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."

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It's official, Text Ads are Dying

[Xerithane]

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Text Ads community when IDC confirmed that Text Ads market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all banners. Coming on the heels of a recent Advertiser-Backed survey which plainly states that Text Ads hav lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Text Ads is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Webmasters comprehensive annoyance test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Text Ads's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Text Ads faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Text Ads because Text Ads are dying. Things are looking very bad for Text Ads. As many of us are already aware, Text Ads continue to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

Google Text Ads are the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core advertisers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Google Text Ad customer Slashdot and Freshmeat only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Google Text Ads are dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Google leader Mr. Page states that there are 7000 people who click through Google Text Ads. How many users of Google Text Ads are there? Let's see. Google Text Ad click throughs on Slashdot are about half of the volume of Google Text Ad click-throughs. Therefore there are about 700 Text Advertisers. A recent article put Google Text Ads at about 80 percent of the Text Ads market. Now Freshmeat is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house. All major surveys show that Text Ads have steadily declined in market share. Text Ads are very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Text Ads are to survive at all it will be among Advertiser dilettante dabblers. Text Ads continue to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save them at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Text Ads are dead.

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