Are Plain-Text Ads Doomed?

friedegg writes "Usability expert Jakob Nielsen's latest alertbox examines the future of text advertising on the web. Text based advertising has become increasingly popular recently partly because of Google's success with it. Nielsen notes that advertising works well on search engines because users visit them with the specific intent of going elsewhere. He also thinks it's only a matter of time before the novelty of text advertising wears off, and users develop "box blindness" in addition to their current "banner blindness." It isn't totally negative, though, as he thinks the low-end media format forces advertises to express a focused and succinct message that users may take more seriously."

Comments

diamonds != forever. advertising == forever

[Hubert_Shrump]

As fonts get smaller, ASCII art in the adverts will pick up and pretty soon - we'll be back where we started.

Just a matter of time.

Based on speed of the responses here

[bwcarty]

I'd say that text *articles* are doomed as well. How many people actually click the link and read everything?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:My Experience

[fobbman]

Your clickthru rate increase was due to folks realizing that clicking the word "monkey" is a lot easier than hitting the graphical bastard that moves back and forth, back and forth, taunting me with his elusiveness. Back and forth, back and forth, back and...

Re:In a word: NO

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

.. rich media ads ..

That's a PC term if I ever heard one. No, that ad isn't ultra annoying, it's just rich media. Rich indeed.

Re:In a word: NO

[Zoop]

That's a PC term if I ever heard one. No, that ad isn't ultra annoying, it's just rich media. Rich indeed.

Actually, to be truly PC, it should be "rich media-American."

Evolution of marketing

[jafuser]

I remember reading one of the Dilbert books, Is your computer safe from hackers? where it said that marketing will continue to become more and more manipulative Make money with your website! as it builds upon the shoulders of already tried marketing schemes.

I just wonder how long before Specials on Ink Jet refill kits! they start putting ads Long Distance for just 1c per minute! in the middle Spy on your neighbors! of all web content?

Re:Better have them plaintext

[jpetts]

Can't we just ban them? :-)

But then you would be a banner!