RSS to Drive Banner Ads: Nothing to Get Carried Away About

Scott Quick, who we're discussing doing a book with, just sent me the link to an article on AdWeek about the upcoming BBC online campaign with a twist.

[BTW - Scott's blog is my favorite RSS source, highly recommended]

BBC is going beyond the traditional banner ad by using RSS to drive dynamic and targeted story headlines within the actual banners, instead of just going with a less attractive and less clickable slogan.

It only makes sense --- by providing constantly fresh and targeted content via their ads BBC will manage to attract more actual clickers and get the opportunity to convert that experience in to a website registration or even newspaper subscription.

And there's another twist as well: using RSS the ad content will dynamically adapt on-the-fly.

"Should a news story break that is likely to elicit wide attention, Agency Republic increases the volume of ads in circulation with current headlines from the BBC Web site."

Certainly an interesting use of RSS, which goes a far way in demonstrating what the format can do for marketers. Perhaps not strictly related but still resembling is the case study shared by Sharon Housley on how some of their clients are using RSS to drive and manipulate banner ads on multiple sites.

But let's not get carried away here. What BBC is doing might be innovative from the viewpoint of using RSS, but ads with dynamic content are nothing new.

E-commerce sites have long been using ads that display their latest products and some are even going the way of behavioral targeting --- tracking users through multiple sites and then displaying products within banners that best meet the perceived needs of the prospect. For example, if during your browsing you showed an interest in high-end laptops, their banner ads would promote high-end laptops, and so on.

But still, a great move by BBC that deserves all the praise. Not to forget, AdWeek also mentions some other great examples:

"BBC is not alone in using RSS in its advertising. In a June CNN.com ad campaign to build awareness and trial of its free video service, Agency.com built ads that included dynamically generated headlines of news videos on the site. Reuters has worked with Nasdaq and Coca-Cola for campaigns that package RSS feeds of its news stories into ad units tailored for those brands' audiences."

"For the six-month campaign, Omnicom Group's Agency Republic, the BBC's lead agency, is targeting "inquisitives," the at-work audience that tends to dip in and out of news stories throughout the day. In one ad, tagged "news for a nonstop world," a real-time feed of the latest BBCNews.com world news headlines orbits a globe. A second execution for lifestyle sites and visitors has headlines and the opening sentence of entertainment stories."