For a description of how Mixpo Xspots helped Scott Brown crush Martha Coakley and drive campaign voluteers, read Kate Kaye’s March 11 article on ClickZ.

Learn more about Mixpo’s dynamic video advertising solution for politics.

“Successful campaigns,” the article continues, “make every effort to convert casual visitors into active supporters,” who, typically, become a primary source of contributions.

Using easy-to-customize calls to action, you can convert any Mixpo Xspot into a list-building tool. Because viewers who join a list through an Xspot have chosen to watch and interact with the ad, they represent a highly-qualified group of leads.

Watch this Scott Brown demo Xspot to experience the list building features for yourself.

While the Xspot plays, expand the INFO menu and click the Volunteer Today! link. Click the Become a Scott Brown Supporter! overlay to open a custom lead capture form.

Note These lead capture calls to action are for demo purposes only and weren’t actually used during the Scott Brown campaign.

Learn more about dynamic video advertising for politics.

Contact us to learn more about building lists with Xspots.

At the end of a short presidential campaign Xspot, viewers, based on their IP addresses, are automatically redirected to Xspots featuring local gubernatorial races.

These are just two examples of what’s possible with the new telescoping, or redirect, feature available in the Mixpo platform.

Click the Economic Crisis overlay toward the end of this Scott Brown demo Xspot to experience a simple example of telescoping in action.

Note This telescoping example is for demo purposes only and was not used in an actual Scott Brown campaign ad.

Telescoping is just one of several new Mixpo features released recently as part of a package aimed at political campaigns. Learn more about the full package by visiting our political microsite.

To talk with a Mixpo representative about dynamic video advertising for politics, contact us.

Mixpo Xspots include a number of features that foster dynamic interactions between advertisers and the audiences they target. The latest addition to this feature list, of particular interest to political campaigns, is polling.

Take the poll in this Scott Brown demo Xspot to see how the feature works.

Note The survey is for demo purposes only. It was not part of the actual Scott Brown for U.S. Senate campaign.

By building real-time, multiple-choice surveys into Xspots, you simultaneously make the Xspots more engaging, gain valuable voter data, and further your campaign goals.

Learn more about dynamic video advertising for Xspots.

Get more information about the polling feature at our product blog.

By taking advantage of the new social media package, political strategists can leverage Mixpo Xspots to contribute to the immediacy of the campaigns they manage.

As this demo Scott Brown Xspot demonstrates, viewers of social media Xspots can easily share the Xspot with friends, sign up to follow the candidate’s Tweets, become a Facebook fan, link to a candidate’s blog, and more.

Contact us to discover how easy it is to run a social media Xspot campaign.

Learn more about dynamic video advertising for politics.

Visit our product blog to learn more about incorporating interactive social media icons into Xspots.

As part of that online model, in the final days leading up to the election, the Brown campaign trafficked an interactive Mixpo Xspot across the Boston Herald online edition. During the 10-day Xspot campaign, the paper served almost 1.5 million impressions.

• Voters chose to watch and engage with Brown’s Xspot nearly twice as often as the industry standard for online video ads.
• The Xspot campaign’s clickthrough rate exceeded the typical rate for display ads by almost double.
• On average, viewers watched 78 percent of the Xspot.
• Brown’s message was communicated for a total of 267 hours.

To learn more about how easy it was for the Brown campaign to convert an existing 30-second TV spot into an interactive online Xspot and to use the Xspot to respond to breaking news, read the full case study.

Find more information and resources on our political microsite.

What accounts for this reluctance? The perception that online advertising is too boring to grab voters’ attention and too expensive to update in response to rapid changes in the political winds.

Indeed, if you define online advertising as static banner ads or as elaborate rich media productions that are expensive and time-consuming to update, then that analysis is correct.

As Scott Brown’s winning campaign demonstrates, however, Mixpo Xspots eliminate the cost and complexity barriers that have prevented campaigns from taking advantage of the power of online video advertising.

Using the Mixpo platform, the Scott Brown campaign quickly and easily converted 30-second TV spots into interactive Xspots that ran across the Boston Herald online edition. From the engaging Xspots, voters could donate to the campaign, sign up to follow the Scott Brown Twitter feed and Facebook page, and more.

In response to the Brown-Coakley debate, the Brown campaign modified its Xspots to take advantage of increased momentum. Without re-trafficking any ad tags, changes went live immediately everywhere the Xspots were running.

Politics is intense and dynamic. Now there’s campaign technology that makes the most of those characteristics online. Contact Mixpo today.

