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Banner Ads Could Soon Be Bigger
remy the man writes: "Yahoo has a story about some group [the Internet Advertising Bureau -- t.] basically wanting to have larger banner ads on websites. If they weren't already annoying enough, this group wants to make them bigger." Betcha didn't know there was a group called the "Internet Advertising Bureau. (Which despite its quasi-official sounding name, is an organization of advertisers, not a regulator body.) Look out soon for ads like the Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600 pixels) and -- even more fun -- a standardized pop-up ad (250 x 250). Mmmm.
They wanted bigger ad sizes to make advertisements that look even more convincingly like Windoze dialog boxes. You and I laugh at these things, but one person I met doesn't visit shockwave.com because when they went there, "a message box said there was a problem with my browser."
I would not. Yes, I would rather pay money from my own pocket for an ad-free life. I would like to read magazines that are all content. I would like to watch television that is all content. I would like to read websites that are all content. I would like to carry a cellular telephone past a store without getting a page telling me the store has a sale on Dadjiframmises today only. And I would gladly pay a bit extra for the privilege of being left the hell alone.
Reading a web page nowadays is not unlike being in a Vegas casino. The effort required to concentrate on the purpose of your visit (a news story, a tutorial, a game of cards) in the face of things that move and flash and beep quickly makes the entire experience a headache-inducing grind. And it's simply not worth it.
Like many, I browse less and less because of the growing in-your-face nature of advertising. When a site is nice enough to serve their ads from an easily-filtered URL, I do it. When they are not, I decamp, never to return. In an ideal world, the bargain-conscious/cheapskates (choose your term depending on where you stand) would not be able to let their penny-pinching grasp dictate the terms of everyone's experience. Sadly, in the land of the fee and the home of the slave, they do.
Learn to spell: nickel, missile, lose, solely, amendment, speech, kernel, probably, ridiculous, deity, hierarchy, versus
Stonethrow Glasshouse, spokesperson for the Internet Advertising Bureau, clarified their stance on "Pop-Up Ads." Speaking with reports for CBS (Completely Boring Schills), he stated,
"Due to the vast lead in Internet profits held by pornographic web sites over not-smutty websites, we are suggesting the pop-up ad as the be all, end all of advertising. Visit your run-of-the-mill urine-drinking web site, and you'll be inundated by a glorious procession of advertising bliss, running the gamut from penile enlargment to bestiality. These windows open faster than the eye can follow, providing a fast, subliminal injection of images!"
By the end of this statement, Mr. Glasshouse was panting, no doubt as a result of his enthusiasm for his chosen profession. Once he regained his composure, he closed with,
"Just imagine the ramifications for printer toner sales, weight loss drugs and money-making schemes!"
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Thats ok. I'm going to start running ascii art banner ads just for you!
That's funny, I went to that story and all I saw there was this large beige box with some distorted/stretched text that seems to say "advertising blocked by squid.redir"
Pardon the sweeping generalizations...
Everybody hates the commercialization of the internet when they have to close popup windows, download banners, and deal with spam. But everybody loves the commercial factor when they need a hard-to-find book and locate it by doing a quick search on Google or Ebay. Personally, I can do most all of my Christmas shopping on Amazon. And I like being able to put in my wish list and just email relatives about it.
I can deal with spam and banner ads. I get maybe one piece of spam a week and I use Junkbuster to filter most banner ads. But take away all commercial entities from the 'net and I might have to - gasp - go to the mall.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
We are a website for user-created communities and online journaling. At one point, we tried banner ads on all non-member journal pages. What we discovered was that we had about 25% fewer new users due to banner ads. The amount of money we received from banner ads was a very small proportion of what we received from memberships. It became obvious to us that for every quarter we were making, we were annoying 1000 other people.
We have since removed banner ads, relying instead on funding from our members. We have also encouraged goodwill by moving towards open sourcing all our software and encouraging users to help support and develop the site.
The results? We have received about $30,000 in member donations in the past 5 months or so, have over 100 volunteers, and have 65,000 users, doubling in size every three months.
