Commentary
Serving Up Ads In Email Becomes An Art
- by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, February 29, 2012
Ad tags in emails give publishers the ability to drive revenue one click closer, helping to fund email programs. The alliance created by LiveIntent,
which sells email ad inventory similar to display, supports publishers and email service providers to ensure compatibility between technologies and campaigns.
Marketers will continue to spend budgets on email marketing, albeit more slowly compared with other media, such as search, mobile and social. Forrester Research Analyst Shar VanBoskirk estimates that by 2016, advertisers will spend as much on interactive marketing as they do on television advertising today.
The Forrester report suggests that investments in search marketing, display advertising, email marketing, mobile marketing, and social media will near $77 billion and will represent 26% of all advertising. Email marketing will take $2.4 billion of the total by 2016 -- up from nearly $1.7 billion this year. Compare that with search marketing at $33.3 billion and $21.5 billion, respectively.
Then there's mobile marketing, which Forrester estimates will reach $8.2 billion in 2016 -- up from $2.7 billion in 2012 -- but perhaps that's where marketers will find the real treasures when tied to email campaigns on portable devices. Mobile commerce should top $31 billion in five years, according to Forrester. Reports suggest that mobile has finally made a connection with commerce.
The alliance, LiveCertified, supports partnerships with ESPs and email ecosystem partners that have already joined the program. Participating partners include MailChimp, Silverpop, Adestra, Email Predict, and BrightWave, according to LiveIntent COO Dave Hendricks.
Hendricks says the ad tag sits in the email template. A feature merges macros, which sends data from ESPs to publishers, ensuring that the correct ads serve up. There are hundreds of ESPs, and as many ways to get this task accomplished. Tags that are set up correctly can get a publisher up and running within an hour.
Not long -- considering that readers spend on average 28.3 seconds viewing email newsletters, according to LiveIntent's data. The company supports four of the top 10 news publishers. Compare this with 8.13 seconds of Web site media content, and 4.52 seconds on news sites, according to AdSafe.
Before participating in the LiveCertified program, partners simply have their implementation and LiveTag parameters vetted by LiveIntent. The program certifies that partners are compatible with the latest LiveIntent LiveTag features, which enable publishers and advertisers to buy and sell display ads within email newsletters, alerts and notifications.
Laurie Sullivan is a writer and editor for MediaPost. You can reach Laurie at lauriesullivan@gmail.com.
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