Slashdot Mirror
2005 The Turning Point For Online Ads
An anonymous reader writes "Google's advertising sales vice president, Tim Armstrong, said this week in an interview that 2005 was the turning point for online ads. Older businesses went from trying out the internet as an advertising venue to investing full-on." From the article: "'The experimenting and testing phase begun in the 1990s has ended. Corporate ad buyers are investing now,' he said. Jupiter Research estimates the U.S. online advertising market will grow 28 percent over last year, to $11.9 billion in 2005, moving to $13.6 billion in 2006 and $15.1 billion in 2007."
They always go to great lengths to point out that ad spending is increasing, yet never make any statements about how effective all this money being spent is. They're throwing cash into this black pit because everyone says to, but how many companies are actually experiences increased sales from onling ads?
Turning point indeed. In financial terms, this is called an "imminent crash."
Can anyone give any real-life examples of offline vs online advertising profits? What costs more? What pay's off more? Which one is better targeted?
Targeting of customers by major brands is obvious. The main challenge is accessing the local market. Finding a central portal/site where consumers from a certain neighbourhood visit is the main challenge for the local business who lives off walkin traffic.
What is this "internet" thing you speak of?
You say, billions of people will use it?
That sounds good. Let's wait 15 years, and see if it will take off, then we'll see if we can make some money off of it.
Brilliant!
"Investing full-on" == the return of pop ups. I've noticed more and more pop ups, not in independet windows, but as CSS overlays. Annoying as hell. Plus, it seems every page now has full-motion 30 fps quarter-page Flash movies. The return of the bad-old-days.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
that a good bit of the Firefox users (about 10% of the online browsing community, if I remember correctly) use the Adblock, Flashblock and NoScript extentions. We were largely ignoring them before, now we are even seeing them. I wonder if investors are taking this into consideration or are they fishing for the IE masses? It's only a matter of time before non-tech savvy grandmas and the like are going to start using Firefox in order to cut through the craptastic ad-laden world that is viewed through IE. (Not to mention the IE vulnerabilities)...ugh.
"I know that 50% of my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half" - John Wanamaker 1886
Thankfully, Adblock works rather well, filtering out visually disturbing ads from actually useful and/or entertaining information on the web.
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Does anyone else think that this is partly because of text based advertisements, and also because of the "adsense" idea? They've finally made advertising that is relevant to what you're looking for.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The online advertising is so successful because it allows any company big or small to get recognized for as little or as much money they want to spend. If you look at how adwords functions, it allows you to bid on keywords to get your ads placed on sites with Adsense. Sure, some keywords get very expensive, but in general the prices are reasonable. Now with other companies like Yahoo getting in on the action, this will drive prices down. What's key here is how effective these ads are or are not. Everywhere you go, my site included, has Adsense. I bet many people click on the ads not even realizing they were ads, thus diluting them a little. But the fact that they are content based, does make them effective. This is the future for now and the kinks will be worked out. Let's just hope tv shows start using adwords so we can get rid of commercials :)
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/Much like the 'blink' font tag in HTML, Internet Ads need to learn that it's important to be present, but not distracting. No self repecting web designer uses the blink tag any more. It's just too obnoxious, and actually puts people OFF of the website. Online Ad designers need to embrace this same philosophy. It is my opinion that the adblock extenion for Mozilla browsers was created because some ads are just too destracting, and make the content of the PAGE harder to read.
Rotating images/text is one thing, but blinking/flashing graphics will NEVER get me to click on the link..
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
So while ads are reasonably effective again right now, it'll crash again, because website owners are just cluttering their sites with too damn many of 'em.
The company I work for has learned, and is maintaining a reasonable number of ad spots on our site. Others would do well to do the same. But I guess that goes against the current trend of dangerously short sighted business practices.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
I've started a tech site/blog just like a million other people around the world in the hopes that I too could cash in on the online advertising scheme.
However, running a tech blog, I have noticed one definite fact - that Ad Munching occurs on almost 70% of the users that visit my site. That means that my "revenue stream" (I've made less than it would take to fill up my car's gas tank) is one Greasemonkey script, one AdMuncher default installation, one MSFT OneCare configuration away from being completely obliterated.
