Remember widgets? Well, they’re still around, they’re just far more interactive. Sprout, the company that launched an impressive widget builder two years ago, is diving deeper into advertising, as it shifts its products to better suit today’s market. This has all led up to Sprout integrating with DoubleClick, adding the ability to serve ads as well as help you create them.

Perhaps you’ve noticed the change in advertising methods, moving from display ads to app ads. This has occurred primarily in the mobile market, as apps from particular brands can act as methods of advertising themselves. The web overall is becoming more fluid and interactive, meaning ads need to keep up.

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by Anthony Ha

San Francisco-based Sprout made a big splash when it launched two years ago with its easy tools for building applications in the Flash format. In the last few months, it has been refocusing on advertising, and with today’s just-announced integration with Google’s DoubleClick ad products, Marketing Director Roland Smart said the company has completed “the major parts of this pivot.”

The company’s first big announcement in this area came in April, when it revealed that its tools could be used to build interactive ads that run in both the Flash and HTML5 formats (an Alice in Wonderland ad built with Sprout is pictured above), depending on what the viewer’s Web browser supports. Now, Sprout is also helping with the distribution of those ads — it allows users to import ads into DoubleClick Studio, where the ads can be previewed, then pushed out to DoubleClick’s ad servers.

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San Francisco, CA – June ##, 2010 – Today, Sprout, the leading technology platform for creating rich, engaging ads and social media applications, announced that the Sprout Engage Platform, a visual authoring solution, has been integrated with DoubleClick Studio, a rich media production and workflow tool. The integration makes it easy for creative teams to develop ads in Sprout’s visual authoring studio and then use DoubleClick Studio to manage their workflow and submit creatives to DoubleClick’s ad serving products DoubleClick for Advertisers (DFA) and DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP).

“With the February launch of Sprout Engage Ads we showed brands how they can bring the interactivity of a Facebook application into a standard IAB display ad,” said Carnet Williams, Founder and CEO of Sprout. “Today, we are ensuring that these ads can be quickly created and easily brought into the DoubleClick platform for trafficking and measurement.

Now, ads created using Sprout Engage can be uploaded to DoubleClick Studio. The integration allows ad properties, such as rich media events, to be setup during ad creation and carry over to DoubleClick Studio, where the Sprout Engage Ads can be previewed, tested and pushed to DFA or DFP. This ensures the ads can be served by DFA/DFP, which provides clients with accurate measurement metrics wherever the ads are run across the web.

Sprout Engage supports expandables, 3rd party APIs and social data integration with the leading social networks. It also includes a rich set of analytics to measure performance and optimize for success.

“Sprout Engage Ads have dramatically changed the way we look at what we can do in an ad unit,” said Matthew Wessel, Flash developer at ThinkGeek.com who was in the program beta. “Integrating RSS feeds into an ad unit used to be time consuming and difficult. Using Sprout Engage Ad Builder we were able to visually create a fully functioning ad unit in just minutes. And integration with DoubleClick means that we can measure the performance of the creative, which we need.” Wessel added.

About Sprout:

Sprout gives brands a better way to connect with consumers through next generation display ads and engagement applications. Our Engage Platform empowers advertisers and publishers to rapidly deploy rich, interactive, and social brand experiences that encourage consumer engagement. Fully integrated with the leading ad servers and social networks, Sprout campaigns can run anywhere your consumers spend time online. Sprout customers include Disney, Warner Bros., HBO, Federated Media, Intel, Technorati, Toyota, and MTV. Funded by Polaris Venture Partners, Sprout is based in San Francisco and has offices in Los Angeles and Honolulu. To learn more, visit sproutinc.com

The integration allows ad properties, such as rich media events, to be setup during ad creation and carry over to DoubleClick Studio, where the Sprout Engage Ads can be previewed, tested and pushed to DFA or DFP. This ensures the ads can be served by DFA/DFP, which provides clients with accurate measurement metrics wherever the ads are run across the web. Here’s a demo video that shows the process of completing an ad in Sprout and bringing it into DoubleClick Studio:

At Sprout we’re focused on way to streamline the process of creating ads and this integration is focused on the serving side. If you’re interested in learning more about how you can streamline to process of importing artwork into our platform, check out this post. And if you’re interested in learning about how to build HTML5 and Flash ads in a single workflow, check out this post.

Here’s what Matt Wessel, Flash developer at ThinkGeek.com has to say about working with Sprout as a beta tester of the DoubleClick Integration:

If you’re interested in streamlining your workflow even further, check this post about how our new FXG converter allows you to bring your creative from Photoshop directly into Sprout.

1. Layout your creative in a layered Photoshop file and save in .FXG format
2. Launch Sprout’s FXG Converter Air application and drag the .FXG file onto the converter. This will place a .zip file on your desktop.
3. Open your Sprout account and click on the “import” link, then select the .zip file.
4. Wait for the upload, then open the new project in your project list entitled “imported from FXG”

That’s all there is to it! Here’s a demonstration video that guides you through the import process and takes you through the creation of an HTML5 ad unit. If you’re interested in learning more about the details of building an HTML5 unit you can check out this video in which we walk through the build process step by step.

