Rich Media Rocks 2012: Being digitally creative

The conference held in New Delhi saw speakers focusing on the need for new and innovative digital tools for advertising, apart from optimum utilisation of the platform to promote brands among audiences.

Rich Media Rocks 2012, a full day conference by Microsoft Advertising which was held at the Westin Hotel in Gurgaon on March 1, witnessed speakers focusing on the need for new and innovative digital tools for advertising and optimum utilisation of the platform to promote brands among audiences.

Starting the discussion, Pushkar Sane, CEO and co-founder, Convergination Ventures, said, "For the brands, it is very important to know how audiences perceive a message. A brand should be aware of reality, such as what matters to the audience, to avoid any disconnect."

He then emphasised on the factors that should be kept in mind while designing and executing a digital ad. For example, in most cases, advertisers revert to the strategy of 'haunting a consumer', where a consumer surfing the internet is constantly bombarded with mailers and pop-up ads. This irritates the consumer. To avoid such situations, he suggested that the advertiser should use a Filmstrip at the right hand side of the screen. The Filmstrip allows the consumer to read content and also view the advertisement.

"Ads should not disrupt the content and advertisers should remember that people go to the website for the content and not for the advertisement," added Sane. He next stressed on how brands should think of themselves as a host because they create a platform for people to interact with each other.

The next speaker was Trevor Yeats, senior product marketing manager, reserve media and advertising tools, Microsoft Advertising, who spoke about various tools that can be used for online advertising. He explained, "Tools like Filmstrip, Billboard, Pushdown, Side-kick and Portrait (yet to be launched in India) can be utilised by advertisers to talk to consumers. While Filmstrip is a strip on the right side of a page, where ads can be viewed, a Billboard is a big banner placed usually on top of the page and has videos running. Meanwhile, Pushdown starts with a teasing effect and enlarges into a Billboard, to shrink back later into its original size. Side-kick is the rectangle banner which starts from one or the other side and turns into a Billboard before reducing to its original form."

Lastly, Farshad Family, managing director, Nielsen Media India discussed about audiences' behaviour towards online advertising and highlighted the Nielsen Online Campaign Rating (OCR) that provides a method to identify the audience and measure their accountability.

Explaining OCR, Family said, "When a person clicks on an advertisement, he/she gets registered on the Nielsen server. For this, Nielsen has tied up with Facebook so that, at the same time, Facebook sends the demographic information about the person. OCR provides the results to the publisher the next day, enabling post-by-post analysis, which provides further insight on the consumer and her choice. This, therefore, enables a more specified targeted advertising. The tool also reveals the total number of consumers who saw the ad."

The conference brought out that brands, with the right tools and strategies, can deliver a rich media experience on the web to engage their audiences.