Meet BSD: Questions with Naomi Geller
Naomi Geller leads up the banner advertising programs at Blue State Digital. Prior to joining BSD, Naomi had an extensive background in corporate online advertising for such clients as Nokia and LVMH.
1. What drew you to the political advertising world from the commercial advertising sector?
The timing was right. I was tired of corporate-only advertising and I was looking for a new career path. Meanwhile, Mark [Skidmore] – an old friend – kept telling me how great BSD was... It seemed like an opportunity I couldn't pass up.
2. What are the major differences between advertising for corporate clients and non-profit/political campaigns? Are there any similarities?
The main difference is the fact that instead of pushing products, I'm now pushing ideas or causes, which makes me a lot happier. The corporate world is also very 'by-the-book,' whereas this has been more of a down and dirty experience. Budgets appear as fast as they disappear and when that happens, turnaround time to get contracts in place and ads live is sometimes as fast as 24 hours.
3. How did you become interested in the world of advertising? Online advertising?
Six important questions
What are the first five websites you visit every morning?
Gmail, CNN, Facebook, PostSecret (Mondays), NYTimes, WWTDD
Who is the most interesting person you are friends with on Facebook? Follow on Twitter?
I'm a 'Fan' of Neil deGrasse Tyson on Facebook. He's extremely interesting and brilliant. We're not friends per se, but I have met him so I'm not completely a stalker.
Blackberry or iPhone?
iPhone. I'm not even sure how I survived before I had one.
Favorite political figure (past or present)?
Thomas Jefferson, because he highly valued the pursuit of knowledge, and had a love of science which allowed him to be an archeologist and inventor, amongst other things. We also share the same birthday.
First screen name on AIM?
I was never really creative with these, it was always some variation of my name. I think the craziest it ever got was ‘nomes413.’ I’m still using the same one I’ve had since senior year of HS.
Favorite viral video?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs.
It all started as an excellent paid internship during the summer of 2005 at an agency formally known as Beyond Interactive (now MediaCom). I say it all started here because advertising was never something I was interested in. It just so happened that reps from Beyond Interactive were at the career fair that I attended and since paid internships are hard to come by, I decided to apply. I worked on the Cheap Tickets and Audi accounts and I did well enough there that they decided to offer me a part-time position for the next year. I didn’t leave until 2008.
4. Many organizations forego online advertising, citing costs. Why should more groups partake in online advertising?
Any client with a website can benefit from online advertising. There's a solution for every goal. For example, if a client wants to get their name out there, or align their brand with specific interests like sports, or music, they can run a display campaign for branding and awareness. If a client’s goal is to drive a lot of traffic to their site or attain conversions, paid search programs are excellent for that. Paid search is able to capitalize on an audience who has already demonstrated interest by searching for particular terms.
5. You specialize in online display advertising. How does that differ from other types of online advertising? What are some of its strengths?
It's great for branding/awareness campaigns and if a client has the budget to support it, custom programs are a great option. There are a lot of sites that now have the ability to build pretty much anything you can envision (within reason of course).
6. You do a lot of testing of types of message, types of display and placement. What types of lessons have you learned from these?
The biggest lesson is that assumptions only go so far. We ran a campaign for Mobile Future, trying to target a tech-savvy audience and at the end of the day, our ads resonated best with 'music lovers.' That's why testing is important a lot of the time.
7. When you aren’t creating successful online display advertising campaigns, what are you doing for fun?
Traveling, going to the park, dinner with friends, dancing (I compete in Ballroom & Latin dancing).
8. What are some of the most interesting campaigns you have worked on in your time at BSD?
A screenshot of the Commission on Accountability's
campaign on Huffington Post
I'm pretty excited about the Commission on Accountability campaign that we just launched. The creative looks fantastic and I think we have a lot of good placements (see screenshot). Through Huffington Post we’re running some high-impact units that I think will be really successful in terms of both awareness and driving traffic to the petition site.
9. What is the funniest poor online advertisement placement that you have seen?
The mortgage rate ads with the terrible graphics of people dancing, which I unfortunately can’t seem to find any screenshots at the moment, but essentially anything with poor graphics is a bad idea. Nothing says ‘scam’ quite like ads with low-quality images.
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