We’re happy to announce that Sprout won the sfBIG award for ‘Next BIG Digital Startup/Technology Company’ at the ‘BIG Star Awards’ in San Francisco last week. It’s a real honor to stand side by side with the giants of the Bay Area advertising industry, especially considering we’re relatively new to the industry. We’ve come a long way in three years and look forward to being an ongoing part of the sfBIG community!

In the last six months Sprout has been working hard to revolutionize the online display advertising space. With the introduction of Sprout’s  Flash and HTML5 authoring solution in April, we were the first companied to introduce a combined workflow for the creation of rich media ads that run on both desktop and mobile devices. These recent innovation and our latest work led to Sprout’s award, but we were also a runner up for the “Best Use of Social Media” category as well as the “Best Digital Campaign from a Local Agency” category. You can see all the categories and finalists here.

What’s working for you? What can you share about publishing from your page? How your pages work together? Something about custom tabs? Have you been A/B testing using Facebook’s publishing tools? Does interactive content perform better for you in the stream? Feel free to share your insights in the comments of this post, or just shoot us a note at marketing@sproutinc.com. If we use something from your comments, you’ll be credited in the guide!

This guide will be published in the next month or so, in the mean time, here’s some interesting articles on creating successful Facebook fanpages that you might like:

• Facebook: tips and best practices
• TechCrunch: building engagement on Facebook
• Mashable: 5 tips to optimize your fanpage
• Mashable: 5 insightful case studies
• All Facebook: 13 strategies for building successful applications on Facebook

Thanks!

Table 1 Quarterly revenue growth online advertising industry

Comscore’s ‘Digital Year in Review 2009’ report discloses that users viewed 21% more display ads between the end of 2008 and 2009, and reported a growth 15% from Q1 2009 to Q1 2010. In context of the slow growth in revenue, this continuing growth of impressions reflects significant losses in average CPM pricing. A recent research publication by interactive advertising agency Razorfish is in line with these figures. In their ‘Outlook Report 2010’, Razorfish reports that the bad economy in 2009 has kept advertisers from experimenting with new social display ad technology. As the market bounces back, however, buoying up CPM prices will require better performance through these innovations that have been slow to market.

While growth of display ad revenue was slow, ad technology providers have not stopped innovating. For example, at Sprout we’re pioneering ways to make the production of highly interactive rich media ads more scalable. The combination of new technology and a recovery in the US economy, is expected to significantly boost the rich media ad spend. A recent forecast by Forrester research visualizes this expected growth of rich media display ads (see table 2).

Table 2 Forecast US Display Advertising Spend, 2009 to 2014 (source: Forrester Research)

Recent signals from major players in the industry also show us that there’s significant confidence around upcoming growth. Major acquisitions and announcements are happening in the online display advertising industry, the most prominent one of which is Apple’s introduction of the iAds. Not only is Apple putting its money on mobile display advertising, in the WWDC this week, Apple CEO Steve Jobs even announced that they’re expecting the iAds to generate no less than 60 million dollars in just the rest of 2010. Apple is not the only one jumping on the mobile display ad train, we’ve also seen Google getting on by acquiring Admob in May this year and Adobe partnering up with ad provider Greystripe to create ads that compete with the iAds.

That’s why we think the online display ad industry is once again poised to make some giant leaps forward in the upcoming years. Some major innovations are coming up and we are excited to be part of that at Sprout. In the past months, we’ve received a great deal of interest in our HTML5 authoring solution and we look forward to bringing that out of beta and fully into our product. Stay tuned.

Toyota’s Rock The Space
Turn up the volume, because Rock The Space is back! After a highly successful campaign in 2009, Toyota and MySpace decided to bring this contest back.  Rock The Space is an application that gives all MySpace bands the opportunity to customize their own demo-tape and upload their song to compete for an exclusive MySpace Music recording contract. Like last year, there’s some pretty good stuff out there, click here to go to the app.

Thermage + Fraxel’s BFF Awards
We’re proud to present to you, the new Thermage + Fraxel ‘Best Friends Forever Awards’ on Facebook. This glamorous Sprout encourages users to share a compelling story and photo of their special friendship, creating their own shareable content within the app, and sharing it in the BFF Gallery. By sharing their friendship, users compete for a weekly $100 dollar prize or for the Thermage + Fraxel grand prize. Do you have a BFF? Check out the Thermage + Fraxel fan page and submit your story!

Norton’s Cybercrime Superhero Creator
Powered by the Sprout Platform, Norton is transforming Facebook users into  ‘Cybercrime Superheroes’ on its fan page. With this adrenaline boosting app, users can turn themselves into a merciless Cybercrime Superhero, choosing powers, weapons and inserting their own face via webcam, Facebook or by uploading a picture. After customizing their avatar’s cybercrime-fighting awesomeness, users can share it into their Facebook stream, encouraging  friends to suit up and join the fight. Check out the Norton fan page and become a superhero!

Coke’s Give It Back App
Coke is using the Sprout Platform to improve the world. The company has published a mind refreshing Facebook application that tests users’ recycling behavior. The application tells the user how many shirts, baseball caps, backpacks, hours or TV, computer or light usage can be made from their recycling efforts. In this way, users can see what their impact on the world is and share this in their Facebook stream, inviting their friends to do the same. Want to see what impact you have on the world? check out the app.