Summer 2010

  

Read the Back of the Box

Earn Higher CPMs with an Immersive Experience

IAB Long Tail Publisher Fly-In

Burst Media Publisher Video Adoption Best Practices

Bursting With News to Share

 
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Photo of Jarvis Coffin

Read the Back of the Box

By Jarvis Coffin, President and CEO, Burst Media

Yahoo! recently bought Associated Content (for a price tag of $90 million according to ADOTAS), giving it access to more than 350,000 freelance writers that gin-up stories from "neighborhoods" across the country. The move is clearly aimed at AOL's content-assembly-line initiative which plans to roll out stories based on search algorithms.

Polite Internet society would have us regard the content mill phenomenon as democratic: picture thousands of freelance journalists with keyboards at the ready to do the informational bidding of the masses. Except that if democracy has proven anything over the years it's that people aren't that naive. Content milling is about the advertising. People be damned.

Audiences aren’t algorithms – they’re people, and the Internet already spills over with the authentic voice of the people who provide engaging content online. It doesn't need the help or contempt of a bunch of media barons. Nor does online advertising, which to bear fruit must be planted in authentic and favorable conditions.

Both consumers and advertisers demand content authenticity. Consumers are more likely to be loyal engaged audiences on sites with authentic, original specialty content, versus sites featuring search-dictated, manufactured content. This loyal audience is what brands seek and can only be found on sites with authentic content.

Authenticity is food to advertising, and advertising's roots are starved already by the factory farming and overcrowding of traditional media.

We've moved on. It's not about the content factories any more. It's about gardens in the yard: homegrown, nothing artificial - publishers like those represented by Burst. And if you want to check the “nutritional” value of what you’re consuming, just read the back of the box.

Have a great summer!

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Earn Higher CPMs with an Immersive Experience

By: Noreen Hafez, Director of Product Management and Marketing

Burst recently unveiled the Burst Macrostitial™, a new way for its publishers to earn higher CPMs and engage their audiences. This custom-sized ad unit combines the concept of an interstitial with the content, functionality and interactivity of a full-fledged microsite. Its monster size gives your visitors a highly interactive online experience that can include original content, video, audio, photo galleries and more.

With the Burst Macrostitial, you have an opportunity to align your site with an ad platform popular with brand advertisers – and you can also earn high CPMs from high quality advertisers who are seeking “beyond the banner” solutions. In addition, you can increase ad placements and expand revenue opportunity without cluttering existing content pages.

The Burst Macrostitial allows you to supersize your site’s revenue opportunity. It’s an engaging, content rich experience for your site’s visitors and an attractive advertising opportunity for premium brand advertisers. Best of all, the Burst Macrostitial is easy to implement with simple source code that’s added to your site only once, and has a clearly marked “Continue” browsing button at the top, so visitors can skip over the ad and continue browsing your content.

The next time you’re looking to launch an interactive, high impact campaign that captures people’s attention and keeps them engaged, the Burst Macrostitial should be at the center of your campaign.

You can learn more about the Burst Macrostitial here, or contact Burst Media Publisher Services for more information.


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IAB Long Tail Publisher Fly-In

By Caitlin Quaranto, Manager, Publisher Services, Burst Media

In mid-June I attended the Internet Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) Long Tail Alliance Publisher Fly-In, the second annual two-day event where long tail web publishers converge in Washington, D.C. to discuss how online advertising empowers their businesses. Nearly four dozen publishers came from 14 states along with several Long Tail Alliance supporters, including Burst Media.

Right out of the gate, publishers hit the issues with a full roster of speakers, panels and discussions. Malware concerns rose to the top of the discussion, with the key publisher takeaway being know all the campaigns that are running on your site and demand full transparency from all partners you work with. Transparency is essential if you’re not selling the ads running on your site. Publishers spoke of the importance of partnering with ad networks that work directly with advertisers and agencies and provide campaign level details such as the advertiser’s name and a view of the creative to run. This is essential since an ad network works for you and therefore must act as a guardian to protect your site and your loyal audience.

The Fly-In also covered how to sell advertising directly to advertisers and agencies as well as techniques on how to build marketplace awareness of a site’s niche rich content. An informative Q&A session with Jarvis Coffin, CEO of Burst Media, Scott Portugal, CRO of TRAFFIQ, and Mike Seiman, CEO of CPX allowed for a candid conversation on the industry and key items such as CPM values, revenue and click fraud. Publishers also participated in round table discussions to share key tips and suggestions on growing site audience, content and revenue.

To complement the event, long tail publishers enjoyed the opportunity to meet with Congress and congressional staffers to discuss a recent legislative proposal by Congressman Rick Boucher (D - Virginia) that may restrict the use of cookies as well as the collection of information that could be considered personally identifiable.

