The End Of Banner Ads?

from the well,-it's-about-time dept

Just a week after being purchased by Overture, AllTheWeb has launched a new look & feel that simplifies things and makes them appear more like Google. While there are a bunch of little points about the new look, the most important thing to note is that they've wisely dropped banner ads. Google has never had banner ads, while AltaVista (also recently bought by Overture) and AskJeeves have dropped banner ads. What I'm wondering is if this is sign towards a larger trend that goes beyond search sites to full content sites. The banner ad has clearly lived well past its prime. Most people are now clearly conditioned to completely ignore any banner ad. The question now, though, is what replaces it? There are two possible directions. First, is the Yahoo belief that "the more intrusive the better". Second, is the Google camp that believes subtle, but exceptionally relevant text ads are the future. I've made no secret of my philosophy that you're in the wrong business if you need to piss people off to get their attention, so I clearly believe that the Google model makes much more sense. For me, personally, I never click on banner ads, and often try to avoid sites (like Yahoo) that make use of ever more intrusive and annoying ad technologies. However, I find that I very often click on Google text ads, because they are usually relevant to what I'm looking for. In the case of Overture's new properties, I imagine they'll move in the direction of text ads as well, since they'll pick up Overture's paid placements. However, it remains to be seen if more content sites make the move towards dropping banners and adding contextual text advertising.
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  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 5 Mar 2003 @ 12:06pm

    Wow

    Wow, interesting. Could you maybe include a few more thousand words of editorial about the subject? Also, if you could add in a few links to stories previously listed on techdirt, that would enhance my reading experience immensely!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      DevBoy, 5 Mar 2003 @ 2:07pm

      Re: Wow

      Hmmm, do I detect a note of sarcasm? I personally come here for the thousands of words of editorial spin, and references to apropos previous posts. Perhaps I am missing the point.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      This Guy, Ya know?, 5 Mar 2003 @ 5:54pm

      Re: Wow

      Ditto, what DevBoy said. Isn't that exactly the purpose of techdirt. Why isn't Anonymous Coward reading news.google.com instead?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    noadman, 6 Mar 2003 @ 1:38am

    AFIAC

    As far as I am concerned *all* ads are intrusive when they appear in somewhere that I don't want them to. Particularly my search engine. Which is why I use the /ie version of google......

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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