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IAB Recommends Larger Web Advertising
Chicane-UK writes "Popups, flash adverts, full screen adverts and all the other methods of internet advertising that make our daily drag through the internet have been deemed not effective enough. The solution, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau is the new Universal Ad Package which comprises a new 'large advert' and three other in page advert templates. Read their press release here. I know I for one am sick of internet advertising of this type - banners were just about right for me." For some reason advertisers never come up with new, smaller advertising formats. There's also a story on AdAge.
Marketing is where the people who are full of buzzwords, mission statements, slogans and an overinflated sense of self-importance always wind up collecting. They perpetuate these ridiculous ad schemes not because they work, but because it keeps them in a job. Do -you- know anybody that's based a major purchase off of a popup ad on the Internet? Everyone I know immediately -loses- interest in a given product when assaulted by popup ads for it. Those little wireless camera thingies, for example. In theory, they seem pretty cool and they have a lot of practical uses (other than the implied use of spying on JC Penny catalog models per their ads). But I will smolder in Hell before I ever buy one because of their obnoxious advertising.. So who -is- buying them?
Yet, however, companies continue to pour money into losing ventures against the almighty click-through because of the Internet's explosive growth and this mistaken belief that people will click them.
News flash: this isn't the case. Whereas ads on television have a 50-year history to draw from, and whereas ads on TV are expected, most Internet surfers would say they're an annoyance and a hindrance to them. Contrast ads on TV--slick, designed to pique the viewer's interest, versus a huge window flashing saying, 'THERE MAY BE PORN ON YOUR COMPUTER! YOU ARE BROADCASTING AN IP ADDRESS, SO YOU'RE VULNERABLE.'
Instead of focusing on more obtrusive, bigger pieces of real estate, perhaps Internet advertisements would work if they leveraged the unique nature of the medium to get their point across. Flash and/or Java ads that are visually interesting and interactive have a better chance of setting clicks than big, flashing banners.
I don't know if I'd expect the ad community to get the message, though. They want us to see theirs, but won't listen to their audience to see what works.
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
"As far as I am concerned, Internet adverts are just like magazine adverts. I don't notice those ones either (unlike TV adverts)."
You notice the lost time, especially when you're connected through a slow modem and pay by the minute... It is a huge bandwidth wasteage!
Give some reason for the customers to click. Offer prizes.
"If this banner is flashing, you may already be a winner!"
Well, did you win? People see right through that type of internet advertising as well, after punch the monkey and the annoying flashing banner has ZERO payoff.
- gtaluvit (prnc. GOT-tuh-LUV-it)
I, for one, am glad that the IAB publishes these standard ad sizes. It lets me know what images my filters should throw away.
I don't know about you guys, but I know that once a site's ads surpass a certain level of annoyance (basically beyond a graphic either at the top, sides, or bottom), I start finding alternative places to visit. It's just not worth my time to "endure" 5 minutes of sparkly flash tidbits and other nit-wittery when visiting a page. If I can find what I need elsewhere, then I go there instead. I know I can't be alone on this. Has no one done a study to determine an average user's "ad tolerance?" I mean, if people avoid your page because of all the ads, then making more and bigger ads won't really do much for your "click-throughs," will it?
If you are a Windows user then you probably have Flash installed and also a sound card. Advertisers think they not only have the right to float annoying animations over the text you are reading, but also to play annoying sound effects through your speakers.
Why don't advertisers realise this: First of all, make your adverts RELEVANT and INTERESTING. Piss me off and I will avoid whatever goods or services you are trying to sell me (I take the same approach with spammers).
Second, "normal" advertising (ie non-internet based) relies on the principle of the subliminal promotion of a brand name. When I drive to work I see adverts for Jaguar. When I watch TV I discover that Herbal Extracts skin cream is a more natural way to cleanse and moisturise [my] skin. When I open a magazine I discover that the local computer shop has a half price sale on, and I can pick up a printer and get a free lawnmower.
This is relevant, interesting and non-obtrusive advertising. Next time I'm at the supermarket I *may* buy Heinz beans over the store's-own brand because the advert put into my head the idea that Heinz beans are delicious and more nutritional (the validity of this is not relevant - advertising exists to sell products, not to be truthfull)
Sorry, but my karma just ran over your dogma.
Don't believe the ad worked? Before those ads came out, the sponsor was but a dim memory. Notice that you and I both know what camera ad you're talking about. That is exactly what a marketing department's job is - to get the company noticed.
