HAL PAWLAK WROTE:
> 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.
Love the cow analogy!
It's good to remember that the primary purpose of the
Net is not to serve as an advertising medium.
I've often wondered why advertising sometimes seems to
run counter to logic and reason. F'rinstance, a study
done a couple of years ago established that banner ads
placed at the bottom of a page had a significantly
higher click-thru rate. Seems logical, doesn't it? If
you're going to click an ad and leave the page, you're
more likely to do it after you've finished reading the
page. Most Internet users aren't going to scroll back
up to the top of the page for that ad (and don't go off
on that dumb-assed idea that all the content should fit
in a single browser window - in reality, most people
would rather read the whole article on one page rather
than waste time going through several page loads). Yet
advertisers still insist their banners be placed at the
top of the page.
A recent study at Rice University
http://www.sandia.gov/itg/newsletter/dec98/banner_blindness.html
clearly indicates that most regular Internet users have
developed what they call Banner Blindness. Because they
don't like pages cluttered with ads, they simply tune
them out. Yet companies still spend huge amounts of
money on banner ads for what seems to me to be an
insignificant return.
We've just launched a new political information site
and while we're going to go after advertising, we're
not going to have banner ads. We're going to try a page
sponsorship thing where we write a short, personal
message at the bottom of the page telling our users why
they should patronize that sponsor. You can see a
sample at
http://www.darkhorse2000.com/html/columnists.html. We
don't know how well it will work yet, but I have a
feeling that it's going to be a lot more effective than
banners.
R.
--
Robert Arnold, Editor-in-Chief
DarkHorse2000, http://www.darkhorse2000.com
robert_at_darkhorse2000.com
"Information is the currency of democracy"
- Thomas Jefferson
"Politics is applesauce"
-Will Rogers
Received on Thu Mar 23 2000 - 19:25:06 CST
