pictela posts

Today we announced the beta launch of Pictela Enterprise, a technology platform for the design, delivery and management of Premium Format ad campaigns, to help scale premium brand advertising on the Web. This robust new set of tools will put creative control directly in the hands of ad agencies, which will include Digitas and Mindshare at launch.

We believe the power of opening our Pictela platform to agencies is the next step in scaling Premium Formats across the Web. Think of Pictela Enterprise as a content management system for ads, whereby creative professionals can efficiently deploy high definition ads across the Web, all the while being able to update and optimize the content of those ads in real time. We are putting the power of publishing in the hands of the ad agencies and their clients so they can take full advantage of the new larger ad sizes coming to market.

We also announced a partnership with Moat, a brand intelligence and analytics company. Through this partnership we conducted research that compared user interaction across three different versions of Kitchen Daily ads: the IAB Portrait format vs. custom rich media vs. standard animated Flash (all 300x1050 in size).



The results show that the IAB Portrait performed 12% better than the custom format and 72% better than the animated Flash version.

Twelve percent might not sound like much, but there's been a perception in the marketplace that the only way to build a highly engaging ad unit is through custom rich media executions. By teaming with Moat in this research, we are validating that Premium Formats perform as well, if not better, than custom executions and standard Flash, while providing the benefits of repeatability and scalability through a productized approach.

This initiative isn't just about scaling Premium Formats across the Web, it emphasizes AOL's continued commitment to consumers to make online advertising more beautiful and engaging.

For more information on Pictela Enterprise click here.

*Moat/KitchenDaily study, February 2012

Introducing @pictela Enterprise, a new way for agencies and brands to build premium format ad units aol.it/ybjjR6 $AOL

- AOL PR (@AOLPR) February 27, 2012

Over 5,000 digital marketers gathered at the Jacob Javits Convention Center for the yearly ad:tech NY conference.

This year's ad:tech conference was especially exciting for our team, since it was our first event as Advertising.com Group. This was a great introduction to the industry about Advertising.com Group and successfully showed our unity and commitment to providing and end-to-end solution for publishers, advertisers and agencies. All of our teams from Advertising.com, Advertising.com Sponsored Listings (ASL), ADTECH, AOL Video and Pictela were represented and engaged with clients about the full suite of solutions under Advertising.com Group.

One of the main themes of this year's conference was around innovation and enhancing the user experience. Wendy Clark, Senior Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications and Capabilities at Coca-Cola, was a keynote speaker and spoke about the importance of understanding your audience and using effective storytelling in the market, "We're moving from an environment about placing messages to movement of stories." I couldn't agree more with Wendy's point. AOL brands are committed to conveying great stories on the web and we continue to evolve with the market.

Conversations centered around video, premium formats, mobile and social. The ever-connected consumer is looking for new ways to engage with content, and as a publisher and advertiser partner it's crucial that we provide these in-demand solutions. Connecting with our current and prospective partners gives us the chance to understand and learn their needs. Conferences like ad:tech are not only a great educational opportunity for the attendees, but for the exhibitors and sponsors as well.

(This post originally ran on the AOL Advertising Blog.)

Picture this: you're sitting at your computer and see a display ad to your right for an outfit that you must have. You click on it, get caught up in the shopping experience and totally forget what you were reading in the first place. Do you try to jog your memory by clicking the back button? Or would you prefer to experience something a little more seamless...

Today, Pictela launched a new product enhancement we've made to AOL's Premium Formats - the "window shopper", an ecommerce experience within the ad unit.

It has been AOL's mission to clean up the Web from the beginning of Project Devil. To start, you may recall that one of the most unique features of our ad units is that users don't need to leave the page when they want to engage with an ad – all of the content is viewable within the unit. The new "window shopper" feature allows a retailer's ecommerce experience to take center stage, on the same page, over the content a user is currently engaging with. (The user can choose to open this page in a new window at any time.)

Results from our recent IPG Media Labs research study showed that purchase intent grew 263% after viewing an IAB Portrait ad. This shows that consumers are focused on the final step of the purchase funnel, so we're making it as easy as possible to go from awareness to purchase without affecting their online experience.

Most importantly, this application still drives brand awareness. Marketers are the experts when it comes to the look and feel of their pages, and no publisher can recreate that on their own. We are bringing advertisers the ability to take their technology and time spent creating a beautiful web experience as they've imagined them, into functional display units across our properties.
Important to note, AOL does not track what happens inside the window; the data from the user's ecommerce experience is not shared with AOL.

This new feature is also available for auto manufacturers who wish to showcase their car builder experiences in the Premium Format executions, and is called the "car customizer".
Stay tuned for even more updates from the Premium Formats team.