Online display advertising appears in many forms, not just traditional banners, skyscrapers and MPUs.

Something many of our sites/ magazines are looking at is interactive digital editions. This is not just the print edition replicated online as they do not follow the standard column widths and heavy text commonly found in hard copy as it really isn't suitable for consuming online. Instead, we fill them with plenty of images, videos and info-graphics designed to make it easy for the user to read without having to zoom in to read small text.

At Flightglobal.com we produced around a dozen of these in 2010 and plan to increase this in 2011. Ours came about from the air show coverage where we produce a printed Flight Daily News handed out to visitors but what about all those people who want to know what is happening but can't make it wherever in the World it is? The answer for us, along with our website, was Interactive Flight Daily News. This is delivered to your inbox so you can see, hear and experience the latest news and information even if you can't be there.

This has been a huge success not just editorially but for advertisers who can provide static ads as they would in print or they can adapt to the new format and provide interactive Rich Media advertisements. You can see this in the following link to our Farnborough Air Show iFDN 

Airbus saw click-through rates of around 6.7% but there are a few advertising tips;

1) Make sure the whole of your ad is hyperlinked - whilst any urls will be picked up and automatically hyperlinked you are relying on a steady hand to mouse over it and you want to make it as easy as possible to click through to your site.

2) Catch the reader's eye straight away - there is so much going on in these editions you really need to stand out.

3) Give the user choices and remember the Rich Media ads can be so much deeper than a static image - create different tabs within the ad so they can view different content which you can also track and see where and what the user is interested in.

It isn't just air shows as we have now recently launched the interactive Airline Business whilst in the agricultural market Crops has just gone digital which complements the eight print issues, sent to around 10,000 subscribers. 

With more and more magazines going digital and with compatibility on iPads the opportunities for advertising in innovative ways to existing and new audiences are really opening up.

At the recent Marketing Sherpa B2B Summit, Dr Flint McGlaughlin of MECLABs ran through 14 useful tips for optimising the marketing conversion process. Tiny changes have an enormous effect and can substantially alter the ROI:

1.    Remember people don't buy from websites, they buy from people.
2.    Use quantitative statements to support your claims, rather than vague qualitative
       language that anyone can say.
3.    Keep paragraphs short, supported with quantitative evidence.
4.    People naturally read from top to bottom, so don't put obstacles in the way of the
       natural flow of the eye.
5.    Reserve the right-hand page for supporting information.
6.    If you make a claim in an ad (eg award winning), substantiate the claim on the
       landing page to follow the natural thought sequence.
7.    Forms that are separate from a landing page should emphasise the value
       proposition much as the landing page.
8.    Some landing pages need so much work that it's more efficient to just scrap it and
       start again.
9.    Remember the job of a headline is to engage someone sufficiently to read the first
       paragraph.
10.  The role of first paragraph is to answer the key questions in visitors' minds - Where a
       am I? What can I do here? Why should I do it?
11.  Keep the number of clicks that a user is required to do to a minimum - research
       indicates that every time you ask someone to click, you potentially lose 50% of 
       audience.
12.  Become a master at using the elements of the page that control eye
       movement: shape, position, size, colour.
13.  Remember to test variables such as the use of different words (eg does the word
       'Trial' convert better than 'Demo?)

The challenge for marketers is to guide users through a process, helping them overcome the 'FRICTION' that they meet along the way:

Further References
Slides from the B2B Marketing Sherpa Event

Article by Lawrence Mitchell (RBI-UK)