THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO AGILE MARKETING IN
DISPLAY ADS
Flite Inc.
Copyright 2013 by Flite Inc.
Smashwords Edition

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO AGILE MARKETING IN
DISPLAY ADS
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Why Adopt Agile Marketing?
- Benefits Of Agile Marketing
Chapter 2: What Are The Key Concepts In Agile Marketing?
- Prepare To Act Quickly
- Keep A Pulse On Trends
- Build Nimble Teams
- Make Updates In Real-time
- Iterate In Short Cycles
Chapter 3: How Agile Is Too Agile?
Chapter 4: How Do You Overcome “Banner Blindness” With
Agile Marketing?
- Causes Of Banner Blindness
- What Makes A Good Display Ad?
Chapter 5: What Are Examples Of Agile Marketing In Action?
- When Preparation Meets Opportunity: How To Stay Agile
During Unexpected News
- How To Test Ideas To Optimize Display Ads
Conclusion
Agile marketing is about taking small steps, minimizing risk, and
failing fast—all in an effort to figure out what works as efficiently
as possible.
As a methodology, it focuses on an iterative approach to planning

audience is a constantly moving target.
So how can marketers rise above the noise? How can we craft
messaging and stories that will resonate with our audience’s
changing interests?
The answer is to embrace a framework that adapts to your
audience’s tastes and priorities as quickly as they change. It’s
innovate or sink.
Agile marketing does not disregard careful planning. Instead, it is a
powerful and necessary evolution that empowers you to reach your
audience in ways that are faster, leaner, and more creative — to
help you become more competitive.
Take Coca-Cola, for example. In 2011 they announced that they
would shift their marketing from “creative excellence” to “content
excellence” as part of a new Liquid and Linked strategy. At the
center of this was a 70/20/10 content framework to encourage
innovation:
• 70% low-risk, established “now” content
• 20% innovative “new” content based ton what works
• 10% untested content, the “next” ideas that will become
tomorrow's 70% or 20%
Why is Coca-Cola applying 30% of their budget to innovation and
experimentation? Because when juxtaposed with the real-time
internet, those rigid and heavily-planned executions from the past
are risky, costly and potentially irrelevant.
Coca-Cola is not alone. As evidenced by Gatorade’s new Mission
Control Center, Forbes’ real-time newsroom, and Procter &
Gamble’s daily review meetings—the list goes on—companies big
and small are flocking to agile marketing.
“Start small and scale fast.”
Wendy Clark

Rich Customer Insight
Successful agile marketing requires careful observation of
customer behavior. By analyzing how a customer interacts with
messaging and creative, the agile marketer gains a deeper
understanding of the customer than they would from a traditional
waterfall marketing. This allows marketers to deliver the type of
ads that delight customers more quickly and effectively.
CHAPTER 2: WHAT ARE THE KEY CONCEPTS IN
AGILE MARKETING?
Agile marketing, while flexible, does rely on a core set of values.
Below are important concepts as described by the industry’s
leading agile experts. Since every organization is different, don’t
be afraid to adjust your working methods, too.
PREPARE TO ACT QUICKLY
Jonathon Colman, Principal Experience Architect at REI,
encourages adopting a bias toward action. Don’t get bogged down
by “analysis paralysis” where overthinking and overplanning
impede progress. By developing a sense of urgency, you can seize
unexpected marketing opportunities when they arise.
Example: Gatorade Mission Control Center
Read Article ⊲
Gatorade keeps a pulse on its consumer base with an impressive
data-monitoring room dubbed the Mission Control Center. With an
eye on social media channels, blogs, and relevant topics, Gatorade
is prepared to refine their marketing when an opportunity strikes.
For example, when Mission Control noticed the viral popularity of
a rap song featured in one of their commercials, they quickly
worked with the recording artist to release a full version of the
track to Gatorade fans on Twitter and Facebook. Despite the
complexity of the task, Gatorade spotted an opportunity to connect

efforts.
Example: The New Forbes Newsroom
Read Article ⊲
Forbes has transformed their newsroom, upending the morning
meeting and redefining roles. The result is a structure more
focused on content success in real-time. Using real-time data, the
team tracks site activity and article performance.
Old hierarchies are dissolved through social software that
encourages an ongoing discussion. Virtually anyone can chime in
with ideas, enabling the publisher to conduct the flow of content in
an agile and effective way.
“It’s now a far more inclusive, continuous and real-time idea-
generating process - a “group think” that reflects the era of
social media and strategy of Forbes.com itself.”
Lewis DVorkin
Chief Product Officer at Forbes Media
MAKE UPDATES IN REAL-TIME
Agile marketing requires a much faster cadence than traditional
marketing. Instead of lengthy planning and execution over the
course of several months, being agile means breaking things down
into a matter of steps that can be accomplished in weeks or even
days.
Marketing efforts fluctuate between planning, execution, review,
and optimization. This doesn’t mean there can’t be big campaigns
or long-term strategies; it means that major initiatives are built up
through multiple refinements and released in full when the data
shows they can reliably succeed. It also means that marketers are
monitoring the performance of ad campaigns to figure out what’s
working and what’s not, and making updates in real time to capture
insights from current trends.