Being part of this Fly-In was an amazing experience: walking the halls of Congress and hearing each publisher tell their story and express their passion for their content and the audience it draws was memorable. It’s clearly evident from speaking with attendees that the Fly-In’s popularity will grow in the coming years and it will become the must attend event for web publishers like you! So mark you calendar now for next year Fly-In and I will see you in Washington in June 2011!

Learn more about the 2010 IAB Publisher Fly-In here.

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Burst Media Publisher Video Adoption Best Practices

By: Noreen Hafez, Director of Product Management and Marketing

Burst’s video solutions give publishers unrivaled methods to provide content to and engage their audiences with sight, sound and motion. In addition to already offering in-banner and customized Flash units, our publishers can now offer pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll video campaigns.

Video advertising is growing rapidly, and publishers need to stay current with video solutions. But video adoption also needs guidelines, so we’ve come up with some best practices to keep in mind when implementing video on your site(s).

Video Player Placement
Publishers can achieve greater success with a video unit by thinking beyond the usual location. Video placed into traditional ad units are thought of as just that – ad units. And this traditionally produces a low interaction rate. Try not to think of the video unit as just a typical ad unit. Instead, treat it as part of your content.

Above you can see the video is placed within/under a site’s actual content, and not as a traditional ad unit. This sample video has a good fit with the actual content of the page, and by associating it directly with content the publisher creates a natural curiosity for the reader to view the video.

  • Placement & Content: Video placement on your site should not replace an existing 300x250 banner space. Choose a space for the video player to be embedded within your content. Always place video content alongside relevant site content and sections. For example, if you have video content describing how to make a cake, place it in appropriate content sections of your site such as cooking, moms, parenting, home & garden and family. The video should also be linked off your home page to related content/sections/video sections.
  • Size: We recommend that the video player be sized to the same width as the text column on your site. This provides the most natural viewing experience for the user and also places the video directly in line with where the eye travels when reading – helping readers to better distinguish video content from an ad.

Play Button: Another technique that publishers have found very effective is to just let their end users know that they have video. If you have a small synopsis of an article that you are highlighting on your home-page (or other pages) with video content, place a related thumbnail image next to the synopsis with a play button to denote that there is video content. This helps indicates to the visitor that the article includes video, and increases the likelihood of them clicking on it to read the full article and watch the video.

  • Label: Clearly label video content by placing a title above or below it that signifies what the content is about, so that your audience can find it and is enticed to play the content.

Creating a Video section (site structure):
Creating a video page is the best way to capture all your videos in one place, and drive opted-in traffic to that page so you can run auto-play video (which is the fastest way to monetize video inventory). You can do that by:

  • Creating a space on your website as a subdirectory, e.g., www.site.com/video
  • Making it easy for users to find using links on pages by including prominent navigation links to your video section from your home page
  • Incorporating video results within your own site search (if available)
  • Helping search engines find your video content using MRSS Feeds, XML Sitemaps
  • Providing content to surround video
    • Contextually related links
    • Related on-page text

Tips to increase performance of your website videos:
The best ways to increase the performance of your video inventory, and get the most out of your video placements is by:

  • Having a video section; you can auto-play your feature video because people are expecting to watch them upon entering the page, and creating a video archive playlist on your video page, which lists older videos for additional plays
  • Considering distribution outside your site and enabling social interactivity like bookmarking, embedding, commenting and rating – people like to share videos!
  • Creating compelling thumbnails that are eye-catching
  • Ensuring your videos are relevant and of high quality

If you’re a Burst publisher and are interested in video adoption, please contact our Publisher Services team to learn more about the Burst’s video offering.

 

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Bursting With News to Share

By: Pamela Sosnowski, Marketing Communications Specialist, Burst Media


Burst Media has been cranking up the noise with new product offerings, partnerships and research findings – and below are a few select hits from our spring/early summer media coverage.

The May 2010 issue of Online Insights – Summer Travel in 2010 – generated lots of buzz just in time for Memorial Day, the unofficial start of summer:

Our June 2010 issue of Online Insights – Left to Their Own Devices – discovered that Internet users could not live without their mobile devices:

Burst Moms Spotlight Sites give advertisers exclusive access to sites that cater to “CEO Moms” and key household decision makers:

Jarvis Coffin, Burst’s President and CEO, spoke with a few industry publications about his take on our industry’s current state of affairs:


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News@Burst Contacts & Credits

If you would like to learn more about Burst Media, please locate our inquiry forms from our contact page.

For submissions or feedback to the editor, please contact Mark Kaefer, at news@burstmedia.com.


Co-editor: Pamela Sosnowski, Marketing Communications Specialist
Designer: Sarah Merlin, Web Designer


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