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Jordan Brand, a division of Nike, has one of the most recognizable logos in the sporting goods industry. A silhouette of Michael Jordan mid-jump graces the footwear, apparel, and equipment that make Jordan one of the most coveted basketball brands in the US. Building energy Although his likeness still appears on merchandise, Michael Jordan retired from his legendary role in the game in 1999, posing a challenge for Jordan Brand-- keeping Michael Jordan top of mind for younger consumers. Looking for new ways to excite and engage youth within basketball culture, Jordan Brand turned to its agency partner, Wieden+Kennedy , New York (W+K, NY). Together, they hatched an idea for a campaign that veered from the TV campaigns they traditionally ran. As expected, they built an inventive, unique campaign around a basketball player. But the player was neither Michael Jordan nor another NBA star. It was Leroy Smith. The man, the campaign “Sophomore year of high school, Leroy Smith took Michael’s spot on the junior varsity team,” explains Jason Clement, Director of Findability and Search for W+K NY, of the true story that inspired the campaign. “Michael points to that as the moment when he realized he needed to work and train harder to become really good.” With the campaign’s central character chosen (and the real Leroy Smith on board), the Jordan and Wieden+Kennedy teams crafted a narrative that would pull in their audience. Played by actor Charlie Murphy, the campaign’s Leroy sells motivational DVDs, promising to teach viewers the same skills he used to dominate Michael Jordan. The DVDs, along with posters, an iPhone app, and music videos can be found on his site, www.getyourbasketballon.com . And of course the campaign’s Leroy also has a YouTube Channel, a Facebook profile, and a Twitter feed to communicate with his fans. But to create buzz and hype, Wieden and Kennedy and Jordan chose not to brand the campaign. Leroy Smith Banner ad that ran on the Google Content Network The ultimate forum And it was the discovery of this content that was key to the campaign’s success. The campaign’s six-week run opened with “Leroy” himself pitching his motivational DVDs in infomercial-style television ads during the NBA playoffs. Google AdWords search ads sent interested users to Leroy’s site. To reach additional basketball fans where they were actively spending their time, the Jordan and W+K NY teams used the Google Content Network to place a wide array of display and text ads on blogs and fan sites. By using keyword targeting to automatically place their ads on relevant sites on the Google Content Network, the team was able to find the right locations for their creative more efficiently. The strategy proved effective. They found a lot of niche basketball blogs where he could reach their target with very, very little waste and get them excited about the campaign. Once their ads were running, the reporting and optimization controls within the Content Network enabled the W+K NY team to see which sites were working best and adjust their targeting appropriately. As excitement over the Leroy Smith campaign grew, it was clear that it was striking a chord with its audience. A number of blogs had double-digit click through rates. People were taking screenshots of the ad on their blogs and then writing posts about how much they liked having the ad on their site. When all that enthusiasm was translated into numbers, the Leroy Smith campaign had generated 188 million impressions and 296,000 clicks over the six weeks it ran. And users were highly engaged with the content, showing very low abandonment rates once on site. Video proved compelling as well, with 27,000 YouTube channel views and 229,000 views for Leroy Smith’s “Get Your Basketball On” infomercial video . Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Jordan's Get Your Basketball On campaign on the Google Content Network

Display advertising is changing rapidly with the emergence of audience data, engaging new ad formats, dynamic creatives, and new technologies. We'd like to invite you to a webinar about our recent innovations in display advertising and how marketers are incorporating it into their strategy. Specifically, we’ll discuss: Google's vision and recent innovations in display advertising How to best take advantage of our offerings, from planning to optimizing your campaigns How advertisers are incorporating the Google Content Network into their marketing strategy Date: Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 11:00am PST / 1:00pm CST / 2:00pm EST Register here Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team

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Upcoming webinar: Uncovering opportunities with display advertising