It's worth pointing out that the sites who really make money on banner ads aren't the tiny "mom & pop" websites. To really make money on banner ads, you need to be big enough that you can offer advertisers very specific, pinpointed demographics. As the demise of so many dotcoms has shown, banner ads in and of themselves do not constitute a stable, scalable business model.
They should do whatever it takes that will make them money.
I think a lot of people -- too many people -- forget that these web sites take money to run. Either advertisers pay for it, or you pay for it directly. Personally, I would rather have advertisers pay for it.
If it takes bigger ads to make them effective, then make them bigger.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The result of this will be successful at first, but after a time people will learn to filter out the new bigger ads too.
I don't think that's true. Newspaper ads are effective, and there is not an "arms race" to make them bigger and bigger. Clearly bigger is better, however.
Banner ads as they exist today are much too small to effectively deliver a message. I think there is a point at which you have enough real estate to be effective.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
In a long-anticipated move, many web sites are converting over to the "banner content" model. These web sites consist of full-screen ads with a 468 x 60 pixel banner at the top where all user-requested content is displayed. In order to access these web sites, all that the user needs is Internet Explorer 5.5 (or later), Macromedia Flash and Shockwave, IPIX Viewer, InstallShield's InstallFromTheWeb, Javascript, cookies, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, Apple Quicktime, Adobe Acrobat, ActiveX, PhotoJam, VivoActive Player, and Liquid MusicPlayer. These web sites will feature a rich, multimedia experience rivalling that found in television commercials. Of course, for maximum enjoyment, a T3 or faster connection is recommended.
dammit.
Oh, whatever. I think that these people need to form a political union and push for this stupid change like so many Lincoln bedrooms sleeping PAC lobbyists, because they realize deep down that they really DON'T have the power.
Who has the power is the geeks who make the system work, make their stupid ads load, and edit those ads out when they get home, with a little script. The ad companies are at the beck and call of these people, really.
What costs all the damn money that makes websites need ads? You need expensive business software that a few companies including Microsoft promulgated as standards and then jacked up the price for.
Labor costs are also high, and those need to be reduced as well.
Goat sex free since 2001
This whole idea is based on the notion that the effectiveness of an ad is somehow proportional to its size. I, personally, don't choose to not click on an ad because it is small and goes by unnoticed. I choose to not click on an ad because I'm not interested it what it's selling.
They say in the article that they want more size to make things more "emotional." If this refers to the content of the ad, make the fonts smaller. If it refers to the impact of the ad on the page, I am decidedly less likely to click on an obnoxious ad, just like when I hang up on telemarketers.
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The advertisers seem to be under the mistaken impression that end users don't click on their ads because they don't see them. The obvious solution? Make the ads more visible. This is just one of the internet advertising industry's myriad failures to catch a clue.
Lucky for them I'm here to tell them what's what.
The internet advertising model is based loosely on the model that has worked successfully for broadcast and print media for decades, and everybody's all confused as to why it doesn't work online.
Clue #1: It is working online. Or put more cynically, it isn't working any better in traditional channels. In old-school advertising, you don't have any way to tell how many people take immediate action upon seeing your ad. Advertisers spent the GNP of a small country to get their name spoken during the Super Bowl. Suppose they had some way to determine how many people immediately stopped watching football so they could go buy a Pepsi at the corner store, or how many people immediately started trying to find information about a new Volkswagon. If advertisers used that standard, would they be satisfied at the results? Would they feel they'd gotten their money's worth? Doubtful. But the very notion would leave a stupified frown on the faces of most sane people. The idea behind advertising is NOT that people immediately drop what they're doing to find out more about your product. It's about name recognition. It's about the moment when people do decide that they need a new car, or a tasty and refreshing cola beverage. In this respect internet advertising is done completely bass-ackwards. Internet advertising is based on "click-throughs." The higher the number of clicks, the more successful the ad is judged to be. This system is fraught with problems. The highest click generator has GOT to be that stupid "punch the monkey" ad. That's why it was everywhere. But does anybody really know or care what was being advertised? But people clicked, so it was a success. In the meantime, the top of the page I'm looking at now contains a pleasantly understated ad for Penguin Computing. I'm not going to click on it now. I have better things to do, such as composing this comment. But when I start building a new home server in a few months, I will likely check them out -- not by coming back to Slashdot and looking for an ad, but by going directly to the source. In a practical sense, the ad was successful, but because there is no logfile indicating a causal link between the ad and my potential future purchase, the ad will be judged to have failed in my case. Clue the first is, therefore, Do not have unrealistic expectations about customer response to ads. You have the technology to track it. You need the will to ignore it.
