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What is high impact advertising and why should you care?

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By Simon Kvist Gaulshøj, CEO, Adnami

One could be forgiven for being none the wiser when told Adnami trades in high impact advertising. Surely everyone whose business lies in the selling of advertising space believes they are working with high impact opportunities – else why bother?

But in our case high impact is a term used to describe a form of digital advertising that is genuinely far superior to almost all other types of ad space available online.

The internet is a very cluttered space for an advertiser and it is not always easy for brands to stand out. Given how many hours a day we spend online, it is inevitable that we begin to tune out ads, no matter how targeted, instead seeing only the content we have visited the site in search of. Indeed, according to Lumen research only 20% of viewable ads are even noticed. Over time, standard display ads as a category have to a degree been reduced to being a performance channel, and not considered to be of great value to the consumer. I think that’s a shame.

High impact advertising on the other hand represents an opportunity for brands to stand out and connect emotionally with consumers through creative, eye-catching and engaging ad experiences. Ads should be enjoyable, fun, engaging and creative. Creative agencies often spend more time optimizing asset file sizes than discussing designs, narratives and animations. We are trying to re-introduce creativity back into display advertising.

Adnami enables publishers to sell space on their websites that goes above standard display ads. We provide templated high impact formats such as Fluid Skins, vertical video scrollers or Top- or Mid-Scrollers, so advertisers can trade high impact ads directly from publishers in a simple, scalable and programmatic way. These sometimes combine multiple ad formats into one, or turn the whole wallpaper of a website into showing an ad creative.

So why are they high impact?

Firstly, they demand attention. High impact ads are typically bigger ads characterised by their behaviour within the sites in which they are delivered. Rather than being restricted to a fixed width and height, they dynamically render to align neatly with the content and various screen sizes.

Second, they are interactive and engaging by design, thanks in no small part to the scrolling experience.

Third, they are fuelled by great rich media creative. High impact formats offer a canvas for greater creative executions, and it is a category where video and rich media often come together to deliver thumb-stopping and engaging ad experiences. Powerful images, recognisable logos or products, brand colours and moving images all add up to a noticed and memorable ad.

Finally, all this results in an impactful ad that engages the consumer. And engagement equals dwell time. The ads deliver on all relevant key ad performance metrics and leave long lasting, memorable impressions for users, and accelerated returns for advertisers.

It is easy to see why digital publishers consider high impact ads to be premium commercial opportunities on their websites. But until now there has not been a universal one-size-fits-all template for this kind of work. Enter Adnami.

First and foremost we supply proprietary technology that enables publishers to use our templated formats, which allows advertisers to repurpose the same creative across their media plans. But by using our technology publishers and advertisers can also then transact the ad space programmatically but on a direct basis. We plug into all the major DSPs, ensuring space can be bought automatically with the benefits of scale, control, transparency and work efficiencies. No more time-consuming, laborious processes and no more black box networks.

There are further significant advantages to taking the direct approach that we offer and that is the access it gives agencies to the publisher’s first party data. Personal data as a tool is becoming increasingly difficult for marketers to rely on at scale, which is seeing the pendulum swing back towards the importance of the creative. The creative accounts for up to 62% of the sales generated from advertising, inspiring brands to change last year’s media plans to include high impact formats as default.

The internet is a vast space, with untold ways for advertisers to reach consumers, so it is crucial that brands tap into every opportunity to make the most of these moments. In digital advertising more than any other medium, there is much to consider, from messaging and targeting to safety and transparency, but by opting for high impact ads and partnering with a technology provider that offers the full gamut of services, there is suddenly a far greater element of media value, control and effectiveness to be got out of brand investments.

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