When I worked at P&G, we begrudgingly invested in coupons for the short term bump of sales, even though most of us all knew that coupons in most situations, rewarded disloyalty and were a bad investment.
Fast forward to 2008 and the modern version of wasted investment is the "banner ad". Although we have been romanced into believing it's a bit more interactive and intrusive than your traditional ad forums, it really is the online Pavlovian shock treatment that attracts e-promotional junkies.
From ComScore's recent study, heavy banner ad clickers are:
- just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks
- skew towards Internet users in households with an income under $40,000
- spend four times more time online than non-clickers, however their spending does not proportionately reflect this very heavy Internet usage
- relatively more likely to visit auctions, gambling, and career services sites – a markedly different surfing pattern than non-clickers
- show no connection between measured attitude towards a brand and the number of times they'll click on an ad for that brand
This is a particularly challenging case to make for web ads, particularly when clickthroughs have declined from 0.7% to less than 0.2% of banner ads in just over a year.
Even more pressingly, the lack of returns and consequently ad inventory sales of Facebook and My Space is pointing to an important contextual difference on when people might even be inclined to click on a banner. When people are searching, shopping or scouting for travel, they are hunting for stuff (kind of like rifling through a fridge late at night) - thus, display ads play a role. That's why Google search makes money.
However, when people are social networking, they are metaphorically "on the couch", display ads take them away from where they want to be ("on a couch" - socializing with their friends), thus, display ads are much less effective and oftentimes, just a nuisance. That's why My Space ads are hated and Facebook ads don't work.
Even more damning, a point supported by Danah Boyd - "heavy ad clickers in social network sites and other social media are more likely to trend lower in both economic and social capital than the average user"
A great quote sums up the situation by BBC journalist Bill Thompson "...we must face up to the irony that our favourite websites may well be being paid for by the poor". Hmm, as it is with TV, so it is with online.
But with 20% of our media time being spent online, the answer can't be to avoid the medium altogether. What's the answer or at least, some good direction then:
- place banner ads where people are "rummaging through the fridge" not "lying on the couch" and use a pay per click model with a stacked return/incentive for clicking
- single message your ads, look for alternate web ad forms that shake surfers out of their inertia without invading their navigation and thus, account for the awareness impact of your ad, not singularly focusing on clickable measures
- accelerate your web ad learnings on mobile marketing, this is the context where people are most likely to be searching, scanning and looking into new stuff and where contextual ads will play well in the future if they really help the user
- recruit your key influencers offline and online and let them carry your messages - don't force a banner ad to do the job that you know only a person can - create deep and tailored environments for valuable tribes of your overall audience and rely on their much more dynamic customer evangelism
- pursue sponsorship properties and advertorial opportunities, where content is inextricably linked to your brand and actively consumed, pursued and searched by your prospective customers
- micro-target to the most fervent, premium target and customize for relevance to the environment
- create ads ideas with social capital - let's think out of the box
- creating incentive for referral (get 5 of your friends on this site, through this ad, win something), incentive for socialization (meet new friends with the same interest, leave your search profile as a watermark on the ad where people can connect to you),
- trade on scarcity (you have only 25 more clicks before this offer expires),
- incentive for self-expressiveness (let brands sponsor user generated messages people submit and thus want to get out to the world),
- incentive for influence/exclusiveness (keep clicking banner ads to get insider info) and
- appeal to immediacy (this offer expires in 30 seconds, 1-20 chance to win with 30 seconds left, 1 in 100 chance to win with 15 seconds left, 1 in 5000 chance to win with 5 seconds left)
But please, please, please... don't feed the coupon clippers.
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