Clue #2: Trying schemes, tricks and gimmicks to get users to click builds up bad karma with customers. Your clickthrough counts may go up, but your sales will likely go way down. I have personally threatened to boycott multiple sites that carried that ad with the animated balloon floating across the browser window. It obstructed the content I was there to look at. The obvious tactic there is that people will click on the balloon to try to get rid of it -- and be taken to the advertiser's site, thus creating a successful ad. Nevermind the fact that hardly anybody actually cares what the balloon links to. This is the most extreme case (I've seen) of a disturbing trend of trying to trick or irritate people into clicking. Blindingly flashing ads, fake forms and "game" ads -- which usually don't even tell you what they're pushing -- all fall into this category. Now ridiculously huge Flash-based page-dominating ads are joining this dubious collection of tactics. At least the big ads have the virtue of a sort of honesty. Their only strength is greater power to distract and annoy. The masses come for the content, not the ads, and the more you try to pull them away from the content, the more you'll push them away altogether. You don't win more customers. You just erode the user base of otherwise good content sites. Thus clue the second is, Thou shalt not annoy thy customer, for he is fickle and will take his money elsewhere in a heartbeat.
In the "ideal" situation, there's this constant tension, kind of a romantic triangle, among the content provider, the advertiser and the user. The user wants the content. The advertiser wants money from the user. The content provider wants money from the advertiser. In reverse, the affections are more tepid. The advertisers use the content providers only as a way to get to the users. The content providers feel forever forced to choose between the advertisers and the users (they often really like the users, but the advertisers have the money). And the users view the advertisers as a somewhat necessary evil, but really wish they'd just go away altogether. Any one of them can upset the balance here. The users can decide the content isn't worth putting up with the ads. The content providers can decide they really do love their users more after all. The advertisers can decide they aren't getting enough commitment from users to justify the money they pay. This last is what's happening. The fallout in a few cases will be poor but happy relationships between content providers and users, but most will be torn apart, with the content providers left wondering why nobody loves them anymore. It's sad, but inevitable unless people reevaluate their expectations.
Of course, it won't be long before every appliance has built in advertising. You'll have a flat LCD screen attached to your fridge that runs ads 24/7...ugh.
When 24/7 banner adds are mandated by law on my fridge, then only outlaws will have spray paint to cover them up.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
Check out this CNET story about how AOL is starting to test putting ADs into ICQ.
Anyway, look at the story -- it isn't a banner ad, but it's a gigantic ad that is right in the middle of the fscking text. UGGH!
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CitizenC
>free sites put up large advertisements
;)
>great, let's block those ads! it's my
>God-given right to have free Internet
>content!
If you don't want to put up something for all to see for free, ask for money before you let people in, like all the pr0n sites do. We have no problem with it. And, if your contents are good enough, we might even pay to enter your site.
However, if you put up stuffs together for all to see with advertisements, we have every right to block them, just as we have the right to switch channels on TV during the commercial periods.
In short: you're asking for it.
>commercial software (especially MacOS X for
>some reason) open source it! now now now!
>and not so that we can add better
>functionality and improve
>the product, but so that we can port it to
>Linux (ie, steal it).
Nobody forces software authors to open source things. They CHOOSE to do so themselves. And I've never heard "receiving a gift" is equivalent to "stealing".
