The key objective of most online advertising campaigns is often twofold: to generate brand awareness amongst an untapped market and to ultimately generate sales. This goal is becoming increasingly more difficult with click through rates on the decline and online advertising on websites reaching saturation levels.

We are finding that we can successfully reverse this trend by tying brands to social networks and contextually wrapping the brand in that environment. Integrated content is about anchoring your brand in the voice and values of an online community and often produces amazing results when executed on a passionate, lifestyle social network. Some examples include an advertiser displaying a brand logo, copy, or an advertorial within a site section or internal messaging system, making it appear like the content is delivered from the community to the community.

Integrated Content often works best in combination with a client’s current online campaign that might include standard banner advertising or rich media ad units. The goal is to communicate that the brand is consistently a huge part of this attitude and lifestyle environment.

In general, most high traffic websites provide advertisers with a variety of options to make their brand presence as powerful as their budget allows. Recent advertisers on Colonies.com (one of our clients) have had the greatest success on the network combining standard banners with user initiated rich media expanding banners ad units. We highly recommend this combination in order to break-through, in particular, with young adults and teens.

A road block will allow a brand to be displayed in all the available ad units on a particular page at the same time. Two road block ad units can work in concert with the creative extending down as a whole in both units for a coordinated visual effect.

Expandable ad units are an excellent way for advertisers to interact with a member prior to click through. The creative can be developed with a ‘teaser’ to engage and to encourage them to click on the ad unit to see more. Broadband Video is a great way to deliver TV commercials online. The video begins to play instantly as the user clicks on the ad unit. So how does integrated content work in combination with the above mentioned online advertising tactics? Here are a few examples:

• Internal Messaging systems are unique to social networks and allow members to communicate with one another. We often recommend an announcement in a News Section on the Home Page, or sponsorship of a comments post to generate increased brand awareness and truly connect your brand and event schedule to the community.
• Social Networks can also engage with members when they are logging into a member based site. For instance, a social network can drive members to view the digital versions of TV commercials by offering an incentive. In exchange for viewing an ad, the consumer is offered access for a full day to all of the networks premium content. The advertiser sponsors the content for the day, and the user must view the ad prior to getting access to the premium content. This strategy can also be used to generate the completion of online surveys and are a great way to learn more about your target audience. Site section sponsorship is about a brand ‘owning’ a dedicated area on an online property. Often a sponsorship is tied to a contest or sweepstakes to generate increased brand awareness and interaction with the consumer.
• We are also seeing a trend whereby national media portals have started approaching sites that house unique video and news articles ranging from TSN to StupidVideos.com. Henderson Robb and Colonies.com are currently working with national media portal and providing a video and news content delivery feed. This partnership provides a benefit for both parties, by assisting the media portal in the penetration of new markets and raising the sites authenticity, while providing the social network with a significant increase in membership, traffic and credibility as a media player. This arrangement also produces additional inventory and ad revenue for both sites.

Social networks offer advertisers some amazing and powerful one-to-one marketing opportunities. A social network might have smaller traffic numbers as compared to the larger mass market sites, but few offer the targeted access to niche market like a social network.