Read the full Scott Brown case study.

Learn more about dynamic video advertising for politics.

Read more about the Brown campaign’s online strategy.

Innovative campaigns, such as Scott Brown’s Massachusetts senatorial race, have already proven that Xspots have a key role to play in politicians’ online strategies. Strategist for Scott Brown for U.S. Senate, Rob Willington, credits Mixpo with enabling the campaign “to effectively persuade many of our targeted voters.”

The Mixpo solution allows campaigns to add interactive custom overlays to existing video footage that encourage viewers to contribute, volunteer, take polls, connect with Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites, and even telescope to other videos where they can explore specific issues in more depth.

Xspots can be updated at any time to respond to charges from opponents and other breaking news. Changes go live immediately everywhere the Xspots are running.

Learn more about the dynamic video advertising solution for politics at our Political microsite, where you can also download a case study and datasheet.

That’s the conclusion from the June, 2009 DoubleClick research report, The Brand Value of Rich Media and Video Ads, which presents the results of a comparison of brand metrics for more than 4,000 online campaigns across a variety of verticals.

If your advertising clients are running Flash banner ads and TV spots separately, you can now offer them an easy way to jump in to the rich-media-with-video space.

In the Mixpo platform, you can upload and customize the two ad formats so that, on click or mouseover, the Flash display ad expands to an Xspot.

The following examples of an expanding 160×600 skyscraper Flash display ad demonstrate the power and flexibility of the feature. (Note: Because these ads are for demonstration purposes only, clickthrough URLs and lead capture emails are directed to Mixpo rather than the actual advertiser.)

Example 1 On mouseover, a 160×600 skyscraper display ad expands to a 400×300 Xspot anchored in the bottom right corner.

Example 2 On mouseover, a 160×600 skyscraper display ad expands to a 400×300 Xspot anchored at the bottom left corner.

Example 3 On mouseover, a 160×600 skyscraper display ad expands to an 800×600 Xspot anchored at the center right.

You can access all of the performance data for the two associated ads in one easily accessible location.

But remember, even the most effective format can’t compensate for weak content.

In a MediaPost article, Judy Franks, principal of The Marketing Democracy and faculty member at Northwestern University, reminds agencies and advertisers that “People love good video content and they’ll take it wherever they can get their hands on it.”

The cautionary advice in a 2007 Beyond the Click article that all online video ads are not created equal is just as true in 2009. While data from 101 campaigns showed that all video ad campaigns positively moved at least some branding metrics, the most memorable campaigns performed dramatically better than the least memorable. In fact, least memorable campaigns had little or no effect on brand favorability or purchase intent.

More information

Mixpo subscribers can learn more about expanding display ads by visiting the Create page, and then clicking Can I run a display ad using the Mixpo platform?

In an interview with Fred Aun of ClickZ, Matt Booth, SVP and program director for The Kelsey Group’s Interactive Local Media practice, explained the revenue growth this way: Local video ads are effective and result in action. Kelsey’s "User View" study found that 47.3 percent of the people who watched a local video ad visited the advertiser’s website.

In keeping with these predictions, large and small advertisers are jumping on the local video bandwagon. National advertisers are increasingly turning national campaigns local by geotargeting calls to action and contact information.

With this trend toward local advertising, advertisers need to know if their ads are reaching the intended audience. That’s why Mixpo recently supplemented the Viewer Locations map that we’ve always provided with a new analytics feature that allows advertisers to monitor Xspot performance by designated marketing area (DMA).

Viewer Locations map we've always provided

By generating a custom Xspot report in the Dashboard, you can immediately see a list of the 210 U.S. DMAs arranged in descending order by the number of views that occurred in each.

Portion of DMA list in custom report - Click for larger image

How DMA data can shape campaigns

Suppose a state agency is running a campaign for the local lottery. By examining the DMA view data (especially in combination with the Domain filter), the agency can tell how effectively publishers are delivering impressions to the target audience. Based on the data, the agency can modify its media plan or work with existing publishers to improve targeting.

Suppose a travel agency is running an Xspot campaign to promote discounted fares to the Caribbean. Based on click data from the DMA list, the agency can identify cities where the campaign generates the most activity. This gives the travel agency valuable insight into shaping future campaigns by directing impressions toward the most active markets.

More information

Mixpo subscribers can learn more about monitoring performance by DMA by visiting the Reports page, and then clicking Can I monitor Xspot views by DMA?