>secure music/content
>rip it! crack it! (but only after it's in
>the marketplace). we have a right to free
>music and movies!
You don't understand. Some of us (at least myself) don't think we have a right to free music and movies. However, anything that increases the power of corporations to rip off consitutional rights (e.g. fair use) of ours HAVE TO BE CRACKED. It has nothing to do with "free right to free music and movies".
>but i still don't see what's wrong with
>putting some advertisements, no matter the
>size, on commercial-provided free content.
>people: advertising is not inherently evil.
I don't either. They have every right to put whatever they damn please on their web sites.
>if you don't want to see advertising, don't
>read sites that have advertising: that's
>your choice. there's good reason to get
>pissed off about billboard advertising, as
>you can't "opt-out," but reading sites with
>advertising and purposefully blocking out
>that advertising is extremely immoral.
So you're saying they can control how I use my eyes. I must see everything, or nothing. Give me a break. If they don't provide a way to opt-out for me, I'd do it myself. It is NOT IMMORAL. IT IS JUST A WAY I ASSIST MYSELF TO IGNORE THE ADS.
>there are ways to properly fight the misuse
>of advertising, including ignoring
>advertising-sponsored content.
So you agree I can ignore them. Blocking is just a method I find effective at making myself ignore the ads.
>but blocking that advertising is nothing but >stealing.
>(and yes, it is stealing despite the fact
>that it's "digital." it's stealing
>bandwidth).
Even if it were stealing. Hey, it steals my bandwidth as well. So we're even. If they finds a way to send advertisements my way without stealing even 1 bit of my bandwidth, I'd be happy to read them all
The problem with advertising on the web is not the size of the ads.
With magazines and newspapers, we have print ads... print media - print ads
With radio we have audio ads... audio media - audio ads.
With television we have video ads... video media - video ads.
With the Internet, we have print ads... interactive media - print ads.
Surely, animated GIFs and Flash animations do make a difference, but for the most part the Internet is filled with print ads. Until advertisors think of some innovative way of advertising on the web, their advertisements will be ignored.
What could be interesting? Why not advertise WITH the media as opposed to just in it? What's wrong with HTML ads? Nice moderately lenghted texts with links to relevent sites explaining why product X is good.
> they are widely seen as a failure, garnering
> response rates of about one in 200, down from
> one in 50 when they were first launched.
Why are they counting click rates as the only reference of effective web advertising? No wonder they think it is a failure... Where did these people come up with that? It's not like every time you see a TV ad you click on it, or send any response at at - at that time.
The way to do it is at least twofold: simply getting your brand out there (Like standard TV - "This program is brought to you by XYZ") - make sure people know you exist when they are ready to make a purchase. The second plan is to make you aware of a product and then you might think about that as you are laying in bed, and might make the decision to purchase it the next day, or next week, or next paycheck, etc.
Getting the eyeshare out there is the point of reference. Why they expect to pay the web site only if the user drops what they are doing and goes to their site immediately makes to sense to me.
I know that when I am out on the web, I am already doing something in particular, whether doing research for work, slashdotting, or whatever. No way am I going to drop what I am doing right then to go look at the site. Instead, if I see something interesting I will mentally note it, and I may later go check it out.
Case in point, about a month ago, I saw a banner ad for Outpost.com saying that they offer free overnight shipping for all orders over $100. I ad nothing right at that time I wanted to buy. Clicking the ad right then would be pointless, I was not ready to make a purchase. Last week, I needed to buy a router and a 100 MB switch. I went to buy.com on the recommendation of a friend, was almost ready to buy, then remembered I had seen the outpost banner ad. I went and checked out Outpost's prices on the same items, Outpost's BASE price was higher, but overnight shipping was free, while buy.com's was $16.95. So, I bought my products at outpost.com based on a banner ad that I DID NOT CLICK ON!
It's the band/product impression. What's made web ads seem a failure is bad expectations. A click on a banner ad means nothing. Instead, look at total online sales after a certain banner ad campaign.
