Skin it to Win It: Why Skinning Sets the Stage for Web Page Takeovers
Page takeovers are arguably one of the most eye-catching ads a consumer will see upon opening a Web page. The homepages of online big guns like AOL and Yahoo have in more recent years added this advertising format to their media kits, bringing the first attention to the latest online ad campaign or movie release. Even MySpacers found themselves in an X-MEN wonderland last week when the mutant comic heroes a la “The Last Stand” took over the social networking site’s home page. But when it comes to these Web skins, are we really utilizing their full promotional and branding potential?
According to Chris Portella, Organic’s media manager, they’re out there but there’s still room for advertisers to get creative and targeted. “From a media perspective, we see a lot sites offering cookie-cutter skin sponsorships. The majority of them are based on wrapping a brand around a media player, or the border of a page,” Portella explains.
“Successful sponsorships are subtle in design, but effective with their presence. They give users the choice to use their skin and offer bonus features; the goal being to provide a richer experience that doesn’t interfere with the user’s primary purpose for being there. Yahoo’s IMV sponsorships do a good job of delivering on these principles. They offer 5 tiers of sponsorships; the most basic is a standard template-ized layout and the most advanced is a fully customizable experience with major functionality integrations, including the ability to host a game. [But] regarding un-skinned opportunities, I think that contextually relevant functional skin sponsorships is uncharted territory.”
And while page takeovers are present, at least on some bigger name sites, the growth potential in this medium is being taken on by the consumer, not the advertiser via user generated content.
Take MySpace, for example. Kids, teens and adults have taken it upon themselves to create skins for their profiles using anything from pictures of their dogs to landscapes to…gasp…their favorite brands. Free MySpace tweak pages like Whateverlife.com, among hundreds of others, offer all sorts of codes for the News Corp. company’s addicts to have their fill and make their profile unique and representative of themselves. Type in “free MySpace codes” and a world of HTML layouts, graphics and cursors (not to mention Fastclick and Casale pop ups) are at your disposal. Whateverlife even has a brand layout page where users have submitted their homemade layouts of their favorite brands like Roxy and Abercrombie & Fitch.
The point: these were made by users, not advertisers, and are being used for free by anyone and everyone. Talk about an untapped viral opportunity for user generated content. You can’t pay for this kind of branding, and you don’t necessarily have to. So why aren’t advertisers offering skins instead of banners for the sites they run on? Similar to the recent MSN.com beta home page where users can chose which color scheme they want (MSN brand related colors like blue, orange, and green, etc.), why not offer free branded schemes instead?
One reason, as Organic’s group director Tim Armitage asks, “Why don’t more brands offer skinning to make customers feel a stronger connection to the brand, as well as a stronger connection to their own experience with the brand? Perhaps most companies consider it too much of a hassle, while others may think that the graphical translations of their brand’s identity might risk brand dilution or fragmentation.”
Armitage continues, “I think that some brands are better suited to reinventing and re-interpreting themselves than others. Target would be a perfect brand to offer skinning. However, I think there are a lot of blue chip brands that would initially resist it, but might be surprised by how well skinning would be received by their customers.”
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