments on convergence culture.

More recently, I spoke at the 2007 Word of Mouth Research Symposium, which was hosted by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. While there, I presented our report Influencing the Influencers, and I sat in on most of the other sessions over the course of the day.

Of special interest was “Measuring the Ripple: Creating the G2X Relay Rate and an Industry Standard Methodology to Measure the Spread of WOM Coversations and Marketing," which was presented by Matt McGlinn of BzzAgent and Dr. Walter Carl of ChatThreads. They’ve gone far to calculate the iterative effect of word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. I was also impressed by “The Effects of Word of Mouth: An Agent-Based Simulation of Interpersonal Influence in Social Networks,” which was presented by Dejan Duzevik, a complexity scientist at Icosystem. By modeling various marketing activities, you can gauge the potential impact of word of mouth.

While I wasn’t able to stay in Las Vegas for the following WOMMA Summit, I got several ideas while at the research symposium and spent quality time with peers in the industry – some of whom I’ve known for years but never met. If you’re interested in word-of-mouth marketing, the state of the research backing it up improves every year.

Posted by Heath Row

Forrester's VanBoskirk on Media, Ad Exchanges

DoubleClick Ad Exchange recently hosted two roundtable dinners to engage with publishers, agencies and marketers, foster direct dialogue between buyers and sellers of online display media, and learn more about issues on the minds (and budgets) of disparate members of the advertising community. We invited Forrester's Shar VanBoskirk to present.

Among the ideas that Shar presented at the two dinners:

• New media advertising, which now accounts for 8% of total ad spend, will become more important as younger consumers become mainstream. Across all channels (SEM, display, emerging, video, etc.), CAGR through 2012 projects to be 27%, with video at nearly 80% CAGR over the same time period.
• Marketers expect interactive effectiveness to increase, and their budget projections and plans over the next three years reflect this.
• Interactive continues to serve marketer needs more effectively, from selling products and services online to driving Web site traffic to lead-gen and relationship building.
• Exchanges will drive the next generation of sales – what is a relatively new concept now will become a core component of media buying and selling in the future.

Posted by Campbell Foster

Heath Row speaking at WOMMA's Word of Mouth Research Symposium

If you're heading to Vegas next week for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association's Word of Mouth Marketing Summit, be sure to check out Heath Row, DoubleClick's research manager speaking at the Research Symposium on Tuesday about Influencing the Influencer: How Online Advertising and Media Impact Word of Mouth. It's based on a popular research paper of ours by the same name.

Heath's one of DoubleClick's best public speakers. He's also fun to schmooze with, if you get a chance, a former journalist of many years for Fast Company magazine and an avid blogger in his own right. We'll make sure he gives a quick write-up of the event when he gets back.

Posted by Rick Bruner

DoubleClick Keynote at Streaming Media Europe

There's a good overview of my recent keynote at Streaming Media Europe on the Streaming Media blog. During my presentation I was worried that I was going to be blogged -- and I guess that worry came true!

Posted by Ari Paparo

Rob Victor on Emerging Markets

Our own Rob Victor, Product Manager for Emerging Tech, spoke to About.com on mobile and other subjects. Worth a watch...

Posted by Ari Paparo

Amex Live Streaming Ad Honored at Mixx

Our innovation lab worked hard with Digitas to help produce the Stress-Free Travel with American Express rich media campaign. The banners let the user choose a city then see a live webcam shot of that city directly within the banner ad. Pretty cool stuff!

We were happy to see the ad honored with the Bronze award at the Mixx awards last week in New York. Congrats to everyone involved.

Posted by Ari Paparo