Technical users are already speeding up their web browsing experience and once default OEM computer installations come with ad blocking (MSFT could potential block AdWords ads with Vista out of the box), you could see a filtering of advertisements off the web. Especially since Google is relying on contextual ads, their JavaScript code is one security setting away from never even reaching the user - no less having them click on the ad and then actually buying something.
Hagrin.com
Don't. Not unless you can afford establishment advertising.
Honestly. Advertising can work for the very select top tier products that become the establishment product, but in the long haul, there is only one way to make a product successful and profitable: quality.
It doesn't have to be the best, it has to work in the customer's situation. If you sell service, do it happily and as close to perfection as possible.
In all my years of being in business, I have never seen a good return on advertising that turned into a long run of regular customers. Sure, I may have seen some profits, but I also so many losses. I will never advertise again, I can't compete with Target or the like. What brings customers to my various businesses? Word of mouth. It spreads like wildfire when you perform a really good service or sell a great product.
The web is in trouble as programs like AdBlock and the like gain use. I know many of you use AdBlock, but if you use it on a website you like, turn it off. Click the damn ads. How do you think that site is being provided for? I pay as a subscriber to slashdot, and this Christmas I'm planning on giving a dozen or so subscription gifts to people on here that I admire. Sure, Taco and the boys have some nice money now, but I love the site, and I will continue to support it.
Advertising online doesn't work as well as many think it does. I've been watching the companies that have started to use AdSense within their catalogs (offering paid links to their competition). Only the top companies are making it big. I've spoken to some large bloggers (off the record) and their numbers in advertising don't make their blogging a real income. Yeah, there are a few who are making it big.
Google is taking in the most, but they have to find ways to combat against AdBlock and other ways to avoid the advertising. I don't know how they'll do it, but as I find AdBlock being used on more and more systems, I know that Google won't remain the king.
I do believe that sponsorship advertising of the web might work. Basically a monthly payment in order to say "Slashdot, brought to you by Microsoft" or something of the sort. Some podcasts I've listened to are receiving sponsorships, and they are't tacky ads but well thought out slogans or quick product placements.
I know not all overlays are Flash based but the pros of uninstalling certain browser plug-ins far outweigh the cons.
crazy dynamite monkey
First, I have grown accustomed to ignoring online ads. I have NEVER clicked on an ad, and by extension bought something from a web site in that manner.
I have also dabbled with creating a website using ads and can safely say I am not making any of that $12 billion. Again, few people click thru an ad and buy a product. In fact, browsers like Firefox ship with the default setting for cookies to delete them after exit from the app, or at least this option is available. This means that many websites using cookies to track performance of ad clicking won't work for a lot of users.
Also, their is more public outrage about online advertising and many products are being offered to combat this pervasive nuisance. Pop-up and ad blockers are being integrated into even Internet Explorer and those savvy enough are using Firefox which handle them better. I use Norton Internet Security with the ad blocking enabled. Anyone with Linux skills can setup a proxy server that will only serve context stripped of advertising. Obviously, there is a big market for people wanting to avoid online advertising.
Who is saying online advertising is working, Google that gets paid to put ads up regardless of whether they actually generate sales, or the people advertising reporting that ads are actually drawing people to their websites (directly) and making purchases (directly).
In my opinion, online ads are becoming ineffective as people strive to ignore or block them.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
.. due to an extreme focus on clicks.
Regular magazine advertisements have no direct link between the advertisement and the shops selling the products, while online advertisement do.
The problem is that for a long while, web adverts were considered useful only if they gave DIRECT hits to the target website. That is highly unfair imo. Having people SEE the banner is useful enough on it's own. It helps generate brand recognition.
I think the web sites oversold the idea of clicks so much it made companies undervalue viewings of the ads. In my opinion web ads should be more expensive per square cm per viewing than regular ads, because of the added statistical information the client gets. In addition, clicks should be rewarded.
