Viral Ad Network

Professor Green- Star Guest, with 450,000 Twitter followers and up to 150,000 click-throughs per tweet

VAN attended the first ever IAB Video Engage last week to absorb some interesting stuff from a host of top industry experts. Thought-leaders and directors from YouTube, ITV, JWT and more gave talks about the role of online video and posed some interesting questions about the future:

How will online video change in a more multi-platform environment? Is TV going to remain the king of video advertising? How is the rise of emerging markets going to effect business models? Can you ever escape Nyan Cat?

Here are some things worth knowing, taken from the full review on the IAB website:

• 28 million of the 39 million people online watch video content on a laptop/PC (UKOM). The average video viewer watches 96 videos a month, for 4 ½ hours.

• YouTube: “Half of our ads are now skippable”.

• Starcom Mediavest: Connected TVs will be the game changer for online video.

• ITV: “The TV kingdom is in good health with new allies on the horizon”.

• Yahoo: Shortform video – the sweet spot between consumer and commercial quality.

• EMI: online video offers access between artist and fan, and new revenue opportunities.

• Professor Green: Online video is about choice, giving fans what they want, when they want.

• Reckitt Benckiser: We’ve been using online video for five years, we know it works, and it works well.

• The click is antiquated – measure the value not the click, Chris Worrell, Specific Media.

We don’t normally need an excuse to indulge in sugary treats around here but since VAN just finished seeding the Super Star Doughnut Awards, I thought it would be nice to have a bit of an afternoon doughnut pick-me-up in the office.

To promote the launch of the new doughnut range by Greggs the Bakers, the agency Steel London created a fun digital campaign, bringing the little icing covered dough balls to life and pitting them against each other in an X-Factor style popularity contest on YouTube.

It was an all out PR battle to win the nations hearts and competition was intense. There were pleas and pledges aplenty, and with each doughnut having its own Facebook and Twitter profile, it wasn’t long before they had racked up thousands of followers and more than 1.4m doughnuts have been sold already in the  five weeks since their introduction.

At the end of the day, when the last crumbs had been guzzled and the sticky goo licked off the plate there was one clear winner that stole the title of Super Star Doughnut from under the nose of the rest… congratulations to Jaffa Cake Doughnut!

Now, over to the VAN doughnut challenge…

We had slightly mixed reviews on the doughnut front, with some less hardcore doughnut gobblers not quite able to handle to gloopy innards, but overall the treats went down well and the sugar buzz has been rippling through the office all afternoon! The winner by common consensus was…. the brown one! (Exact flavour unconfirmed – possibly hazelnut?).

Ben from across the office in the Delib team is a bit of a confectionary guru, in fact he has his very own biscuit blog, which is well worth a read if you want some serious baking insight! He had this to say on the matter…

“Not only were a wide selection of exotic and vaguely palatable doughnuts on offer, but also the pollsters themselves were able to eloquently describe the options available and the kind of opinion they were looking to collate.  Their methodology was sound and so far no-one appears to have died as a result of taking part.  Overall then VAN managed to avoid their usual monosyllabic speech patterns and instead deliver a piece of imperious scientific research.  Back slaps all round.”

Um, thanks Ben!