Giving Homes the Story They Deserve

Houses and residential properties are some of the oldest products to be sold in the modern world.  For years, marketers have recycled the same methods of advertising them; utilizing catalogs, print advertisements, and "For Sale" signs. However houses are more than a place where a person simply lives, they are homes. They're a place where people enjoy the company of friends and family, make memories, and ultimately can feel safe and comfortable. With the availability and integration of digital media into all aspects of modern-day life, some real-estate marketers have finally decided to step up their game, and utilize online video channels to not only show the physical appearance of a house, but also the story and emotional connection that goes along with it.

DNB Bank's real-estate division, for example, crafted a heartwarming video on Vimeo showcasing one family's experiences growing up and raising a family in a home, not only showing the beautiful interior of the house, but also the emotional attachment and memories connected to it. This allows potential home-owners to exercise their own imagination of the wonderful life they can have if they choose to purchase and move into one of the company's houses. It gives the properties more than just a price-tag, it adds a face and story- something that you can't just put a monetary figure on. Other companies have also began to follow-suit with video story-telling; some using humor, some using romance, but all telling a story that can be passed on to the consumer. With the success being displayed by these new advertising efforts, I would not be surprised if many companies begin to adopt this method of marketing in an online digital age where stories can be shared to tens of thousands of potential consumers at a time. Most importantly, I think brands and companies of many industries can learn sometimes it's not just about the product and the price, but the stories and memories to be made with their products.

Mobile Gaming Evolving: The Next Big Advertising Platform

The year's Super Bowl featured a new flair of commercials from the mobile gaming industry in its mix. With hefty $4.5 million dollar 30 second airtime slots, mobile games have shown just how profitable they've become. Three of the games advertised during the super bowl were Clash of Clans, Game of War: Fire Age, and Heroes Charge; two of which were able to hire well-known celebrities to appear in their ads. Interestingly, no traditional gaming platforms aired advertisements during the Super Bowl, proving the strength the mobile industry is gaining in the gaming world.

Digital marketers have taken notice of the grasp mobile games have grabbed in the gaming industry and the large audience demographics they have taken with it. While platform systems and PC games have often had a predominately young male demographic, mobile games spawns a wide age group composed of both genders and all ages thus making them a highly attractive candidate for advertisers who wish to reach a wide audience. Also as opposed to traditional gaming systems, mobile games are  constantly with consumers and accessed during all parts of the day since all a person has to do is pull the phone out of their pocket or purse. For companies and brands that are able to integrate their advertisements into games in fashionable manners, the ad spaces can become very lucrative. In the past, in-game advertisements have existed but once a game was released they could no longer be up-dated or changed, however mobile games allow marketers to evolve and update their advertisements as the gamer get farther along, or can offer differing advertisements based on the consumer demographic who is playing their game. It will definitely be interesting to see how mobile gaming continues to grow as their popularity spreads and if traditional platform and PC gaming systems will be able to reclaim advertisers as they search for the next big medium to display their ad campaigns.

Twitter's New Advertising Campaign

Twitter is considering introducing a new revenue-sharing campaign in which advertisers can buy space to air ads within streams of tweets on other companies and publisher's apps and websites. Similar to the auto-play ads that regularly appear in one's Facebook newsfeed, these Twitter ads would appear intermittently while scrolling through a list of tweets.

The idea is that companies that are interested in Tweeters of a certain demographic segment can host their ads on related apps or websites that said users would frequent, similar to how a brand may buy a commercial spot on a broadcasting network popular with their customer targetstwi. The possibilities are limitless with such a campaign, and it is believed it can potentially increase Twitter's advertising revenue exponentially.

Twitter is also weighing the idea of allowing 6-second previews to automatically play on their users' feed with the ability of the Tweeter to click on the full video or link if they are still interested, similar to how YouTube auto-plays ads before their videos. This would make Twitter a potential competitor for advertisers choosing between social media such as Facebook and YouTube, as prior to this date Twitter hasn't allowed or enabled video advertisements on their feeds.

Just last year, Twitter announced a plan to increase their sales from $65 million to $14 billion by 2024, and this just might be the right course of action to get them there. It will be interesting to see how this new campaign develops in the coming months and if it will be as popular with Tweeters as it is with advertisers.