JIM REARDON WROTE SOME REASONABLE STUFF, INCLUDING
> That's absurd as well.
But the real absurdity is in thinking of the Internet
as an advertising medium. Painting an ad on the side
of a cow doesn't make cattle an advertising medium.
The Net is a great communications vehicle. And you can
work marketing communications into the flow. But
banners at their current price levels aren't a great
way to do it.
This has been masked because the online ad sellers have
managed to couch the argument in terms of comparing the
cost of banner click-throughs against the cost of new
customers created by direct mail, for instance, and
that's not valid.
A direct mail response rate of 2% means that 2% of the
recipients accepted the offer. A banner click-through
rate of 0.5% means that the clickers finally get to
_see_ the business offer. Think about it - it's a big
difference.
A direct mail effort with a $ 2,500/CPM and a 2%
response rate creates customers at a cost of $50 each.
The 0.5% banners with a $25/CPM will see perhaps 1% of
the clickers converted to customers at the site, so the
customer creation cost is $500.
I'm not saying that banners are "evil," just that
they're inefficient and way over-priced. I can see
using Net banners to get additional reach beyond
conventional media, but at 1/10th or less of their
current price.
(And I'm not interested in the "branding" spin, either.
Banners are about as effective as bumper stickers and
keychains for branding, Millward Brown and the IAB
notwithstanding.)
So to encourage better business decisions, here's a
great list of banner blocking options:
http://www.meta.demon.co.uk/adremove/
---
Hal Pawluk
http://www.pawluk.com/
Received on Sat Mar 18 2000 - 11:26:10 CST
