I was impressed the other day to see a great example of engaging advertising on our website. The advert for Westpac demonstrated that flashing banners is not the only way to achieve impact – their approach courtesy Saatchi & Saatchi DGS, is far more engaging and to my mind memorable.
The technique they have deployed as shown in the screenshots below is what is termed an expanding skyscraper – when you hover over the vertical advert the “dream bubble” expands over the listing photo of one of the listings on the site – thereby creating a warm and engaging dream of a new home for the characters in the sketch advert.
This is in my judgment contextually relevant and put a smile on my face.
The fact is that more and more advertisers are moving their advertising budgets online. The final quarterly survey from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) showed that online now accounts for 8% of all advertising spend and in the last year online grew by over 42% to $193m – the growth of of over $58m coming from other media as the total spend for all media showed no appreciable growth.
Clearly for a site like realestate.co.nz advertising is an important and growing part of our revenue, it is great to see the innovation in creative being applied to the medium. I also understand that the client is delighted with the performance of this advert as judged by the click through rate which is one measure of the success of such a campaign – ie. the nmber of people who have clicked on the advert to take them to the websites of the advert – in this case Westpac.
