Cameron Yuill

News flash of the day: Flash doesn’t play on tablets!

This is not news. At least it shouldn’t be.  However it still amazes me that many marketers and publishers don’t get it: if you have use flash it ain’t gonna work on a iPad!

If you are happy with a default jpeg being served in place of your slick flash creative or even a blank space where an ad should be – yes, I have seen that as recently as last month with a large German auto company on a major news publication – then keep doing what you are doing. Note to large German auto company: I bet you paid for that blank ad serve and I know you paid for all the default jpegs served to tablet users. Ask your agency about this strategy.

Infamously rejected by Apple in 2010, Flash has been overshadowed as HTML5 has swooped to the rescue of tablet and mobile-based advertising and web design. Publish once, publish to all. Yes, I know HTML5 is not all there yet but it will get be soon. In the meantime it works well enough today for you to adopt it now.

All that said, there are many ads still built around Flash out there. This is fine, but buyer beware—you are not maximizing your company’s tablet advertising possibilities means you’re losing out on a large growing corner of the market. Sales of tablets continue to soar all over the world. Go where your customers are going. Go where they are now.

Some stats: according to a new report from online advertising network Chitika , 20% of web traffic in North America now comes from mobile browsers, including phones and tablets, and 5.6% of overall browsing is from tablets*. It is also worthwhile noting that a huge percentage of tablet based mobile web traffic (ahem—a whopping 95%), and smart phone based mobile traffic (72%) comes from the Apple iPad and iPhone, respectively.

All this is to say, AdGent Digital’s HTML5-based platforms have been designed with the greatest reach and flexibility in mind. Don’t waste your opportunity to reach a quickly growing tablet audience.  Start building in HTML5 – dare I say it – quick as a flash!

*(http://www.phonearena.com/news/Mobile-Browsing-accounts-for-20-of-North-American-web-traffic-according-to-new-report_id30602.)

Will Tablets Revolutionize TV?

TV viewing isn’t what it used to be, and one of the things that is changing the experience even more is the growing popularity of tablets. All the data we have seen suggests it is not necessarily an either/or experience,” said AdGent Digital founder Cameron Yuill. “Rather, consumers are viewing TV and using their tablets at the same time.”

The adoption of tablets has reached critical mass in the U.S., according to comScore. In fact, one in every four smartphone owners also used a tablet during the three-month period ending April 2012.

What stands out most about this particular study, though, is the link it makes between TV and online video content and the growth of tablets. Tablet users were nearly three times more likely to watch video on their device, compared to smartphone users, and one in every 10 viewed video content on their tablets almost daily, the study found. Of those viewing video at least once during the month, one in four paid to watch content.

In short, tablets are poised to disrupt the way people engage with the digital world, both in mobile mode and in the home, the report concluded.

Original article featured on…

Like Me, Like Me Not, LIKE ME!

We see you, plucking daisy petals and ruminating about whether your latest ad campaign will stir up some attention. “Will they like me, will they like me not?” Junior, put the flower down! AdGent Digital’s D:30 now has a social media button feature that will help you increase audience engagement and track it too.

Imagine this message popping up in your inbox: “Your video has 10,000 Likes on Facebook”. For those who’ve created the ultimate, hilarious, attention-grabbing, poignant video or ad, and then seen the Interweb’s interest in it fizzle and fade, it’s time to think about how social media plays a part in generating popularity and sales. With AdGent Digital’s D:30 capabilities, we bet you can attain those 10,000 Likes and then some!

The D:30 video platform inserts a 15-30 second television ad between Web site page loads.  D:30 has some amazing and useful features, including its ability to target audiences so that your video is relevant to the search term or pages visited. Branding spots utilizing the D:30 are measureable in terms of reach and engagement. And social media links can be added to your video.

Some may hesitate to stick social media buttons all over their ads. Implementing the ubiquitous “Like” button of Facebook may seem, like, so overdone. However, traffic numbers don’t lie. The increased traffic thanks to social networking Web sites can be game changing for a brand.

SearchEngineLand.com published an article featuring data from Facebook on the results of implementing the “Like” button. Yes, Facebook is self-reporting, but other sources can back up findings like these: “The average media site integrated with Facebook has seen a 300% increase in referral traffic.” According to Facebook, “Levi’s saw a 40 times increase in referral traffic from Facebook after implementing the Like button in April 2010,” and Giantnerd.com, Amercan Eagle, ShoeDazzle all report similarly incredible success rates. Ticketmaster and Eventbrite report that links to events shared on Facebook are directly tied to a rise in specific dollar amounts in ticket sales.

This June, stop picking your neighbor’s daisies and playing existential games with yourself. Turn your attentions elsewhere and consider launching your ads utilizing our D:30  video platform. And don’t forget to add those social media buttons! They pay off. Like, for real.

Visit AdGentDigital.com to learn more about integrating social media buttons into your advertisements.