Making Banner Ads Cool Again

from the is-it-possible? dept

We talk a lot about the idea that advertising is content and content is advertising, and there are always those who get confused and insist that they hate advertising... and that if they see content as advertising they won't pay attention. But explain that to the millions of folks who tune into the Super Bowl each year to watch the commercials rather than the game. If the content is good, no one cares that it's also advertising. Of course, usually when we talk about this sort of thing, we're talking about content/advertising that goes outside the usual boundaries of advertising -- since the traditional forms of advertising have been so overdone and are so painful that people instinctively ignore them.

But could the banner ad, for example, be rescued? I still remember, way back in the early days of banner ads, actually paying quite a bit of attention to an HP banner ad for the Mopier. In fact, I remember the ad so much, I still remember the name of the product it was advertising. That's because the ad itself was fun. It was a game of Pong within the ad itself, with the paddles controlled via mouseovers. That was advertising that worked... But, for the most part these days, banner ads are either boring or intrusive. Yet, sometimes, people still do creative things. Mike (different one, obviously) pointed me to an award-winning banner ad from Pringles, which is quite silly, but fun to click, because it tells a story (and does so amusingly) and you want to find out how it ends. I don't know if the initial call to action is enough to get people to dive in, but if advertisers actually put more thought into making their ads interesting and fun, perhaps people wouldn't just ignore them all the time.

Filed Under: advertising is content, banner ads, content, content is advertising, pringles

The Traditional Banner Ad Business May Be In Even More Trouble Than You Think

from the ad-blindness-everywhere dept

It's no secret that we're not big fans of the banner ad business -- and, in fact, part of what we're doing with Floor64 and the Insight Community is helping to offer companies alternatives to wasteful spending on straight banner ads. Just a couple months ago, I moderated a panel at a marketing conference, where we talked about "the death of the banner ad." And, while every person on the panel admitted that banner ads aren't particularly effective, they said they still bought them, just because it's part of what you do. However, that may soon be changing. The first hint may have come earlier this year, when people started realizing that banner ads on hot social networking properties were worthless. And, now, with the financial crisis freaking people out left and right, some are considering pulling back on their ad spending.

And, if they needed any more ammunition for that, a new study from Jakob Nielsen shows that ad blindness is more widespread and more comprehensive than almost anyone realized. Almost no one looks at banner ads. The only "advertisements" that people look at are search ads, because in those cases, people are actively looking for something, and the ads often provide it. In other words, in those cases, the ads are good content.

This doesn't mean that it doesn't make sense to reach out to the people who make up your market. It just means to stop thinking about just bombarding them with meaningless "push" messaging that they'll ignore completely -- and start actually engaging them and providing good content.

Filed Under: ad blindness, advertising, advertising is content, banner ads

New Push Towards Social Advertising May Miss The Fact That Influence Isn't Static

from the check-yer-assumptions dept

As more and more people are realizing that banner ads don't work very well as advertising, there's a rush on to find better alternatives. What's now getting a lot of attention is "influential" ads. News.com has two examples of new companies trying to put this into action. The first is a company called 33Across that tries to use some algorithm to figure out who is most "influential" online and target ads towards them, hoping they'll influence others. The other is a company with the most generic name for this space: SocialMedia, who is hyping up the fact that it's come up with a "FriendRank" to determine how influential someone is, and then try to get those influential people to effectively "endorse" advertisements that their friends see.

These approaches have plenty of problems, but the biggest one is the simple fact that studies are starting to show that the concept of "influentials" is overstated. Sure, people are influenced by others, but it's not because some officially designated "influential" influences them. Influence doesn't work that way. People don't trust people because they're suddenly considered influential. They trust people because they know that individual well and trust them on that particular topic. In other words, Bill could be influential on a certain topic to Jill, but won't be influential to others or on other subjects.

But, these services don't seem to do much to recognize that. Instead, they assume that people actually have some sort of universal "influential" rank. What they'll quickly discover is that this won't be very effective, because people won't be influenced by who these services think are influential. And, if anything, these efforts will decrease influence by inserting additional friction. If I were to see a friend in an ad for a product, before making me think that product is more interesting, it will make me wonder what my friend gets out of it, and whether or not he really believes in the product. I trust recommendations that come up unsolicited -- not those that are built into an ad unit.

Filed Under: advertising, banner ads, influence, influencers, social networks
Companies: 33across, socialmedia

Banner Ads Are Bad Content

from the no-wonder-they-suck dept

A few months back, we started a series of posts on the topic of adveritisng being the same thing as content, meaning that if the content sucks, it won't be very effective as advertising. So, it should come as no surprise that those who rely on banner or "display" ads for revenue are discovering that the business is hitting a rough patch. It certainly worked for a while, in the "gold rush" phase. However, these days there's a ton of ad blindness out there -- and that's because most banner ads suck as content. And, before anyone brings it up in the comments -- yes, we do have banner ads on this site -- and that's for a few reasons. First, while it may suck for the advertisers, it's still lucrative for publishers (though, that can't last unless the content gets better). So, we might as well take advantage of that. But, more importantly, it's a tiny fraction of our revenue, and it's been more useful from an educational standpoint than as a revenue generator. We're certainly not relying on bad advertising as a business model, and have done a few small scale experiments in trying to try out some ad banners that are somewhat more useful. Still, I worry about the many sites that do rely on such advertising. Advertising has always been something of a cyclical market, and with so many companies now relying on pure display advertising, it may get pretty ugly. At some point, the advertising industry has to realize that simply putting up useless (or, worse, annoying) banner ads isn't particularly effective.

Filed Under: ads are content, banner ads, display ads