Sometimes innovation means revisiting the past. The Visonaire Group, an LA-based digital agency known for breaking the mold, did just that on April 1, when it served as the main point for a home page takeover of NYTimes.com for the premiere of A&E’s new original docu-series “Fugitive Chronicles” that will be its most comprehensive effort to date. The fully integrated video unit, created by The Visionaire Group (TVG) and secured by Horizon Media, Inc., showcased a fugitive pursued by the police who jumps across the page touching every ad unit, including crossing over the prized search bar real estate, to announce the series’ premiere that evening at 10PM ET/PT. Although NYTimes.com has had cooperative video ads on its homepage before, this marks the first time video has been integrated across all of its ad units and the search bar. We caught Dimitry Ioffe, CEO and Founder, for five questions about the strategy.
Digiday: Home page takeovers seem to have fallen out of fashion lately. Why did you decide it was a good strategy for Fugitive Chronicles?
Ioffe: Large home page takeovers are not suitable for every kind of campaign, but if you want high reach and immediate awareness, then takeovers are still the most effective way to do that. Launches of television series fit perfectly into that category. In the specific case of “Fugitive Chronicles,” the convict-on-the-lam concept integrated extremely well within the page’s ad units and delivered an impactful message to the user.
Digiday: Any early research on results or even anecdotal results on its performance?
Ioffe: From the standpoint of user engagement, users clicking for audio and to replay the video, as well as clicking through to the official A&E site, the New York Times home page takeover performed extremely well, exceeding expectations. While we don’t base the cumulative success of online ads on clicks, we do see it as a strong positive that people were engaging with the ad and thus increasing awareness and interest in the show. Anecdotally, other clients, colleagues and friends were aware of the ad before we even had a chance to show it to them so if we are using awareness and engagement as our barometer of success, this campaign was quite a hit.
Digiday: Display ads seem to be caught between search and video right now? Can they continue to be effective and what will the keys be to the creative approach?
Ioffe: All three types of advertising (display, search and video) have their place and purpose. Search is great for capturing a user who is actively looking for a product. It’s your ROI / Direct Marketing in digital format. Straight pre-roll video ads can work well within certain online environments like Hulu because users are at the site to watch video so it integrates well. You still need Display Advertising, though, to act as a branding and direct marketing action when users are simply consuming information online. I would also say that video advertising and display advertising are not completely separate animals. Most of the display ads we do for our clients now integrate video in them in one format or another because video is still the strongest medium for affecting users emotionally – it just needs to be used in innovative ways online. Throwing up a :15 second pre-roll ad, which has its place in the media mix, is not something we see as the best use of video in the digital world.
Digiday: Define "innovation" in today's digital marketplace.
Ioffe: Innovation is observing what is being done today and making it better for tomorrow.
Digiday: What does the Visionaire Group do internally to stimulate a creative and innovative culture?
Ioffe: We live and breathe digital. Within the company we promote use of all new technologies and media and have even run internal social media contests with cash incentives for the best concept. The more ingrained you are in the current trends, the better suited you are to create new innovations.
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