I-Marketing Interview: Carat Interactive - Part 2

In Part 2 of this interview, Carat Interactive vice president and media director Mark Stephens talks with the E-Commerce Times about how new Internet ad sizes and formats will transform the industry.

Click here to return to Part 1.

ECT: What advantages have you gained through running a banner ad campaign?

Stephens: Banners work well in conjunction with other ads, depending on what you do within the banner. There are places for all sorts of ad sizes, depending on the aim of the campaign.

For example, we have used banner ads to trigger pop-unders. Point-roll technology also works great -- where you can pull more information out of the banner, as Bluestreak is doing. But these banners have to be extremely targeted.

ECT: What advantages have you gained through marketing in e-mail newsletters?

Stephens: E-mail is so pervasive and is a big part of opt-in marketing . The advantage of e-mail is it allows you to have that one-to-one relationship. It allows you to be very targeted because people request information about specific items or categories. And it allows you to have a dialogue back and forth. You can keep sending people information [or incentives], moving them closer to purchase. But we are big proponents of privacy and are anti-spam.

The industry is evolving at an incredibly rapid pace. The challenge is sifting through the vendors that are going through that evolution.

Bigger Is Better

ECT: Have the new, larger ad sizes had an impact on your advertising campaigns?

Stephens: We have utilized skyscrapers, pop-ups and pop-unders. It has allowed us to take a creative leap and make ads much more impactful. It has affected the response rate as well. Also, we have done research with clients, and there is not a lot of negative pushback about the pop-ups and pop-unders, as long as they are targeted and the copy is not overly aggressive.

A lot of sites have reconfigured themselves. Many of the available units are page-dominant. My hope is that by the end of this year or sometime next year, most sites will standardize on those page-dominant units, and [smaller] banners will be on their way out.

The types of advertisers that are starting to come online -- Fortune 500 companies we work with at Carat -- are not interested in running a [simple] banner campaign. They want something that has some impact and panache.

ECT: What are some successful strategies for online advertising?

Stephens: Understand the target. You need to understand their habits online and overall. You need to deliver things that satisfy their needs.

Another key is always be mindful of your results. Make some predictions beforehand. We even map out expected results from a brand perspective. The fact that this medium is very accountable is a good thing.

Rising Tide

ECT: What pitfalls should an online advertiser try to avoid?

Stephens: Overhype and overpromising. You run into problems when something is completely new and you sell it as something that is going to work. Clients are at various stages of interactive advertising. Some are willing to test and experiment, but we make it clear that we are going into uncharted territory.

And scrutinize your vendors. At Carat, we have a rigid vendor qualification process.

ECT: Are there products or services that are not suited for promotion through online advertising?

Stephens: I think the Internet will be appropriate for just about everything, eventually. But there are a lot of packaged goods companies that are still trying to figure out how to use the Internet. You are not going to buy Tide online. It is not economically viable.

The challenge is evolving the branding side of the business as well as integrating online with offline -- such as getting a coupon online and redeeming it at a grocery store. Some packaged goods companies want to see clear evidence that the Internet can brand.

ECT: How do you measure the effectiveness of an Internet marketing campaign? What factors come into play?

Stephens: It depends on what the objective is. If it is brand awareness, we will do a dynamic logic study and look at awareness and purchase intent -- how far we "moved the needle." In other cases, there might have been some action we were looking for.

With Adobe, it might be product demonstration downloads. With Bank of America, it might be signing up for online banking. For some, it might be selling the product right away, like with Palm.

There are a number of different ways to look at the results. You can look at direct click-to-sale or view-through data, where they saw the ad and went back to buy it later.

Future Perfect

ECT: Based on your experience with Web marketing thus far, what does the future hold for online advertising -- both in terms of strategy and technology trends?

Stephens: Eventually, there is going to be a fast pipe into your household, and there is going to be a lot of stuff going through it. Television is going to merge with online, but we are still working that scenario out. They are definitely going to grow closer together. Over time, the Internet is going to become less computer-centric and more of an overall tool or appliance. Once media are more interconnected, it will make doing business that much easier. Impulse purchases could happen just like that.

And I believe over the next few years the Internet is going to be heavily regulated. Part of the challenge is to self-regulate and get things in order, because it will eventually be regulated by the government.

ECT: What advice do you have for a company starting to plan a new online advertising campaign?

Stephens: Keep an open mind. Do not put the Internet into a single bucket. View it as equal to other media. In some cases, it may even be better, depending on how much you are trying to do. Think about where your target is and how you are going to reach them. And think about the follow-up step, not just the advertising. Think about the customer relationship and how you are going to facilitate that.