Opinion The future of the banner ad

By Erin Williams

Blinky emoticons, dubious diplomas, preposterous weight loss claims… Is it any wonder we tune out banner ads? Is it surprising that the number one add-on for Firefox is “Adblock Plus,” with over 62 million downloads? Banner ads are dead.

Online banner ads have long followed a disruptive media model: grab the viewers’ attention, and sustain it long enough to deliver your message. Then, measure the persuasiveness of your tactics by the number of clicks. That worked well… for awhile.

But when clicks stopped delivering value, people stopped clicking. And when the disruptions became an annoyance, people tuned them out. And when “clever” advertisers deployed banners that popped up and moved around and seemed impossible to close, well, people just decided to hate their brands.

“I would never click any ad that blinks or animates in the first place. It’s obnoxious and juvenile, and I’m not about to reward them,” wrote David Pogue, New York Times technology blogger and member of the Twitterati (with 1.2 million followers).
 
We’ve gotten so good at blocking out these ads that there’s a term for it: banner blindness. And— this might come as a surprise to a lot of online advertisers— it was coined in 1998. Yeah, more than a decade ago.

So why are we talking banner ads?

’Cause banner ads are back. They’re back because they still build awareness and aid in brand building. In some cases, banner ads still result in clicks too, and they’re as cheap as popcorn. What’s changed is how we approach and measure banner ads.

Firstly, disruptive banner ads are so 1998— unless it’s bleeding-edge, game-changing disruptive, like the “Wario Land: Shake It” YouTube takeover that got over 6 million views. Or the Apple ads on The New York Times website that introduced a dazzling new ad synchronization effect. Then, it’s entertainment. In those cases, you measure effectiveness not simply in impressions and clicks, but in tweets, views, stars, posts, and comments.

It’s obvious, right? Unsolicited distraction and disruption are unwelcome when we’re drafting emails to friends, searching for information, or logging in to our online banking (the top three consumer uses of the Internet). Sometimes we go online for distraction, too, but then we’re more likely to search for cute kitten videos on YouTube.

But rich-media ads are not a cure-all

In fact, many successful banner ads don’t stand out, on purpose. Rich media is often more noise than entertainment, so we’ve tuned it out or unplugged it. Good online ads now take a page out of the print world and function as online advertorials: they look like content (and to a certain extent they are content, albeit paid). They add value by providing a message relevant to the searcher’s query. 

The prevalence of search— both web-wide and site-specific— makes it easier than ever to deliver “paid content” (i.e., ads) at the exact moment someone is interested in your product or service. Search for articles on “mid-century modern” on The New York Times and, along with the list of articles the newspaper has published about mid-century modernism, you’ll get five sponsored links with “mid-century” in the copy. 

Same thing goes for headlines. Follow the links and you’ll find related advertisements next to just-published articles— what’s known as contextual advertising.

Demographic and geographic targeting is more sophisticated too

As we willingly give up more and more information online through social media profiles and purchase order histories, advertisers can zero in on small niches and highly specific target groups. Facebook, for example, has 12 criteria for segmenting their audience, ranging from standard age, gender, and location information to workplace, interests and connections. Blanket advertising just wastes impressions.

Once they’ve hit their target, smart banner ads clearly communicate their relevance (not necessarily their offer) and drive clicks to a customized landing page. Sending users straight to the company home page expecting that they will seek out the product or promotion in the ad is an unrealistic engagement expectation— ads that do so will likely fail.

Different measurements for different kinds of banners

So do you measure your subtle, super-targeted advertorial the same way you measured the blinky, over-the-top attention-grabbers? Not likely.

For the attention-grabbers, you might have bought a hundred thousand impressions, expecting 30,000 actual impressions (only about 27 percent of ads above the fold get viewed), and hoping for click-through rates of 1 to 3 percent.

For a targeted advertorial, the number of impressions decreases exponentially; fledgling click-through rates are then unacceptable. The targeting is deeper, the analytics are richer, and the opportunities for engagement are greater. Accordingly, strategy, measurement and management need to be more sophisticated.

Banners can still produce results, but they need the kind of smart thinking we’re putting into the “exciting” channels like websites and social media. They need to be:
•    user-centric and content-driven;
•    targeted, timely and relevant;
•    integrated;
•    measured and managed.

So battered and beleagured, the banner ad soldiers on. But what do you think? Are banner ads invariably a waste of time? Do animated, disruptive banners catch your attention, or force you to tune out? And what about “advertorial” banners— love them or loathe them? We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Posted on December 15, 2009 by Erin Williams, an online strategist at Rethink Communications, Vancouver.

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