NONE: Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Mass Medium? Targeting?
Re: ONLINE-ADS>> Mass Medium? Targeting?
PlanetaChat - Director (director_at_planeta.tierranet.com)
Thu, 25 Jun 1998 01:00:20 -0700
Well, I'm back from my Soccer World Cup side project, so
finally I have the time to post again to my two favorite
lists, IA and OA.
Marlena Schwarz wrote:
>I don't care what anyone says, I'm going to recommend
>another medium for awareness (branding). The power of the
>Web doesn't currently lie in its ability to create
>awareness
I don't agree with Ms. Schwarz about her statement that
the web doesn't have the power for creating brand
awareness, the problem is that not every site it's able of
doing it.
The goal of branding it's to put your product or brand in
front of the consumer eyes as much as you can, the
longest, the better and if you can relate it to some
useful content or interesting information even better, but
on the web not every site can offer this. Search engines
for instance have very short user sessions,, the surfer
makes a request, find some links and swoooshhhh!,, jumps
to another site. In this case the branding power it's
pretty small, maybe non-existant... but for classic banner
advertising of course you have a shot for a clicktrough if
you have a catchy banner, related to the content that the
user is searching.
But for sites with longer user sessions like news sites,
e-zines and chat networks, I think the power for creating
brand awareness it's pretty obvious. There you have a user
watching the same screen for a long time, reading some
article for 5 minutes or chatting with other people for
half an hour,, put a Pepsi or an IBM logo somewhere on
that screen and you've got yourself a branding vehicle for
a fraction of the cost of a TV advertisement.
Unfortunately, as Mr. Adam Boettiger wisely stated "The
industry still stresses clicks because the majority of
online advertisers do not have the money or technical
means to measure the effectiveness of a branding campaign
online...", I would also add that most of the industry are
still doing their advertising on the top search engines,
and the branding power isn't there.
Now talking about CTR's, I totally agree that one of the
reasons for the dropping it's that the consumer is tired
of banners that offers something and when you click on
them you find a different thing, sometimes you'll find low
quality content, or sites that puts you in a
buy-something-now position from the first page.
But there are some other pretty important issues to
consider...
- Massification: The web keeps growing at an atonishing
rate, and with that growth, the PERCENTAGE of people with
significant purchasing power has to drop a little, it's
not that the amount of people with purchasing power is
dropping, in fact I think that's impossible... but now you
have a lot more users with not-so-significant purchasing
power surfing the web everyday. In Latin America for
instance of the estimated 8.5 millions surfers, 90% are
considered to have significant purchasing power, this is a
pretty accurate figure if you consider that here internet
access it's some sort of a luxury, 60$ a month for an
unlimited access account, and local phone calls charged by
the minute in most countries. But times are changing, and
now most universities offers free access for their
students, and most goverments are helping public schools
to access the net, ISP's are getting more competitive, and
maybe by the Y2K, phone companies will be offering flat
rates plans. So of the estimated 35 millions Latin
American web surfers by the Y2K, that purchasing power
percentage obviously won't be that high.
- Creativity: This is also pretty important. Today most
banners advertisements are simply to boring to get a user
to click on them. The quality of banners have diminished a
lot, I don't remember when was the last time I clicked on
a banner this year. Today banners are swimming on the
extremes, they are either saying too much or not saying
anything at all.
One of the things that I always do when I'm surfing the
net it's to save every banner that really catches my
attention, then when I need to design a banner for my site
I browse those saved banners and take ideas from them,,
well of my current library every banner it's dated 1997.
Can you name the last banner that catched so much of your
attention that you wanted to save it???, I'm sure must of
you will name a 1997 banner. Take for example those USR X2
banners that were on most computers related sites by
middle '97,, remember those where the word SPEED appeared
on the banner at around 200 miles/hour? Zummmmmmmm!!!!
Want speed?, get a X2 USR modem... Zummmmmmm!!,, Click
Here... raise your hand those of you who clicked on
those banners????... I did, more than once in fact!
Recenlty I designed a banner for the postcard section of
my chat network, the banner was going to be showed on the
rotation in the chat rooms, it showed a very simple
equation:
<Sad Face :( > plus <Digital Postcard> equals <Smiley Face
:) > "Click here to send a free digital postcard"
Although the postcard feature it's pretty obvlous on the
main page of the site, the banner have reported a 10% CTR,
it's been rotating for more than two months now and the
CTR it's the same. The amount of postcards sent tripled
since the inclusion of the banner.
My .02
Best Regards
Jorge Rodriguez
Director, PlanetaChat
"La Red de Chat en EspaÒol m·s popular de LatinoamÈrica"
http://planeta.tierranet.com
========================================================================
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This week's Online Advertising Discussion List sponsor:
24/7 Media
"We chose 24/7 Media because of their proven
success selling online advertising."
-- Howard Lefkowitz, VP Business Development, EarthLink Network
24/7 Media -- Always Serving You
http://www.247media.com/join.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
========================================================================
Online Advertising Discussion List To Unsubscribe send UNSUBSCRIBE
http://www.o-a.com/ to online-ads-request_at_o-a.com
