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Banner Ads: Biggest Advertising Mistake Ever

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the beat-to-death,-I-know dept.

While I know that the issue has been beat to death several times over, Charlie Hall of LinuxGram sent me a story from Silicon Alley Daily that's currently running concerning banner ads, and some editorial musings. The proposition of the editorial is good, but man, does interruption based advertising irritate me.

5 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. Banner Ads by Skyshadow · · Score: 4
    The thing about banner ads is that I'll occassionally see one for something I'm interested in or for a company I didn't realize had a web presence, but usually I'll just make a mental note and surf there myself when I'm in the mood to shop.

    I wonder what would happen if companies started offering mild incentives to use the banners -- maybe I could get free shipping on my next DVD order at Reel.com if I clicked on the banner at Ebert's site or something.

    Of course, since so many online retailers operate so close to the bottom line already, this may not be feasible.

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    Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
    1. Re:Banner Ads by Lemmy+Caution · · Score: 5
      What you've described is the classic model of print advertising. Advertising traditionally doesn't work by immediately creating a sale, it works by building a largely subconscious awareness of the brand and product that is being advertised, and associating that awareness with real (it works!) and imagined (it will make you popular, get you laid, and bring joy to your life!) benefits (also mostly subconciously.)

      That click-through has become the metric of the success of online advertising is an unmitigated disaster for on-line publishing. In other domains, no one judges the success of print ads by the number of people who stop reading the magazine and rush to the phones, they judge success by the overall increase in business. Likewise, no one judges the success of billboards by how many cars veer off the freeway and head towards the advertiser's business, nor TV advertisement by how many people shut off the TV and run to the mall. However, that is exactly what is used to judge the viability of banner ads - it is expected to provide instant business, and advertisers are loathe to pay for online ad campaigns that don't have a next-click success.

      Online publishers are partially to blame for this by promising the moon to their advertising customers, and by selling click-through instead of selling brand awareness. This may be fallout from the heady pre-bust days when no one worried about revenue, anyway - having big accounts (which produced no revenue) was seen as more important to attracting investors than the revenue stream was, so publishers would tell ad sales prospects that they wouldn't have to pay (much) unless there was a click through. Now, they are paying the price for that carelessness.

  2. Lousy Banner Ad INTERPRETATION by rkent · · Score: 4
    Personally I'm sick of people like this who consider banner ads successful ONLY when people click through immediately! To me, that's a McDonald's manager saying "Gee, advertisin' bob, traffic through our drivethrough only increased 0.3% in the 5 minutes after our commercial was run... I don't think TV advertising works!"

    People aren't used to interacting with advertisements. In fact, I'd go so far as to say people don't WANT to. It's always "yup, there's an ad, I'm going on with my day." When I get up to read the news, I don't WANT to go buy a car, I want to read the %$#@ news!

    I wish they'd look at it more like print ads, where you could just buy space on a web page, and there was LOTS of space. I mean, the NYTims shouldn't try interstitials, but it SHOULD sell that 2/3 of the screen not filled by the column. That just makes sense. Then if you don't want to read the ads, shrink your browser; think of it as folding back half of the newsprint page :)

  3. Real Link by rkent · · Score: 5

    Oops, looks like they rolled out tomorrow's edition already. Er, today's. Whatever. Click "previous issue," or click here.

  4. Re:fair enough, but depressing by rkent · · Score: 5
    The NYTimes does not _need_ to advertise that heavily; it's shortsighted, greedy behavior and is akin to a sort of 'psychic pollution.'

    Just for the record, yes they do. Any periodical does. That's how they survive. Take wired, for example. Just the print version, to simplify things. If you've every tried to publish a book or magazine yourself, you'd know that printing that many glossy pages and binding it that way costs at LEAST $3 per copy, and that's with a substantial volume discount. Yet they sell it for $1 to subscribers, and what? $4 on the newsstand? So there's no way they could ever, ever EVER subsist without "that many" ads. Just so you know.

    Now, ad a website to that. Hell, might as well start talking about NYTimes now since that's the example in the article. The digital edition does not SAVE money because it does not directly eliminate the need for any particular printed copy. Plus there's additional overhead like syncing it up to the print edition, typical web admin duties, plus additional editors/columnists/photographers for special "online only" stories. And since they offer it FREE, it can only drain the main New York Times budget.

    UNLESS, that is, they run more ads there. And actually persuade people to buy them.

    So, your argument is really flawed. I don't think you're evil for skipping the ads, we all do, but don't say the papers don't NEED to run ads.