Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
--
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.
--
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.