Re: Interesting Twist to BANNER ADVERTISING

From: Fred <DTGNews_at_aol.com>
Date: Sun 2 Jan 2000 14:35:42 EST

... following the thread:
 "Interesting Twist to BANNER ADVERTISING"

in which Fred is playing Devil's advocate, proposing
the hypothetical scenario of having the ISP router
server actually replace banner purveyor ads for
incoming web site pages, with banner advertising which
has been sold by the ISP to local business to advertise
to the local constituency...

MATT MAGRI SAID:
> It's a -very- clever idea, from a technical
> standpoint. My gut reaction would be to avoid it from
> just about any other standpoint, tho. You are
actually
> changing the content of what the user has requested,
> which gets into all sorts of weird and exciting new
> legal and ethical realms.

Not true. You would be hard pressed to identify one
single web surfer who REQUESTED that ad. I have a real
problem calling banner exchange ads "content". Maybe
it's just me.

In the banner exchange schemes, ad banners are 99.9% of
the time NOT part of the content. In fact, the site
owners seldom knows what banner will display for any
given surfer at any given moment.

(Why is it that some have come to think that banner
advertising is part of "content"??? Has the web caused
the idea of content to change? I never considered ads
to be part of the content of the newspaper. I know a
lot of writers who would be insulted if you said the
ads are part of their content. Do people now consider
commercials to be part of the movie they're watching on
TV? Or are they still just an annoyance?)

Could a site even testify WHICH banner was replaced for
which reader at which time???

> Unless it was part of some new "filtered" service
> they would optionally provide at the receiver's
> request, I suspect there would be jail time involved.

What about schools, government ISPs, and others who
automatically filter out ads, spam and porno? Will the
schools go to jail?

School systems regularly filter incoming content and
ads when filters can be programmed to do so. A school
system just won a big law suit for filtering and
blocking certain sites. The court ruled it is within
the system's right to limit or delete materials from
transmission over its system, including blocking entire
domains. (I've considered blocking all HotMail.com and
Yahoo.com because of the huge amount of spam they
purvey... hundreds of gigs.)

I think we need a wakeup call at this point. Remember
that the Ad purveyor site SENDS the bit data to our hub
servers for viewing on our private WAN. Once that data
arrives here, it's on OUR property. Not like TV where
the receiver is getting wide broadcast air waves. A
Private WAN is like closed circuit TV. We can show what
we please. Period.

I can let your door-to-door salesman knock on my
door... but I don't have to let him in. Agreed?

We let (usually) most web pages "trespass" on our
system, but we don't have to.

Banner ads can constitute over 33% of incoming
bandwidth. This is a significant amount of
tresspassing. The advertisers are in effect stealing
that bandwidth to display their message, for personal
gain. Letting all those door-to-door salesmen into our
subscribers homes.

The site owner who sells the ads is in effect stealing
bandwidth from the ISP, then charging their advertisers
for that bandwidth. We, as ISP are in effect charging
our customers to make you money!!! Seems upside-down
doesn't it?

Why would anyone in their right mind charge someone
else to make YOU rich???

??? Should the ISP NOT be compensated for that
    bandwidth?
??? Should the local TV station charge for advertising?
??? How about national advertisers in the local
    newspaper?
    Do they pay? (Ha... after over 30 years in print
    advertising)

Then...

> . . . Or the movie theater owner who sells
> ads to air during the preview trailers of movies?

MATT SAID:
> No, they aren't replacing any of the content with ads.

That's right, Matt. They are in no way tampering with
the movie the people came to see. They are merely
taking advantage of a "captive audience" (literally,
LOL) to sell ads.

The BANNER ad substitution coding would NOT replace any
of the content of the web site (or the movie) the way
Mr. Henning thinks it would (see later in this post)

> What you are talking about would be more akin to the
> theater replacing any products that appear in the movie
> with some other product that the advertiser paid the
> theatre to insert.

Nope. Wrong.

Most people can tell that they're seeing ads, because
the movie hasn't started yet. (They haven't come to
think of ads as content. Maybe not yet.)

Commercials are not part of the TV show. A lot of
people can tell that the TV show has paused, and that a
commercial is now showing. (Although many times the
commercials are better than the programming. LOL,
still, I'm getting one of those new digital VCRs that
clip the commercials for you!)

