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i-design 08 - 3D to 5D

The first panel discussion broached the topic of 5D, the developing area of immersive design that touches on themes around sensory experience, virtual reality environments and design that is not just digital and not just virtual, but rather a hybrid of the two.

Online Advertising Bucks Flagging Market

The industry received a welcome boost this week with the news that Internet advertising revenues rose significantly in the first half of 2008, despite tough economic conditions. NMK quizzed the industry on what we can expect for the next year.

ITV’s Overlay Advertising Trial Panned

Troubled ITV is experimenting with ‘automatically placed overlay advertising’ to help revive flagging revenues. NMK’s Chris Lee canvassed opinion from around the new media industry about the move.

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• UK Council for Child Internet Safety Launches
• US Presidential Election Gets Social
• i-design 08 - Brendan Dawes, My Interactive
• i-design 08 - Simon Waterfall
• YouTube gets into Top Gear
• Goldfarming for Fun and Profit

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Related Events

Beers & Innovation 9: Goodness 2.0 (NMK)

When: April 10th, 2007
Location: The CC Club - Unit 33, The Trocadero, W1D 7DH
Price: Reduced to £20.00 if you are eligible for a discount.

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Web Accessibility Training

When: December 7th, 2006
Location: Aldgate, London
Price: Reduced to £375.00 if you are eligible for a discount.

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Web Usability Training

When: December 6th, 2006
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Writing for the Web Training

When: December 5th, 2006
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Web Accessibility Training

When: November 9th, 2006
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Price: Reduced to £375.00 if you are eligible for a discount.

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Web 2.0 Lacks Converts

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While Web 2.0, user-generated content sites perform less well than traditional sites when it comes to advertising conversions, the cost of using such sites is proportionally low.

Research from US firm BlueLithium has shown that while Web 2.0, user-generated content sites perform less well than traditional sites when it comes to conversions, the cost of advertising on such sites is so low that they are nonetheless more competitive when it comes to the cost-per-conversion:

When comparing ads shown on non-UGC sites to UGC sites, the ads shown on non-UGC sites had a 32 percent higher conversion rate. However, due to the lower cost of advertising on UGC sites, the cost per conversion for non-UGC sites was 58 percent higher. Therefore, on average, UGC sites generally provide a considerably lower cost per conversion.

A companion study based solely on the top 250 most-trafficked sites in the US found similar results:

The study showed that the conversion rate of ads shown on non-UGC sites from the comScore top 250 was 175 percent higher as compared to UGC sites. However, given the significantly lower cost of the UGC media, the non-UGC comScore 250 sites have 7 percent higher cost per conversion as compared to UGC sites.

Dakota Sullivan, CMO of BlueLithium, said that, "Based on the results of this study, we believe that UGC is worth exploring, since it appears to provide a better place to invest your advertising dollars to drive conversions. However, since performance varied across sites and categories of advertiser, make sure that you work with a network to test various messages on different types of sites to see what works best for your specific product or service."

However, the low rates of response from such sites (UGC sites would presumably include such high-profile properties as MySpace, YouTube and Facebook) suggests that they will need to keep their rates low to attract any advertising at all. MarketingSherpa's Anne Holland believes that the results are to be expected:

This is actually no big shock (except perhaps to Madison Avenue.) Human beings are all about *THEMSELVES*. Web 2.0 is incredibly appealing content because it's all about you. Ads are generally not all about you. They are about the advertiser.

The research was based on the performance of campaigns that included 716 ads and more than 1.7 billion ad impressions between August 2006 and April 2007.