Remember X10? Back at the end of the dot-com era, the spy camera company took popunder ads to an extreme. It even rode its tactics to one of the top slots in the MediaMetrix rankings. Lots of sites ruined their user experiences in the short-term chase for ad dollars by bombarding visitors with popups and popunders. Thanks to Firefox and advanced versions of Internet Explorer, a good chunk of Web users don't get many of those annoying ads.
Get ready for X10 2.0 as the economic downturn puts incredible pressure on pubishers to get clients more "engagement." Let's face it, banners aren't doing it. The entire adjacency ad model looks shaky in the limitless expanse of digital media. Jakob Nielsen has long preached "banner blindness," yet the focus online seems to still be on more and more ad networks to slice and dice worthess inventory. Don't get me wrong: dispay ads have their place. Numberous studies have shown they have an incremental impact on search clicks and conversions. Still, advertisers will keep driving down prices for these commodities. The smart sites will craft smart integrations and sponsorship packages for clients.
Others will take a page out of X10's book and just look for more intrusiveness. ESPN.com recently rolled out its much-trumpeted redesign, promising to simplify an experience that even its top exec termed "frustrating." To its credit, ESPN has stopped the autoplay video, an annoyance that scared the bejesus out of countless Internet users. (An ESPN exec once confided in me that it knew how annoying the autoplay was but calculated it couldn't sacrfice the added ad revenue,) One of the new features is what to me is a horrifying video home page takeover, which ESPN is terming a "prestitial" and thinks will be prized by movie studios. (That's better than the Orwellian "welcome screen" ad. Nobody feels welcome when they're trying to get somewhere and someone pops in front of them trying to sell something.) Ford scrounged up enough money to work with ESPN on the execution, which bocks the ESPN home page with a video message overlay showing the F-150 pickup seeming to kick mud on a SportsCenter anchor. Some (in advertising) like it. Others (not in advertising) aren't convinced.
My guess is the first of many moves to be more aggressive with advertising mingling with and even mixing with content. As a creator of content, I'm somewhat sympathetic. Users have gotten mostly a free ride until now. The economics of digital media aren't great if you're not just pumping out user-generated content or social networking pages. Jeff Zucker was onto something with this trading-analog-dollars-for-digital-pennies bit. But time and again, advertisers blow it. People are ignoring our ads? Let's make them bigger and more intrusive. Here's a crazy thought: make a banner ad that over 750,000 people voluntarily watched on YouTube. Another idea: give users some choice. One of the more interesting ad experiments going on is at Hulu, where users can choose their sponsor and even if they want to sit through a longer initial ad or several commercials throughout the content. I like that. There's a value exchange taking place: make it open and transparent. That approach won't work for most pubishers, but slamming bigger and noisier ads at people is a risky proposition when other content is just a click away and technologies like AdBlock Plus are really easy to install.
Amazing that we are still discussing banner ads in 2009.
Especially on banner ads on ESPN, where I’m guessing a goodly number of fans are heading because they want a quick update on a particular score. And so Booby Trap Banner Ads are going to annoy them more than the average bear.
And yet here we are again, listening to people spout on about the value of a banner ad. As a direct response vehicle no less, if I’m reading you correctly.
Websites get screwed with that metric. I doubt people pay any more attention to print ads than they do banner ads- less possibly, since it’s way easier to flip the page to get to the next article than to avoid seeing the banner ad up top—but since print ads are not judged on a DR metric, they’re still seen as valuable. Go figure.
Posted by: Alan Wolk | January 06, 2009 at 22:48
Ugh. Even funnier is the hundreds of thousands of dollars still being spent to move a CTA to the right side and color it green because someone is from Philadelphia. OPTIMIZE!
Next stop "prestitial's" with embed/share options... you know... cause we need to spend money on social media! Can't wait to make people look at that ad before they see my Facebook photos...
Posted by: Reegan | January 07, 2009 at 07:29
Interesting how you attempt to drive home your point with a YouTube vid of a Mac/PC ad that began it's life as a hated "pre-stitial" at one time. It blows your entire arguement. Fail.
Posted by: Joe G | January 07, 2009 at 09:37
Joe,
I never saw the Mac-PC ad that blocked content. The one I pointed to is in the regular old banner space on the edges of content.
Posted by: Brian Morrissey | January 07, 2009 at 10:56
My partner and I used to work in creative/content development at AOL in 2003/2004. We had about 300 people on staff, but needed 900. There were never enough people to "feed the beast." At the same time, advertisers were unhappy with the fact that consumers were blind to banners, because they were so focused on content. Advertisers wanted something more "content like" to attract consumer attention.
Today, when even online publishers are cutting back staff, they're more desperate than ever for quality content. Seems like complimentary needs. Instead of just mingling content, maybe advertisers and online publishers could partner to create content that actually helps solve consumer needs.
Posted by: Joe McCambley, The Wonderfactory | January 12, 2009 at 16:45
I would have to say, that depending on how out there the banner ads are, they can get noticed. American Apparel does a great job at this. Their ads beg to be clicked on.
Posted by: espn book | December 08, 2009 at 14:18
sadness is a mood very uncomfortable, I believe that one way to eliminate the sadness is having fun on the side of those who most want, and provide a unique love without expecting anything in return
Posted by: generic viagra | April 12, 2010 at 13:46
You claim that there is a disconnect between savings and investment. That may occur in monetary terms, but not in capital terms. This does not imply that a commensurate amount of capital is siting idle. It instead means that those whose cash is not idle have a greater purchasing power. Thanks
Posted by: guanacaste costa rica | July 17, 2010 at 16:57
Great news topic I feel very bad when I heard this news. How such type of incidents happen in airlines only. Why the have not taken proper measures to stop such nonsense event. A quick question, if you want to participate in your challenges, do we have to use Prima products ... I don't have any yet, and sure would like to play along for a chance to win some...?
Posted by: viagra online | August 14, 2010 at 11:03
Hey, Really great work,I would like to join your blog anyway so please continue sharing with us...
Posted by: Generic Viagra | April 05, 2011 at 01:49
Article is very nicely written and I am happy to find so many useful information here in the post, thanks for sharing it here. I hope you will adding more !
Posted by: Kamagra | June 04, 2011 at 15:06