Just because neither you nor I would care to be marketeers doesn't mean you need to diss them - they do serve a real function.
When I go into a brick and mortar store, there are advertisements. They are advertising the prices of the goods on sale. Their are also ads trying to convince you of which product on sale is better. And there are ads trying to get you to buy things that you didn't come into the store to buy.
How come in an online store there are ads for, other stores? Do they really make more money off advertising than they would if I actually bought something? I think that's the big mistake of online stores with advertising.
I think we can also agree that the more annoying the ad the LESS likely we are to click on it. But the more likely we are to click on it, by accident.
Lastly I think the biggest problem with internet advertising is that you have a bunch of websites providing something for free. Webcomics being the best example. And the people who run those sites try to make money. Some people try to make enough money to live off of their webcomics. If I made a comic, or any other kind of site, I would pay for it myself from my JOB, or I would make just enough money off it to pay for hosting. Too many people are trying to make a profit off of websites that aren't providing a profitable service, but are popular. So they run ads, which don't work, so in desperation they get more and bigger and more annoying ads to make more money. I think more people should look at penny arcade as an example as to how to make money without making ads better. I think gabe talked about this the other day actually.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
That's true. They need something a little more honest. Rather than a big flashy abstract you have won, tell them what you're advertising.
For example, if I said by clicking here, you can enter a competition to win a video game (Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin) , you may feel like clicking on it. If you are interested, then the advertising was succesful. It told you about the existence of the game.
That was proably a lot more succesful than the flashy banner ads, less irritating because it doesn't flash, and it was totally honest about the benefits of clicking there. This may encourage people to click on it. It also has the benefit to advertiser that it is targetted at people who want to play video games, and it cannot be blocked by ad blocking software.
Incidentally, that competition was just a Google search for "Win a PC". I have no affiliation with the company.
The problem is not size. People refuse to click the ads because nobody wants all the funky Javascript and browser tricks that interfere with going back to the original page.
I expect all kinds of shenanigans if I click a banner, therefore I don't do it. Any ads that cannot be suppressed with a proxy filter will be ignored. Making the ads larger will not change anything.
These ads are getting bigger and bigger and more and more interactive. But what is 'globally seen' the goal of the advertiser, they want to reach something .. inform you, get you to buy a product, brand the company and so on.
The bigger the banners get, the more attention they're requesting the more annoyed the user will become .. and cause the user will remember the thing that is advertised for as a bad thing cause it has annoyed you! So what will happen? You will get a bad feeling about the advertising company or the thing what is advertised for.
If we are going on this way .. the tide will turn and advertising will not lead into new 'leads' but only into lost of customers and new leads.
I'm sure you're dead wrong. If slashdot started having "clearly labelled" advertising articles (or slashvertisements as an April Fools post once called them), the page I read that policy change on would be the last page from here that any browser I control downloads from slashdot.
Yeah, slashdot has a heavy editorial bias towards certain products, but that's nerd-land people. In case you hadn't realized it yet, nerds tend to fixate on things and want to tell everyone how it's the greatest thing since sliced bread, even if the other people really might not be all that interested. That I don't have a problem with. Infomercials, cross my line, and my line is the only one that matters in this particular case, since I'm the one choosing what to browse..
The real solution? A clean layout that showcases the ad well, delivering your ad to an audience who is actually interested, and not insulting the viewer with cheap tricks like animating nausea-inducing flashing colors. Penny Arcade has done this with its layout, and even with a smaller reader base they outperform ads from sites like IGN. To quote:
Here is another little behind the scenes look at the way advertising works on the internet. Game companies want animation. They want a fucking guy to parachute down from the top of your screen and land on the article you're trying to read. They want you to have to interact with their advertisement just so you can see the content you came for. Everyone who uses the internet knows that this kind of shit is just frustrating. Look at sites like IGN, Gamespot, or Gamespy. You can't read an article there without an animated bug crawling across your screen or some flash ad blaring shitty music. When we decided to do advertising we decided that we wouldn't ever run any kind of animated add. Some companies won't advertise with us because of it. Others, it's like pulling teeth to get a non animated ad out of them. They have this idea in their head that the only way their ads will be effective is if they are annoying as fuck.
Some of them are actually shocked when ads at PA out perform animated versions at other sites like IGN. Here we are just a little comic site and we kick their fucking ass. We tell them that if you don't insult people with shitty flash ads, they are much more likely to actually check out your game. I have never once clicked on a flash ad except to mute it or close it and I have a feeling you guys are pretty much the same. They just can't get it through their heads that people don't like to be annoyed by advertising.
