Re: Topic for the Week: IM Advertising
I for one am most interested in the ActiveBuddy.com
Instant Messenger BOT apps as advertising vehicles.
I think SmartBuddy (AOL IM ID) is one of the
more interesting online direct advertising
technoligies I've seen. Just not sure how the
company can grow a large enough user base to attract
advertisers who's ad campaigns can make it profitable.
I have a friend developing a bot for IM but he has
the same issues.
I think the banners in AOL IM are not ideal for
standard banner ad campaigns, but they likely are
useful for some types of branding if the rates are
very very low. I usually keep my AOL and ICQ windows
in the foreground but anchored to my right screen.
The new ICQ rev has a persistent banner ad in each
message window (located at the bottom). The banner
is positioned in such a way that it will generate
many unintentional clicks. This will irritate users
like me :-(, and lead to poorly converting click thru
traffic for advertisers. Can you say slippery slope?
I can only imagine the stuff the AOL marketing folks
have cooked up and have yet to employ as a way to
monetize the enormous ICQ and AOL IM user base. How
about Keyword anchored banners. The app watches what
you type and pulls banners based on top Keywords...
hey, it could happen. No more far fetched than GEO
advertising, which they are probably doing already.
in my not so humble opinion...
Regards,
Ron Sheridan
Received on Tue Dec 04 2001 - 07:18:28 CST
