Online advertising is a soft market at present and the number of
click-throughs on banner commercials has always been low. But
perhaps you shouldn't be looking for that type of response at all
When Marty Levin, executive vice president of Internet research
firm Jupiter Media Metrix, gave a talk recently on the future for
online advertising, he left more than a few pale faces in the
audience. Levin reduced his predictions for revenues from the
online advertising market this year from $7.3bn to $5.3bn.
The online advertising industry only has itself to blame; creating
unrealistic expectations of advertising 'click-through' ratings -
the number of Web surfers clicking on advertising banners - has led
to unhappy customers. The percentage of surfers clicking on such
ads has been around 0.5% or less, leading to wide-ranging
disillusionment in the business.
Companies have often paid advertisers based on how many end-users
click through to their sites, which is one of the reasons why so
many websites have been irritatingly aggressive with their
advertising. A common trick, for example, is to throw up
unsolicited commercials in separate browser windows using
Javascript when surfers first visit their sites, therefore forcing
customers to notice them. Companies such as Tradedoubler pay
website publishers to put links to its clients on their pages, and
reimburse them on a click-through basis.
Monitoring our movements
Such services - two others are
Doubleclick and Valueclick - work by recruiting many such Web
publishers into a network of affiliate sites. When a person visits
an advertiser's website using a link from an affiliate page, it's
possible to collect data about their movements.
ValueClick's eTrax service, for example, allows advertisers to
place monitoring tags at critical points on their Web sites,
determining information such as which affiliate sites are
generating the most actual sales as opposed to mere click-throughs.
Such systems are probably the best way to gain clear, quantifiable
feedback about the response to your online advertising.
Other techniques are now emerging, although their techniques are
generating controversy among Internet users. Smart tags - a
technology from Microsoft that would highlight key words on a Web
page and offer a choice of sites to link to - were removed from the
final version of Internet Explorer 6 after negative customer
feedback.
Not to be deterred, a company called eZula is creating a similar
system whereby links to its customers' commercial Web sites can be
placed directly in the text of any Web page when it is delivered to
your browser, even though the publisher of the page may not have
put them there.
Nevertheless, many are now saying that companies looking for such
quantifiable return on investments are missing the point. Instead,
companies should focus on the branding aspects of online
advertising, and shouldn't necessarily expect many people to click
on the banners that they display. After all, you can't click on the
side of a bus, and yet banner advertising on vehicles has been
going on for decades. Simply getting your name out to more people
should be enough, say new economy pundits, and click-throughs
should be simply a bonus.
Others are taking this concept of branding still further, and
eschewing banner advertisements altogether in favour of more
stealthy marketing techniques. Individuals with a good
understanding of your product and a lot of grass-roots influence
are known in the trade as 'mavens' - and targeting them can yield
great rewards. There are many enthusiast sites on the Internet, and
finding two or three good ones in your product area with a large
following can give you a great dissemination point for information
about your products and services, as long as you respect the
individual's independence. Check out ElectricArtists (
www.electricartists.com)
for a good example of this technique in action.
Economic backlash
The click-through online advertising
market is unlikely to go away. Most technologies experience a
period of sharp growth, before suffering a backlash, and then
finding long-term equilibrium. The economic downturn has
accentuated the backlash. While monitoring click-through responses
should be on your agenda, it should be secondary to less tangible
forms of online marketing. This may be a difficult pill for your
financial and marketing directors to swallow, but it will be good
medicine in the long run.
Dangers to the online advertiser
If you're considering
a banner-based advertising campaign, beware. Gator, a Califorian
software firm, produces a free 'helper' application for Internet
users that carries out basic tasks for them, such as form filling
and remembering passwords. CEO Jeff McFadden, however, admits that
the program also uses pop-up technology to replace online
advertisements on Web pages with alternative advertisements - from
its own customers.
It's not just companies like this that are dangerous to your online
advertising campaign, either. Programs and plug-ins are emerging
that enable Web surfers to block out online advertisements
altogether, and such facilities are starting to appear in big-name
products. Norton Internet Security, a well-known Internet firewall
and anti-virus package for home users, contains an advertisements
blocking system.