1. Listen
Understand which trends matter to your customers. Determine if
and how these changes should be addressed in your marketing
efforts.
2. Program
Develop and curate content to reflect daily trends.
3. Update
Make your marketing relevant with real-time updates to messaging
and creative.
4. Measure
Monitor results using accurate metrics that reflect your marketing
goals. Apply what you learn to future updates and campaigns.
CHAPTER 3: HOW AGILE IS TOO AGILE?
Being agile isn’t an excuse to fumble along forwards, backwards,
or sideways until you get your act together. On the contrary, agile
marketing requires you to have a strong vision of what you want to
accomplish, what problem you are solving, and for whom.
There are plenty of ways to be led astray in the rapid pace of agile
marketing, but with awareness and solid decision-making, these
pitfalls are easily navigable.
Here are a few items to be aware of:
Pressure to Cut Corners
With a faster cadence and bias toward action come the pressure to
cut corners. Yes, you should act and iterate, but make sure to keep
standards high with the quality of your marketing; otherwise, you
risk damaging your brand.
Insufficient Exploration Time
Sometimes it makes sense to delay acting until you have explored
a variety of potential options. Especially at the onset of new
initiatives, it’s okay to resist the fail-fast mentality in order to

demographics, date, weather, behavior, etc.
• Application-like functionality in display ads that can deliver
highly interactive experiences
CAUSES OF BANNER BLINDNESS
Skeptics keep insisting that display is dead, but the numbers
suggest quite the opposite. Display is engaged in a period of
serious growth. Forrester Research predicts that display advertising
revenue will more than double by 2016, with search revenue only
doubling in that time.
Consider how display marketers who use the web’s best
technologies and agile mindsets can overcome these common
complaints:
CUSTOMERS SAY:
• Cause of Banner Blindness
• Agile Marketing Solution
• These ads don’t appeal to me. They’re not fresh and interesting
like the content on the website they run on.
• Cloud-based ad services allow ads to easily be updated with
emerging content, new themes and stories relevant to the news and
memes of the day.
• I look right past ads. I’ve been ignoring them for years, and I’m
good at not looking at ads.
• News ads are more interactive and functional, and can offer the
types of useful and engaging content found on a website - not just
images and text enticing visitors to click through.
• I don’t want to interrupt what I intended to do when I came to
this site. I’m not going to click on an ad and leave this page.
• Paid media publishing replaces promotional language enticing
readers to click off the page with engaging content and
functionality that visitors can enjoy on the page itself.

privacy; there’s a fine line between being surprisingly relevant and
creepy.
Interactivity
Good ads are as interactive as the web itself, allowing the user to
explore the creative and learn about the product. Use smartly-
planned navigation to showcase the kinds of content you might
have otherwise put on a landing page or other larger ad format,
then optimize that content based on performance. Look to mobile
sites for inspiration for how content can be packed into a small
space.
Clearly Safe Interaction
Interactive ads should always behave as expected. Build in visual
cues, like tabs and scroll bars, to show that the ad is safe to
explore. Click-throughs should require a user’s obvious intent.
Time-on-unit will improve, and the click-throughs you get will be
far more likely to result in conversion.
Context
In many cases, partnering with publishers to create a more
integrated or contextual ad experience can significantly bolster
results. Native display ads that blend into the page and aren’t
distracting will circumvent banner blindness.
CHAPTER 5: WHAT ARE EXAMPLES OF AGILE
MARKETING IN ACTION?
Even static units and basic rich media ads can benefit from
periodic iterations. If interactivity isn’t in your game plan, agile
testing and experimentation still have plenty to offer.
WHEN PREPARATION MEETS OPPORTUNITY: HOW TO STAY
AGILE DURING UNEXPECTED NEWS
Agile goldmines are opportunities to elevate your marketing based
on events and situations that occur in real-time. Sometimes the

strategic and conscientious. Construct a framework for
experimentation, keeping brand guidelines, company values, and
your audience in mind. Then, come up with some hypotheses to
validate through low-risk trial runs that can be scaled up based on
their success.
Experimentation Strategy
To many marketers, experimentation is already part of your
process. You already A/B test landing pages, or keep watch on
your social channels to see what content gets the most shares and
likes. Congratulations! You’re an agile marketer and you didn’t
even know it.
Applying this agile approach to display advertising opens up a
tremendous amount of possibility for what can be changed and
how. Always remember the scientific method, that the goal is to
empirically prove a hypothesis with data.
Run small tests to learn without much risk, then once you come
upon ideas that work, bet big.
Some Experiments for Optimizing Display Ads
• Experiment with functionality
Video vs SWF animation overlay
Live Twitter feed vs. Facebook feed vs. static messaging
In-ad videos versus clicking through to reach content
• Experiment with creative
Content
Layout
Navigation
• Experiment with context/media buy
Ad Networks
Targeting
Frequency