by Freddy Tran Nager, Founder of Atomic Tango + Former Banner Ad Creator…
Frankenstein created a monster. And advertisers created the banner ad. Fortunately, advertisers can still fix their hideous beast before it gets totally toasted by us villagers…
First, a little background…
Back in the late ’90s when I was creating online ads for Toyota, a good click-through rate for banners was 3-5%. That’s about the same as the response rate to an effective direct-mail campaign. Today a “successful” banner scores a click-through rate of less than 1/10 of 1%. In other words, banner ads are now less effective than junk mail. And yet advertisers still spend BILLIONS on them every year.
We consumers have all learned to ignore banners, particularly on sites where we want to hang out. As in, dude, I’m trying to savor my sports/videos/lurid fantasies here — why should I click your banner to go elsewhere?
Yet banners persist. And since consumers ignore them, the banners become ever more intrusive and annoying. Really annoying. As in pajama-wedgie annoying. They’re the online equivalent of the late night TV commercials that scream at you, “BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!!” Some banners visually annoy, like the mortgage ads with their crude dancing animations. (At least they don’t flash and quiver like a firefly on a bad acid trip, like some banners I’ve seen.) The worst are the talking ones that “congratulate” you for “winning” a free iPod or other contraption you’ll never get your hands on.
Since apathy hasn’t driven banners into oblivion, consumers have turned to antipathy.
Adblock Plus is an add-on app for web browsers that blocks most banners. And I endorse it 100%. In fact, I have it on right now.
“You’re stabbing us in the back, you traitor!” say my fellow advertising professionals. “You’ll destroy our industry!”
“You’re kneecapping our sponsors, you content thief!” say my fellow bloggers and webmasters. “You’ll destroy online publishing!”
To which I say, no, tt’s awful banners that are doing the trick.
On the downside, Adblock Plus is indiscriminate. It blocks all banners, even good ones like… hmm, I can’t think of any. It also blocks some website content as well, such as certain video formats. In time, I’m sure the good techies at Adblock Plus will figure how to rectify this. (And no, I have no connection to that company whatsoever. I just use their product.) The multimillion-dollar question is, will advertisers instead rectify their banners to keep consumers from blocking them?
Knowing how business works in America (“sue the bastards!”), I doubt it. In the tradition of the psychotically litigious RIAA and MPAA, marketers and webmasters will probably invest all their time and energy into trying to disable or ban Adblock Plus.
However, if you do choose to go the banner route, and you want to do it right, follow these tips to avoid costly mistakes, such as annoying the hell of out of your potential customers:
1. Don’t run banners on cluttered sites. To get noticed, avoid most portals, video sharing sites, e-commerce sites, and other destinations where there’s too much to meet the eye. Instead, pick sites where the primary content consists of text, not images.
2. Pay for clicks, not eyeballs. When you do buy, insist on cost-per-click instead of cost-per-thousand. Remember, most ads get ignored, so you don’t really score the “impressions” the host site claims you’ll receive (especially if the consumers are using Adblock Plus).
3. Integrate your ad into your host’s site. Unless consumers are searching, they generally prefer to stay on the site they’re currently surfing. So make your ad part of the site, which might require creating a dedicated page (sometimes called an interstitial page) on that site for more info. It negates ad blocking, and your hosts will also appreciate that you’re not sending their hard-earned traffic elsewhere.
4. Make it relevant to the site content. If you’re on a sports site, use a sports theme. If you’re on a scifi blog, get futuristic. And if you’re advertising on an Apple fan site, don’t run an ad for Windows — unless you love getting trolled. It seems obvious, but most bad banners have absolutely nothing to do with the sites they appear on. Take a second to understand who’s surfing those sites and why!
5. Present an offer that consumers can’t refuse. Once you understand the site and its surfers, don’t just present your product and say “click here.” Provide a good reason for the consumer to do so, such as a contest or special offer.
6. Be clever instead of annoying. Yes, basic rules of advertising apply even to banners. Be funny, provocative, daring. Any loud jerk can attract attention, but it takes a smart marketer to drive action. Can’t think of anything? You can always hire a great agency (hint, hint…).
7. Think beyond words or pictures. Don’t limit yourself to what I had to use in the 90s. Put a video or a game in that banner space. Video is harder to resist, and it enables you to say a lot more — with a lot more creativity and emotion — than a glorified miniature billboard.
Will this guarantee 100% click-throughs and the adoration of millions of consumers? Uh, no. If I could guarantee that, I’d be running my own island kingdom somewhere. But by following these rules, you’ll less likely pull a Frankenstein and more likely reate an ad that truly grabs consumers — not by the throat, but by the imagination.
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Related Article: And The Standards Go Out (The Browser) Window: Banner Ad-Nauseum
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