Online advertising - does it work, how?
According to a recent article on Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Using heatmaps, he goes to show that users don’t fixate within design elements that resemble ads, even if they aren’t ads, something he calls Banner Blindness.
Given the various formats of banners and innovations now possible and available (shoskele, etc.), I am not sure how many types of banners were considered in the study. A static banner may not be able to attract attention, but the fight for eyeballs is what would drives the industry and has given us innovations like shoskeles, etc. Another way could be to make the ad look like part of the content itself, and hence attract attention, but this would of course need to be done very carefully. In any medium, be it print, television, etc. some people are bound to overlook the advertising - why should online be any different?
On the other hand, today, when all advertisers are jumping onto the CPC and CPA model, a new study hints that marketers should not fixate on the number of people who click on ads.
The study, by Chan Yun Yoo, an assistant professor at the University of Kentucky’s School of Journalism and Telecommunications, found that when people view Web advertisements, they store information in two different types of memory: explicit and implicit. While explicit memory involves facts learned through conscious interaction, implicit memory involves unconscious retention. Hence just seeing an ad on a Web page can impact memory. While any campaign should have a mix of both, publishers would no doubt heave a sigh of relief. This study was published in the spring 2007 edition of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.
Over time, I see broadly 3 types of online advertising succeeding:
1. Highly contextual advertising - once this gets highly contextual, which can only happen after knowing and being able to predict the behaviour of an individual, it crosses the boundry between advertising and content/service.
2. Innovations - that grab attention. Screen grabs, skoskels, etc. fall in this category.
3. Solution selling - building advertising into the product itself, and hence creating a fit.
Related reads:
Using Google Earth for Interactive Advertising
Online advertising - driving advertising spend
The future of advertising?
Online advertising in India
France third largest internet advertising market in Europe
The great advertising shift
Filed under: Business