New Year, New Opportunities

We all know that the holiday season is the busiest time of the year for online retailers. While there are numerous stats and studies released each year around ad performance in November and December, there is a lack of useful data available surrounding what happens after the dust has settled on the holidays. We decided to investigate and this is what we discovered…

Performance in January Trumps the Holiday Season

Based on data analyzed from the 2010 holiday season, we found that daily click-through rates (CTR) in January were 14% higher than over the holiday season. Drilling deeper, the data revealed that there was a slight decline in CTRs in the first week of the year, but beginning the second week in January, performance rebounded strongly — up to 36% above the holiday season baseline.

The increased performance across Undertone could be attributed to New Year sales offers or possibly the need to exchange holiday gifts, but either way, performance in January surpassed that from the holiday season.

Retail Advertisers' Performance in January Trumps Overall Performance

It's no surprise that retail advertising accounts for the bulk of online ad dollars spent during the holiday season, but what about in January? What results can retailers expect after the hype of the holiday season is over?

Well, it's good news and additional opportunity.

Our data revealed that retail advertisers saw a 27% increase in CTRs during January 2011 compared to the 2010 holiday season baseline. This 27% increase represented a 13 percentage point increase over January's overall improvement.

So what does this mean for retail advertisers?

Simple: It means that retail advertisers, or any brand looking for an early boost in the New Year, shouldn't discount the prospects available in January. Although the holiday season may get all the attention, the New Year brings with it new opportunity to reach audiences and build brand equity online.

PageGrabber™ – A Year Old and Already an Award Winner!

It's hard to believe that we only launched our PageGrabber ad unit a year ago. Since the launch we've run PageGrabber campaigns for some of the world's leading brands.

We hear from our clients time and time again that what makes PageGrabber so compelling is the combination of its immersive creative options and the ease with which it can be run at scale across a broad range of high profile publishers. And it seems the industry is taking notice — two recent PageGrabber campaigns have been named award winners:

1. HBO Ricky Gervais PageGrabber | Silver Davey Award Winner
2. Tourism Ireland PageGrabber | Silver Davey Award Winner and W3 Silver Award

We're focused on designing ad units that push the creative envelope, so watch this space for more as we move into 2012.

Undertone Named a 'Best Place to Work' Again!

Earlier this month, Crain's unveiled its annual roundup of the 50 ‘Best Places to Work' in New York. We're proud to have made the list... again! This is the fourth consecutive year that Undertone has been included on the list.

It's exciting to be recognized by Crain's because the heartbeat of Undertone is definitely its people. We put a lot of effort into ensuring that Undertone is a place that we all want to get up and go to work to. We're focused on creating an environment full of passion, energy and shared goals.

We're a rapidly expanding team but as we expand we never lose sight of the culture that has got us to where we are today. Because we think having the right culture and energy inside our four walls helps us to better serve our customers.

Making an Impact with the IAB

Brand dollars moving online continues to be a major topic of discussion, much of which revolves around questions like: 'why hasn't the web lived up to its brand promise yet,' and 'what will it take to instill the trust that brands need to move more advertising spend online'?

Well, for starters, we need to get back to the essence of advertising: making an impact. And the increased focus on automation and efficiency, while important, aren't going to get us there. Instead, we need to focus on making ads more engaging and truly immersive.

The IAB has been championing this cause with the introduction of its Rising Stars formats earlier this year and, more recently, the release of its updated Rich Media Guidelines. These two initiatives help highlight the importance and best practices of implementing bigger and better ads online.

Last week, we added two Rising Stars formats — Sidekick and Slider — to our high impact product suite. These new ad units join our existing high impact units like PageGrabber. Early interest in these new units has been encouraging and we're readying ourselves to add more of these exciting formats to our portfolio as we move into 2012.

We understand the importance of supporting these initiatives as well as leading new ones to make online advertising better, more engaging and the first choice for brand advertisers. These are just the first of many exciting changes/enhancements to come.