Banner ads are NOT messages which are intended to
appear as part of the actual content/context of the web
site's information. They're easily caught because
they're called from another source.

The only ads replaced would be the "stock" variety, not
related to site content, which are easily hooked, and
filtered because of their link-through code. (Remeber
that the Hub actually reads every single bit of data in
ALL incoming web pages. It see instantly which are
actually part of the content, and which are merely
rotating extranious site-spam purveyed by a robot.
Like the "Samuri Girls" Banner Exchange ad showing up
on the Baptist church site.)

RE: Local advertisers can't buy ads on the big web
sites,

WILLIAM HENNING SAID:
> Not true; geo-targeting is available; and if they can
> pay for expensive TV and print ads they should not balk
> at paying for geo-targeted advertising from the
> reputable agencies.

Obviously Mr. Henning has not dealt with many local
advertisers. He's too far up the food chain, working
with the deep pockets of the big boys. He should play
in the trenches a bit.

Yes, they can buy advertising. But not on the big sites
-- mainly because of the high minimum, and LOW exposure
time. (on the big sites, 10,000 links are used up in
just a few minutes. AND the site has no idea if a real
human used the banner or if it was a banner-surfing
robot.)

How can you prove to the local drug store that they had
10,000 page views? You show them your server log. So
what?

What if you paid for 10,000 views, and 9,000 of those
were robots or merely page refreshes? Ever notice how
the ZDnet pages refresh TWICE before fully loading???
There goes THREE exposures, right there. Those people
aren't stupid!)

Now, tell me... why would a local drug store want to
buy into a program like ZDnet or About.com when they
have to buy minimum thousands of click-throughs, yet
vitrually "0" % of those seeing the ads would live in
the drug store's neighborhood?

It would be an insanely tough sell. I wouldn't buy it.
I know the web is still new, but I would think that
many of you have been in advertising before.

However if they could buy ads that would appear in the
ZDnet site ONLY when a LOCAL dial-up customer surfer
arrived at ZDnet -- customers who could actually drive
over to the drug store -- then that's an intelligent
buy. "Hello, I saw your ad on the web." Who could argue
with that?

The local advertiser now doesn't even have to care
about views. Page views??? Who cares. End of
discussion. He knows that EVERYONE in his local target
market area will see his ad NO MATTER what web site the
customer surfed to. Now the ad sale is a no-brainer.
Period.

THEN MR. HENNING SAID:
> If someone wants to put ads on MY site, they will
> have to pay me for the priviledge. Period.

Granted. I don't want to take that away from you.

However, what if I said: "If someone wants to put ads
on MY server hub, they will have to pay me for the
priviledge. Period."

or... if YOU to plan to make a profit off MY bandwidth
then I get a commission. (Then I'll let your salesman
in the door.)

It's my belief that subscribers are not paying for the
ADS. They are paying for the content the site offers.

Read the GVU survey and you'll learn that the vast
majority of surfers find banner ads of little interest
or use. In our ongoing survey we have yet to find one
single subscriber who is willing to pay for banner ads.
Period. That's not what they use the web for. Nor can
we locate anyone who admits to actually clicking on a
BANNER EXCHANGE ad, and subsequently buying anything.
However they do admit to buying local services and
products from local businesses.

I'm going to take a poll and see just how many of our
local dial-up customers ...
A) would be willing to pay to see your banner ads,
B) would rather have LOCAL advertising for LOCAL
   business, and
C) would rather have ALL banner ads stripped from
   their dial-up account, all together.

(It might just be a good subscriber service to offer
banner ad stripping. A service few other ISPs offer
their customers. Could be a goldmine upcharge
service.)

Thanks folks... this is an interesting thread, and one
that seems to be flushing out some interesting views on
the way people think about advertising.

Fred

PS: Interesting also, that we have received over a
dozen inquiries from web companies who what to "share"
or help us "test" the code that replaces ads....
hmmmmmmmmm.

PSS: Don't you think it would be interesting to see how
many readers of this list are:
* companies wanting to learn how to advertise better, or
* advertising firms wanting to sell more, or
* web site owners wanting to learn how to sell more, or
* web designers looking for new things they can upsell, or
* ISPs and/or service providers watching what happens
  next.




Received on Sun Jan 02 2000 - 13:35:42 CST