The Sun, Doubleclick and i-level create online advertising tool

New Media Age

25/09/2008

Google-owned DoubleClick is working with Sky on the beta test of live-update ad-serving.

The service, which is yet to be named, is in the final stages of testing prior to rolling out next month. It enables rich-media advertising to be updated dynamically by any RSS feed, XML feed or a number of other live-update technologies.

It has been born out of a number of initiatives including the creation of an advertising update service for The Sun. Glue-owned technical agency Anorak, media agency i-level, The Sun and DoubleClick developed a tool to create advertising that could be updated using headlines and photos from stories on the tabloid's site, using live feeds from the newspaper's bespoke CMS which was created especially for the project.

Sue Hunt, director of rich media at DoubleClick Europe, said, "It means that agencies really only need to build a shell, allowing them to be a true creative agency and spend more times on creativity and innovation and less time creating hundreds of different treatments."

The service is being used by Sky to ensure its content-based advertising is as fresh and relevant as possible. The tool can also be linked with other DoubleClick services that match advertising to relevant page content.

It builds on existing campaigns that have used RSS to alter creative dynamically. Renault launched an online display campaign for its Mégane Coupé-Cabriolet that served different creative according to the weather in the user's location, while a campaign by Agency Republic and Media Contacts for the BBC iPlayer served six different video clips according to time of day.

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