Banner ads are the standard when it comes to online advertising, but lately there’s been talk of how well they really work, and of how little money they actually bring in per reader (as opposed to print). But what if you could drastically improve their effectiveness?
An article in yesterday’s New York Times discusses a pair of California-based companies doing exactly that. They’re experimenting with colours, fonts, images and other features of standard ads – as they interact with the web page they’re displayed on – to collect data on what gets the most clicks, and the most sell-throughs. And their results show that advertisers, marketers and designers may have to shift their mindset when it comes to creating ads:
“I think the creative community has to get very comfortable with results-based outcomes in marketing,” said Mr. Hanlon, whose company has an interest in Tumri. “There are a lot of creative people who didn’t sign up for that kind of world.”
Bant Breen, the president of worldwide digital communications at Initiative, the Interpublic Group media buying and planning firm, had a similar view. “The traditional creative process right now is not structured to essentially deliver hundreds of permutations, or hundreds of ideas for messaging,” said Mr. Breen, whose firm is using Tumri to determine which ads are working.
“There’s no doubt that there will be a lot of data that can be collected that could be applied to the creative process.”
I think we need to turn the concept of advertising around a bit online. People are generally on the web because they're looking for information. They want solutions. Rather than getting in their face with your latest whatever, offer them solutions to the problems they have. That means contextual ads, and that means an attitude on ads that matches the site they're presented on.
But one thing we've noticed is that the little text ads on our home page (they also have keywords attached to them) generate about 10-times or more clicks than banner ads. Though we haven't tested this extensively, my theory is that Google has trained Internet users well, and that readers regard text ads as "information" more than "advertising," particularly if they are well written (e.g. relevant). Google has said this is their strategy. So, content works; but then again, is there not value in having hundreds of thousands of impressions of a brand's logo and message in a banner?
Advertisers need to realize that individual solutions are required for each kind of online ad. A very effective idea that's popped up a lot lately are context-specific ads developed by the advertisee, not the advertiser.
Collegehumor.com is a great example of a website who understands its audience. They create sponsored content (transparently) that fits in perfectly with their non-sponsored content. They know what their audience wants and what annoys them better than anyone else.
Using Geist as an example again (I don't work for them, honest!), they've managed to get their ads nicely into their site design, but they're still explicitly ads. That's important. Internet users don't like to feel that they're being tricked.
Using the Masthead site (where I am reading this blog) as an example, there's currently an ad in the upper right corner for Mags Canada's "Look Like a Hero" print production guide. While they've got the right audience, it's a really obnoxious ad that does little more than clash and distract.