The Economist Discovers Text Ads
from the the-next-generation-of-ads? dept
Just as some are saying that intrusive, annoying pop-up ads work, the Economist has jumped on the text ad bandwagon. They say that pop up ads are the "last gasp of a doomed attempt to advertise on the web", and that text ads work so much better because (a) they're not intrusive and annoying and (b) they're often relevant. This is, of course, what just about everyone who follows this space has been saying for quite some time now. The article also discusses the "battle" for moving the text ads from Google and Overture onto content sites. Originally, I thought this was a big deal as well, but I'm slowly changing my mind. Text ads are especially relevant in searches, because the person is specifically looking for something. When people are on a content page, they're generally looking for the content directly on that page - and the only ads that work are serendipitous ones. I'm not sure that Google's attempt to move their ads to content pages will work quite as well as they're hoping. The clickthrough rates are likely to be insanely low, which won't make anyone happy.
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Targeting based on content?
I haven't paid much attention to the approach that goole is taking in setting up their content-based text ads: is it really a shotgun approach of just serving up ads in their unobtrusive text format without any real targeting?
If that's the case, then I'm with you -- it's not going to perform well, at all, especially not over the long term (once people get over the "this kind of ad is good" feeling). That would seem like an odd approach for google to take, though, when one of their biggest strengths is the tools that allow them to evaluate information without human intervention.
Were I trying to build this as a saleable product, I'd be evaluating each page, serving ads based upon the content, and using clickthroughs as a feedback mechanism to determine which ads are succesful with content (apparently) on a given topic.
If you put that together with knowing what source is requesting the ad (for some more general information on what the population viewing the ad will be), I would think that you could target ads pretty much as effectively as you could for searches.
The down side would be that you're very likely to be displaying the same ads over and over within a given day (because it's the same story, rather than millions of different searches), which makes it harder to sell ad space; and further you're likely to show the same sorts of ads to the same people on a given site, over and over...if I check the same sorts of stories on a news site each day, I'll probably start seeing the same ads, which become less and less appealing until they become totally invisible.
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Re: Targeting based on content?
In the tests I've run with Google's ads, I've found that the percentage of clickthroughs on content sites is less than 1/10th the clickthroughs on search sites.
People going to search pages are looking for answers to specific questions. The text ads on those pages often will answer those questions. That's not true on content pages.
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Re: Targeting based on content?
I'll certainly concede that a search page is a better environment for ads, since people are searching for something specific when they come to the site...for that reason, I'm not sure that it's apples to apples to compare ads provided by google to ads on google.
I would propose that the question is the responsiveness of the google text ads relative to other ads placed in similar places on the content site. Unless we're going to say that the return for putting advertising on a content site just isn't worth the trouble (which is an interesting discussion), then the question is what sort of advertising performs best in that environment.
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Ads do not need to be intrusive & offensive
http://www.mimeartist.com/engagestudiocom/toyota/
Webspace needs to be recognized as different than meatspace. Same as with the music industry - (sometimes) you cannot [effectivley] force a new medium to obey the rules of the previous...
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Here's another one & another one
http://bj.canon.co.jp/japan/papercraft/costume/index.html
http://www.yamaha-motor.co.jp/e ng/papercraft/index.html
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