Overlaying rich media display ads on still images is fast becoming a staple of the digital media plan, based on their viewability, relevance and high engagement. GumGum CEO Ophir Tanz is credited with inventing the in-image advertising category and will share his insight on how in-image ads work best for retail brands, including key takeaways from the company's new white paper, "The Brand Marketer's Guide to In-Image Advertising."
Speaker: Ophir Tanz, CEO and founder, GumGum
Good morning, my name is OphirTanz, and I’m the founder and CEO of GumGum. For those of you who may not yet know GumGum, we invented the in-image advertising category and our premium platform reaches 60M unique visitors per month across 900 premium content publishers. Our technology turns our publisher partners’ images into display advertising inventory which can be contextually targeted to help brands tell their stories using rich media and video.
In your chair this morning, you should have each received a copy of the white paper on in-image advertising we published last week. Given the timing of the publication, I thought it would be interesting to highlight some of our findings from the paper and what I think are the most important aspects of in-image advertising for retail brands.
First, I’d like to quickly show you a few examples of in-image campaigns we’ve done for a few retail clients. http://demo.gumgum.com/fansided_com/mcdonalds.html?c=mcdonaldshttp://demo.gumgum.com/youbeauty_com/ulta.html?c=ultahttp://demo.gumgum.com/dessertmixer_com/buffaloww.html?c=buffaloww
We all know users’ focus first on content, especially images, which, as we’ve learned from our own eye-tracking studies, dominate where their attention is focused. Not only does in-image advertising work because it’s in-line with editorial content consumers are interested in, but technically the ads only serve when the photos is within the browser’s viewable window.
Central to what makes in-image advertising so effective is its relevance to the content a consumer is already viewing. Our technology uses image meta data and analysis of other content on the page to determine the meaning of photos, enabling us to serve highly relevant ads on a keyword or category basis. In addition, our image scientists are using highly complex computer vision algorithms to understand what images are about, in this case identifying makes and models of vehicles.
What I findmost exciting about in-image advertising, and what’s important to most of the brands we work with, is the increased engagement that results from being viewable and relevant. While these are averages across many campaigns over several months, you can see that in-image enjoys some measure of success over standard banner ads, and is arguably competitive with other brand strategies like pre-roll video.
Beyond the engagement we see with ads across the GumGum Platform, we have commissioned independent studies to verify lift in key brand metrics, in this case awareness and purchase intent for a major electronics manufacturer who wanted to drive sales of its new LED TVs during last year’s holiday shopping season.
With all of the excitement around mobile advertising, it’s also worth mention that in-image ads work across across tablets and mobile phones too. Because in-image ads are specific to an individual publisher’s photos, it makes no difference on what device a consumer views their content.
Finally, while we are excited about our ownership of the in-image market, we’re leveraging our platform and our great technology team to develop another high-impact unit we call “In-Screen Ads.” In this example for Feria, you can see the ad appears at the bottom of mobile and desktop browsers, and remains there as users scroll, until they close the ad or go to another page. Not only are In-Screen Ads highly viewable, but they also allow us to provide audience targeting options for our brand partners.
Thank you for your time and attention. I hope you enjoy the white paper and I look forward to your feedback as we get a chance to talk throughout the day.