I feel like we have a pretty good relationship you and I. Maybe I'm wrong but I feel like we treat you guys pretty well and I think that's why you treat us so well in return. You click on our ads and buy our stuff at an unbelievable rate. Those new Wang Fu shirts sold out in one fucking day. I mean that is some crazy shit. Tycho and I just want to say thanks. We have the best job in the world and we have it because of you guys. It seems like we should hug or something now.
End quote
To me, at least, it seems like current ad companies are ramming their head against this big wall of how to make effective advertising, and their solution seems to be to just ram their head harder against that same wall.
slashdot!=valid HTML
I'll never see them anyway. I use Mozilla.
:)
Temporarily, it will put more money in web sites' coffers through more advertising dollars, heavily subsidized by new and unsophisitcated users.
Long term, the preponderance of pop-ups will further motivate and/or educate IE and Netscape users to switch to Mozilla and use its cookie, image and popup blocking capabilities.
At some point, web sites will then have to learn a new way to make money other than pissing of thier users.
In the meantime, I'm unaffected.
Software Wars
Google's ads are nice, but I kind of wish they'd find some way to advertise based on context of the search rather than just one keyword. It's not uncommon for one of my google searches to turn up what I'm looking for in the first hit (Yesterday's big success was finding out that the letter "W" can, indeed, be used as a vowel.) However the keyword based advertising is much less accurate. So if I were to search on "goat feed" or something I might get a bunch of farm suppliers in my search, but "Lola's Palace of Live Goat Porn" in the advertisers section. I know that advertising is all about delivering eyeballs, but a more appropriate advertiser based on the context of my search would be much more likely to get my click-through.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It seems inevitable that this will lead to a technology arms race.
The advertisers get more obnoxious. Browsers and proxies get better at screening out ads. More features will appear to help the end user. And those features will become more sophisticated.
Here is a hypothetical example. [Disclaimer: this example is purely hypothetical. I have not done this myself, and am not trying to induce browser authors to commit a crime. Remember, a web site has to make money, and not watching ads is stealing!] Anyway, that said, suppose a browser (or proxy?) went through all the motions of running the ad. Executed the ad code, scripts, flash animations, etc. Dutifully simulated the popup windows, and executed their code. Dutifully requested all of the graphics, flash animations, and other inline content for the popup windows. This way the server really thinks that you see the ad. After all, your browser requested a flash that is only embedded in the popup. So you must not be a thief, because you are seeing the ad. The problem is, the authors of this browser or proxy have induced their users into stealing because the browser or proxy doesn't actually display the ads or popup windows. It still consumes the bandwidth, but these evil crooks (i.e. users) don't care.
This technique will prevent the advertisers from knowing that you've seen the ad. From their perspective, your browser has executed all the right code and requested all the right content from the server that should be associated with viewing this page.
Seen from the perspective I've described it here (advertiser friendly, and users as thieves) could the above hypothetical example be construed as a circumvention device? "Our content is protected by Anti-Leech, and these evil hackers have circumvented it. That's as bad as spray painting ad billboards!"
In the end, we'll have heads up displays in cars, with ad billboards constantly popping up in our face while driving. This will be seen as enormously beneficial in eliminating the visual clutter of billboards on buildings and roadways.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Whether or not you can remember what the ad was about is not a good test for whether it worked. Advertising is designed to affect your behaviour. The advertiser could give a rat's ass about your conscious memory. Actually, they'd prefer you not remember why you made a particular decision down the road. Let's say I'm selling a commodity product in retail stores. My product is out there, and I know when you go the store you're going to see it. I don't want you to think "Choosy Mothers Choose Jif" when you go to the store. I don't want your wife to tell you to get "Jif" when she sends you there. What I want is for her to tell you "We're out of peanut butter". Then when you get to the store, I want you to perceive "Jif" as the best brand. You don't know why and you don't care. You just buy that one and feel good that you've gotten the best product for your lovely wife and kids. What I want to do as an advertiser is to creat emotional "keys" between my product and good feelings. I don't want to present cognitive arguments; those take way too much work for you (my customer) to deal with. And people really do not operate that way on a daily basis. Think of the thousands of decisions you make each day. Do you really analyze every one of then in a conscious cognitive manner? If you examine a decision you made an hour ago, you could "justify" (come up with a rational explanation after the fact of why you did what you did). But that's not how you made that decision. As an advertiser, I'd much prefer you--a person who believes he makes informed, intelligent, deliberate decisions for himself--to have an emotional association between my product and something good. And have no conscious awareness of how that association got there. Then when your wife asks you why you bought "Jif", you'll say "Because I love you". (If you're smart, that is ;).