Lady Gaga isn't the only one creating a ruckus about " Telephones " these days. Google and Compete are excited to share their latest research findings on cell phone and smart phone shoppers. With so many choices, how do consumers make wireless telephone purchase decisions? How do they shop online, and how can marketers effectively command their attention? For answers to these questions and more, join Compete's Mobile & Wireless expert, Danielle Nohe, and Google Tech Industry Account Planners, Megan Runser and Marl Gatchalian, on Tuesday, April 20th, at 2pm EST/11am PST, for ThinkTech: Wireless 2.0 Shopper. Specifically, we'll cover: How to reach and influence the consumer within this competitive marketplace Strategies that drive new customer acquisition The role Search plays in the wireless research process, from query to purchase Date: Tuesday, April 20th 11amPST / 1pmCST / 2pmEST Register here Posted by Megan Runser, Google Tech Team

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Upcoming webinar: Wireless 2.0 shopper

Advertisers can now build media plans to reach audiences with interests relevant to their campaigns using DoubleClick Ad Planner. Audience interests represent the aggregate interests of visitors to any given website. With today’s release, the top ten audience interests for each site are now listed on the profile page for each of the millions of sites profiled in Ad Planner. This provides an important complement to the demographic data that’s already widely available. By combining an understanding of a website’s demographic appeal with the range of interests of the audience the site attracts, advertisers can get a more complete picture of who they will reach by advertising on the site. To date in Ad Planner, advertisers have used site categories, which describe the content of websites, as a proxy for audience interests. For example, to plan an ad campaign for a pet product, advertisers would look for sites with content about pets for their media plan. While this may be an appropriate proxy, it also may overlook some great sites, since when people are interested in a topic, they don’t only visit sites about that topic. Audience interests in Ad Planner helps advertisers find a wider range of sites for their media plan without compromising their ability to reach the right audience. With the “Search by audience” tab in Ad Planner, selecting the “Pets” interest will reveal a list of sites that have a high affinity with audiences interested in pets. While some of the sites will be about pets, many additional sites will be about other topics. Take the screenshot below, which is from the Ad Planner profile for a site about politics . Although the site is not about pets, it scores a high (36.9x) affinity with audiences who are interested in pets, which means visitors to this site are 36.9 times more likely to be interested in pets than the average Internet population. A category filter on pets would never locate this site, but an interests search on pets would. (click to view image) Audience interests gives advertisers a new tool for selecting the best sites for their media plans. To learn more about how we generate the data for audience interests, please refer to our methodology document . To try out the new audience interests features, visit www.google.com/adplanner . Posted by Ben Chambers, Software Engineer [note: this post has been reprinted from the DoubleClick Blog ]

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Audience Interests Now Available in DoubleClick Ad Planner

If you're a regular reader of the blog, in the last year you've seen Google's advertising tools move in some exciting directions. We've introduced more data-driven and efficient campaign management with the new AdWords interface , easier account optimization with the Opportunities tab , and new ad formats like Ad Sitelinks and Product Extensions , to name a few. But where is advertising with Google headed next? Which new tools, formats and features will make it possible for you to communicate with your customers in more meaningful, creative ways? We've started a new project, Google Ad Innovations , to answer that very question. Google Ad Innovations is a website where you can explore Google's latest advertising technologies, watch short video demos to learn more, and try out select new tools. The technologies we'll highlight on Google Ad Innovations are at various stages of development, from early tests to fully released features. Here are a few of the new releases you'll find on Ad Innovations right now: Remarketing -- a way to show your ads to users who have previously visited your website as they browse sites across the Google Content Network AdWords Search Funnels -- a set of reports that help you understand the Google.com search ad click and impression behavior leading up to a conversion Location Extensions with multiple addresses -- an ad format which displays a list of nearby store locations when your customers are performing local searches Click-to-Call Extensions -- an ad format that let mobile phone users call you directly from your ads Analytics Intelligence -- a Google Analytics feature that automatically identifies significant changes in your site traffic Although there's a lot to look at on Ad Innovations, we want it to be more than a show and tell site. Every Ad Innovations page will have a feedback link: if you see a feature that can be improved, or if you think we've hit on a valuable new idea, let us know! The comments and suggestions you leave while using Google Ad Innovations will go directly to the Google team working on the feature. So, if you want to stay on the cutting edge of advertising products, visit Google Ad Innovations — we’ll regularly add new tools and features to the site, and we can't wait to hear what you think! Posted by Devin Sandoz, Product Marketing Manager

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Google Ad Innovations: Where ads are going next