Plus, the advertiser's have used this bullshit story about how ineffective web ads are to force down their cost per ad. They whine to the web content people, who then have stupidly folded and let themselves be paid only per click instead of per impression (display of the ad on their web page).
We can go full-on conspiracy mode and look at it this way: Most of the big advertising companies are owned/controlled by big old world publishing companies. The old companies are trying to move their publishing monopolies onto the web. So these big ad companies push this bullshit story on the web people, who cannot make ends meet off the paltry amount paid per click, go out of business, allowing the old companies to fill their niches, one by one, until they have the amount of saturation they are shooting for, once all the other web ad players are irrelevant, and then begin selling ads on these replacement sites, slowly raising the price they are charging for ads to where they begin to make a return on their investment again, after putting the rest out of business with their bullshit story. What they like out of this plan is that in the meantime, while they are moving to put the others out of business, they are pretty much getting free advertising via the per-impression advertising that they know is the real money maker from their decades of TV and magazine advertising. They are just playing a parasitic smoke and mirror game with the existing web, trying to steal it for their own.
I think slashdot is running this story to give us the impression that this is inevitable. That way we won't complain so much when they implement these ads.
First doubleclick, then java ads and finally popups.
You really can't blame them for this though.
VA Linux has fallen on very hard times. Espescially the OSDN online division.
The product line manager for the OSDN online division is under tremendous pressure to increase banner add revenue. Normally he wouldn't be able to affect slashdot since their contract gives Taco and Hemos complete control.
But VA found a loophole.
You see, the product line manager for OSDN online is Jeff Bates (AKA Hemos). He CAN force slashdot to do what it takes to increase ad revenue.
Enjoy this interface while it lasts boys, because the slashdot layout is about to become a lot more cluttered.
==Shoeboy
It's time for webvertisers to recognize the same thing. It isn't the click that counts, it's the mind space. That doesn't change just cause the ad is on a web site.
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Last year, the Poynter Institute did an eyetracking study of how people read news on the web. They found that graphics were largely ignored. It probably doesn't matter what size they are, they'll still be ignored.
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AOL Time Warner announced today that the decision to remove all content except for advertiser banner ads had been implemented on their sites more than 18 months ago and that the IAB was behind the times.
"We've been pleasantly surprised at how many of our subscribers haven't noticed a single change" said Steve Case, CEO of the merged companies. "We thought there would a huge outcry, but apparently no-one's using our service for anything beyond easy dial-up access".
Bill Gates was reportedly "livid" at not having thought up the idea of removing all relevant content from Microsoft's sites sooner, but vowed to catch up and dominate another industry "as soon as the DOJ gets off my back".
why are most slashdot users so cheap?
i always wonder this. it seems that the majority of people here want everything for free. it's one thing to dislike corporate America, but most of what i see here is childish "gimmie gimmie gimmie!"
examples:
great, let's block those ads! it's my God-given right to have free Internet content!
open source it! now now now! and not so that we can add better functionality and improve the product, but so that we can port it to Linux (ie, steal it).
rip it! crack it! (but only after it's in the marketplace). we have a right to free music and movies!
seriously people, this is getting disturbing. there's a difference between fighting a misuse of technology, but many people here have gone way beyond that into a "me! me! me!" attitude that make middle-age yuppies look like ghandi.
personally, i'm not keen on advertising, i despise over-consumption, and i don't own a car for purely ethical reasons. heck, i don't even own a television for christ's sake! but i still don't see what's wrong with putting some advertisements, no matter the size, on commercial-provided free content. people: advertising is not inherently evil. if you don't want to see advertising, don't read sites that have advertising: that's your choice. there's good reason to get pissed off about billboard advertising, as you can't "opt-out," but reading sites with advertising and purposefully blocking out that advertising is extremely immoral.
there are ways to properly fight the misuse of advertising, including ignoring advertising-sponsored content. but blocking that advertising is nothing but stealing. (and yes, it is stealing despite the fact that it's "digital." it's stealing bandwidth).
seriously, grow up.