And thus progogateth the meme.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
michael wrote "For some reason advertisers never come up with new, smaller advertising formats."
Just because 'the advertisers' come up with these new formats doesn't mean you have to use them. GET CREATIVE. How about clearly marked slashdot articles that are actually advertisements? Hell, some of the ones you run now sure sound like them already, might as well get paid and make it legitimate with an 'Advertisement' label. Don't let non-paying slashdot members block that category, either. Let the advertiser decide whether or not to allow comments on the product. Hell, give the advertiser infinite mod points for that article, they're paying for it. (Just as long as you let everyone know.)
Google innovated with their ads. They're making money and not pissing us off with bigger ads.
All that having been said, I find it amusing that slashdot is using HUGE banner ads only on the reply pages. It's like you're punishing the one group of people that add content to your site. Kinda lame, but I guess you'd rather just "blame it on the advertisers."
"And like that
A couple of months ago, I read something simlar. TV advertisers were bemoaning the fact that individual TV ads no longer have the effect they once did. Viewers are tuning out-- wether by fast-forwarding, or just by not really paying attention. Some of them went on to say that the problem partly was saturation. The fraction of the hour that has ads on a typical TV broadcast has grown, to the point that there are so many ads that no one ad stands out very much any more.
(My reaction to this, and to the surprise that came through in the article about this, was: well, duh!)
Then they go on to suggest the solution: in-programming advertising. Popups, effectively, in TV programs, more obvious and blatant than product placement.
So, the logic is: advertising has become so prevalent and overwhelming that the common consumer is starting to get desensitized to it. To solve this "problem", we need to make advertising even more prevalent and overwhelming.
Hello?
We're so in love with our marketing-driven society that we've become incapable of thinking any other way.
I predict that "popup-ads" during TV shows whould just drive more and more people away from broadcast TV and to watching either premium channels, renting movies, or (horrors) reading books. Broadcast TV will be shooting itself in the foot.
Similarly for web sites that don't think their ads are annoying enough right now. If they think that the solution is to make them more annoying, then users will either avoid their sites, or just use browsers that, in the increasing arms race, filter out the annoying ads. (Until the Fed. government outlaws those browsers, at which point the laws will become irrelevant since they are in conflict with what most of the population wants and does. Maybe eventually they will realize the short-sightedness of their current campaign finance model.)
I just shake my head when people seem to think that the solution to oversaturation of advertising is more in-your-face advertising. Don't they get it? Can't they take a lesson from Google, who subsists on advertising? Yeah, sure, Google is the #1 destination on the site, so they have it easy. Perhaps, though, nobody has considered that part of the reason Google is the #1 destination may be that their advertising is very minimally annoying....
-Rob
I used to hate banner ads. Now I appreciate them in comparison to the annoyance of pop-up ads, making me want to use the internet less and less each time. And never buy whatever it is they are "pushing".
I use Phoenix now. I only loop images once, and of course block popup ads. What these idiotic marketdroids don't understand is that I won't click on an ad just because it is big and animated. In fact, it will probably just piss me off and make me never go to that site again. People will only click on targeted advertising for things they like. (ie, thinkgeek ads on Slashdot or the user submitted text-based ads on Kuro5hin)
If they keep this up, I might have to completely install some ad blocking software.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
But the catch there is this : fake your connection and you'll only get a part of the content you could have if you were honest about your connection. In other words, sites could meter not only the ad type, but the content type of their site as well. Faking your connection as a 28.8 modem when you're sitting on a T1 would result in you not seeing full media like you would expect. For some people that may be fine, but for others they want to utilize all of their bandwidth, even if that means viewing fuller ads.
Of course, this would all have to be done on a site-by-site basis, but it would be a way for sites to cover high bandwidth costs. Larger, interactive advertisments would cost more, helping to pay for the more media-rich content that would be served to those being honest about their connection. Text ads would cost less, coinciding with the cost of serving text-only or close-to-text-only content.
Obviously this suggestion isn't the be-all/end-all, but perhaps it could be a start.