The cosmetics company will launch its own campaign on the iAd platform in December, initially in the UK and France, with Germany and the US to follow in January.
Marc Menesguen, L’Oréal’s Head of strategic marketing, told CosmeticsDesign.com USA, the company are already committed to run four different campaigns throughout the year to come, and may extend its global reach as the iAd network expands to new countries.
“As the world leader in the beauty business, L’Oréal aims to create the most meaningful connections between its brands and its customers, so iAd was a natural choice,” he said.
“We’re thrilled by the quality, the interactivity and the depth of iAd’s user experience, giving us an unparalleled opportunity to reach and serve the most engaged and discerning customers at the digital forefront of beauty, hence our choice of Lancôme to lead our iAd campaign.”
Combines interactivity with emotions
Menesguen explained the beauty industry is about connections and emotions and L’Oreal sees this as a great opportunity to combine the interactivity of the web and the power to deliver emotion just like television.
The company is convinced that mobile will be an important advertising tool in the future, and being the third largest advertiser in the world, it states it was an obvious choice for it to participate.
“Going with Apple for mobile advertising was before all a company wide decision: we need to be on the learning curve of such an experience,” said Menesguem.
Market research firm IDC has forecast that although mobile advertising will not make or break companies over the next five years, it is showing fast growth, stating it is a platform that company’s cannot afford to ignore.
iAd has signed over half of the top 25 leading US national advertisers in the four months since its initial launch, and has a projected 21 percent share of US mobile display advertising revenue for 2010, according to IDC.
The power of the ‘app’
Since its US launch in July, iAd has emerged as a powerful new way for advertisers to reach millions of iPhone and iPod touch users right in their favorite ‘apps’, while providing a significant new revenue stream for developers.
iAd, which is built into iOS 4, lets users stay within their current application while engaging with an advertisement, even while watching a video, playing a game or using in-ad purchase to download an app or buy iTunes content.
With user engagement times averaging more than 60 seconds per visit, Apple claims that iAds combine the narrative quality of TV ads with the interactivity of digital for something entirely new.
“We’re thrilled to add leading global brands to the iAd Network in Europe and create even more great opportunities for developers,” said Andy Miller, Apple’s vice president of iAd.
“In just four months, we’ve doubled the number of advertisers on the network and thousands of developers now have a valuable new source of revenue.”
iAd will launch in Europe and L’Oreal’s campaign will also be joined by iAds from cosmetics firm Unilever, as well as Renault, Louis Vuitton, Nespresso, Perrier, Citi, Evian, LG Display, AB InBev, Turkish Airlines and Absolute Radio.