Sprout Social Advertising

Sprout Engage Ad Case Study: PEPSI – ThinkGeek / DoubleClick

Sprout and DoubleClick Simplify Ad Building and Ad Serving saving time and money
Creating rich, engaging Flash ads quickly and cost-effectively is at the top of the priority list for most ad operations teams. But client revision rounds can slow time to market when each change requires more coding, and bringing interactive features into ad units—RSS feeds, polls, or the ability to share ad content on Facebook or Tweet about it on Twitter— can be complicated. In late 2009, Sprout began efforts to integrate their Engage Ad Platform, a web-based visual authoring studio that eliminates the need for Flash coding, with DoubleClick Studio. The goal was to enable advertisers, publishers, and agencies to quickly create Flash ads that could be served and tracked through DoubleClick Studio and DART.

Geeknet Ag rees to Beta Test Sprout’s Engage Ad Platform An existing DoubleClick customer, Geeknet, understood the challenge of rapid rich ad creation and agreed to beta test Sprout’s solution. Matt Wessel, as Flash Developer and Ad Product Technology Specialist for Geeknet, creates ads for the site, which sells products geared toward technology and gadget lovers.

Sprout’s Platform Eases Pain Point of Flash Ad Creation for Geeknet “The Sprout social advertising platform was really easy to work with. As a designer I loved the amount of creative control I had over the ad. I wasn’t forced into a template or hindered in any way,” said Matt. Matt’s first ad included an RSS feed that brought dynamic news content right into the ad. “I was really pleased with how easy it was to bring an RSS feed into the ad,” said Matt. “All I did was drag and drop the component onto the canvas and link it to the correct URL. Working with RSS in Flash is hard but with Sprout it was really simple. In fact, it only took me about 15 minutes to build the ad,” Matt added. Once the ad was created, Matt was able to share a fully functional demo— rather than a static mockup—with the customer for approval. “One benefit of working with Sprout is that I have a functional mock-up to show customers. If the customer wants something tweaked I can do it right in the Sprout in real time.” Upon receiving approval, Matt used Sprout to auto-generate a DoubleClick Studio-compliant zip file containing a SWF and backup image. He uploaded this zip file to DoubleClick Studio and QA’d it as normal.

Sprout Ad Served Seamless ly via DoubleClick with Above Average Performance

The ad ran in mid-December and boasted an above-average click-through rate of 1%. Geeknet is currently creating a second ad unit using Sprout’s Engage Ad Platform; this time they’ll pull blog posts right into the unit to bring rich, meaningful content to their audience. They plan to keep working with Sprout and DoubleClick as these two companies continue to revolutionize display advertising. Sprout Engage Platform Benefits:

• Quickly create rich, dynamic Flash ads with a web-based drag-and-drop visual authoring studio. No Flash experience necessary.
• Create fully functional mockups to speed client reviews and ad deployment.
• Drag and drop interactive features like Twitter and RSS feeds, polls and video components into your ad units in minutes.
• Easily upload and track ads through DoubleClick Studio.