- j
It is well known that everyone ignore banner ads these days, as everyone is inured to them and filters them out of their mental bandwidth.
Not everyone ignores them. I say this, cause I'm one of the offenders - I buy ad space. Would I buy a 250 x 250 pixel popup? HELL NO. I don't want to annoy people, just little ways of catching thier attention, and get them to check out my product(s). (More on that in a minute.) Do people click-through on banners and button ads? Well, my limited experience so far - yep. But there's more to it than that...
We should be encouraging the banner ad makers to be inventive, and use flash and the like, rather than just being more obvious and intruding.
I *SO* disagree with this. First off, one of the reasons why ads are failing for most people is simple - they are missplaced (when is the last time you even noticed an ad on a chat area like /.? You aren't LOOKING for information on, oh, XML, so O'Reilly's ad for XML in a nutshell is mentally filtered.) I program games - so, the places I'm advertising are all game related (two shareware sites, one gaming site.) People are looking for games to download, or information on games - thier eyes are open to this sort of ad suddenly.
Second, unless it's cross-platform, and works on all browsers, why would you use it to create an advertisement you can't garantee will show up? You are just wasting money then. And for the ones that DO show it, you'll just end up waisting thier time as they download the ad - something else I learned, people don't wait for ads to load, unless the page is structured so that the ad has to be fully loaded before the page displays.
Whatever you do, it needs to be tight, quick loading, and viewable everywhere. But even more importantly, it needs to be targeted at the right place. Since advertisers are desperite at the moment, well, they will happily sell you space on Breast Cancer Discussion areas, even though your product is a First Person Shooter.
More focused ads, better advertising, etc. would improve the current problems. However, most advertisers are looking for 'eyeballs' more than anything else, trying to build brand recognition at any cost. Me, I just try and focus on selling the product at hand.
And, PLEASE, let's not get to the point where not only are there full-motion, sterio sound ads, but, that we have 3 or 4 of them per site battling it out! When it gets to that point, well, I guess I'll start resorting to junk buster :-(
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I don't use JunkBuster becuase to be honest, banner ads don't bother me. I see them, hell, I even click on them from time to time... but it they got really big, I'd block them.
It seems counter-productive in the long term to annoy the consumer.
Think about the ads on the TV that are best... they're funny ones, ones you like. You're not going to be affected so well by an ad that you don't like.
They're missing the point. People don't ignore banner ads because they're too small, they do it because they're annoying.
When I first used the Internet, all the banner ads caught my eye. After a few days, only the really flashy ones did. Now, years later, my eyes/brain ignore them automatically. They don't even register. The ones that force themselves to be obvious just annoy me even more, and at that point I'm ready to NOT buy whatever is on my screen, even if it's something cool.
Perhaps one out of every thousand banner ads I see contains an ad for something I'm interested in. But they are generally things I've read/heard about already. Television commercials work because they take over your entire screen, are targeted at a specific group of viewers, and are usually semi-entertaining to watch. Banner ads just use bandwidth, slow down the page loading and just basically get in the way.
Entertainment on the Internet usually comes in the form of reading. Yes, some sites stream video/audio, but for the most part, the viewer is reading something. You watch things on TV, not read them. It's far less annoying to have 'watching' interrupted than reading interrupted. Can you image a book that had a paragraph on each page automatically morph into an advertisement? Ick.
Go back to the drawing board, folks.
Why do users with IDs under 100,000 or over 700,000 usually have the most worthwhile comments?
I'm switching to Lynx
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
The way that advertisers get around this in other media is to make the ads more interesting or flashy, but on the web this is not an option. The only option is to make them bigger and more intrusive.
The result of this will be successful at first, but after a time people will learn to filter out the new bigger ads too. Then advertisers will call to make them even larger.
Where will it all end? It won't.
I think until such time as banner ads incude sound and video, and can hence be creative and entertaining, they will just become more and more obnoxious.
We should be encouraging the banner ad makers to be inventive, and use flash and the like, rather than just being more obvious and intruding.
It is really the only way forward.
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-
I think of little else but you.