For newspapers, at least, online ad revenue is growing quicker than print ads, but still makes up only a fraction of sales. http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/art icle_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001570425
e aseID=174773, after it says its own study found 78 percent of those who played Orbitz online games would play again in the future. I don't take too much stock in companies' internal studies that are announced in press releases, but I think advergaming has popularity for business folks who might feel guilty (or afraid of getting caught) if they seek out online games. (But hey, if one just opens up while I'm on this site, why not play, right?)
Text-based, targeted ads seem to be the rage because of affordability and ease (you don't have to hire someone to create the ad), but you have to keep in mind the masses and masses of people who still muddle through the pop-ups. Sure, it's easy to look through slashdot and hear about people who are quick to turn pop-ups, but don't discount the millions of people who don't understand how to turn them off. (Generally, these are the same people who still have their homepages set to msn or apple, and still have 12:00 blinking on their VCR -- yes, people still have VCRs.) I would guess that these people are likely the most susceptible to advertising messages, too.
I am surprised by the success of advergaming http://www.naa.org/artpage.cfm?AID=6563&SID=103, which is probably most often identified with Orbitz. So popular were the games that Orbitz unveiled orbitzgames.com earlier this year http://pressroom.orbitz.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?Rel
Quick question: What are the feelings on pop-up vs. pop-under ads? I block both, but before I did I tended to dislike the insidiousness of pop-under ads more than the annoyance of pop-up ads.
While I can't comment much on how EFFECTIVE advertising online is, I have noticed in my home audio recording based community that there has been a significant increase by the industry in advertising on my site, and I presume others in my space. 2005 was pretty interesting, I was contacted by many manufacturers over the year, and now that it's toward the end of the year, many of the manufacturers I did enter into agreements with have now started talking to me about re-upping for next year, so really, I can only assume that the advertising has been effective for them.
But then, there are some companies that throw money at things without watching exactly where it goes...so it's anybodies guess...but since it's my site, I would like to think it's cuz my site sells stuff for them :-)
Bottom line: What I do know is 2005 interest picked up a lot, and they want to reup for 2006, with more companies wanting in...so, well, I see validity in the article.
dB Masters
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I find it strange that we are all "worshipping" a company whose only revenue stream is placing internet ads and whose main focus is to pester us with more ads.
I think a lot of you are placing blame in the wrong places...for every company willing to pay somebody to place a nasty popup, popunder, expanding flash, spyware injecting or moving target type of advertisement, there is also a lame webmaster that actually PUTS IT on their site...so, who is to blame, the company trying to buy it, or the webmaster that puts it online? I for one never accept those types of ads for my sites, for the reason you guys site, they suck...and are even dangerous... don't hate the player, hate the game
dB Masters
I am very surprised to hear this. I personally have only seen a handful of adverts on the web in the last few months - this is because I use firefox and adblock as well as a few other tricks. And I help everybody I know to do the same.
The truth is - most people despise adverts because they are deceptive, annoying or irrelevant (and quite often all). When I buy things it is often despite having seen an advert for it; that is how I feel about the kind of advertising we are presented with, and I think many feel the same. When I want to buy anything more expensive than a bottle of milk, I first research what my options, find what I need and where it is cheapest - then I buy. Adverts don't enter into it, unless you count such things as catalogs that you pay for. And that illustrates the difference between reality and the fantasy if the advertisers: my research presents me with the information I want, whereas advertising is in your face, disruptive - and highly unwelcome.
What I find particularly strange is that what you would have thought was otherwise sensible businesses keep doing this when it so obviously alienates a lot of people.
You personally might not be affected by advertising, be it web-based or traditional, but in one way or another the majority of consumers are. Be it due to hectic lifestyles, demand for the immediate satifaction of owning a product they just "KNOW" suits their every need, or sheer ignorance, people by the bucketload are more then willing to let their purchasing decisions be swayed by the advertisments they see everyday.
Even those who pay no attention to advertising themselves are at least indirectly affected. Word of mouth is a powerful influence in buying decisions, but without an initial userbase built upon at least some degree of advertising, this is not possible.
At the end of the day, advertising exists because it is effective. And we all know, in this capitalist society of ours, if something isn't effective it generally doesn't last long (not without a good advertising campaign anyway!)