I never thought the day would come when I would say this, but AOL is ahead of their time. Their interactive advertising offering aimed at moving beyond the banner ad is innovative and right on target, but so far Project Devil hasn't been the godsend the company expected.
It's not that their interactive ad units aren't converting. In fact, engagement is four times longer with Project Devil ads and users linger on pages with AOL's ad units an average of 18 percent longer than they do on pages without the mark of Project Devil.
You'd think this kind of engagement would bode well for AOL, but the company is feeling nothing but heat as Project Devil falters with lower than expected site adoption rates. Even with their recent addition of in-ad eCommerce integration, AOL's advertising units aren't getting the kind of adoption they need to succeed because there aren't enough places that will display the ad in the first place. As a result, it's nearly impossible for advertisers to justify the production costs associated with the interactive HTML5 overlays.
Vice president and associate media director at RPA, Rich Kim, told Reuters that 100 of the top sites on comScore need to sign up with Project Devil before the ad units can become truly lucrative.
Speaking strictly about innovative ad units, this is a shame because while AOL struggles with Project Devil, other platforms are moving closer to the same endpoint: frictionless eCommerce tied into online experiences.
We started to see this when social networks moved their ad units into the social stream. As Facebook changes their newsfeed and adds more than just "like" to their list of action verbs (e.g. "read," "listened to," and "bought") they show us a glimpse of an Internet focused on frictionless consumption.
It's not difficult to imagine a future when you can order anything on the web right from a Facebook based sponsored story or purchase goods from more than just a shoppable video. (I believe one day all online video will be shoppable and we will just call it video, but that's another point.)
We're approaching an era where everything online is engaging, shareable, and shoppable. Forget click through rates that lead into long funnels. Everything will be right there, immediately accessible. AOL may have been the first company to take us there, but unless Project Devil can drum up some support their foresight may go unnoticed.