Banner Ads - The Ghost in the Machine

I met up with Dave Cushman today from Faster Future blog spot and we had one of our familiar chats about media, traditional media, digital media, mobile and advertising.

We talked about how do advertisers create value in a networked world as opposed to a broadcast world?

We both observed the idea you build your community first - then you monetise, this also raised some thoughts I had today after responding to a Q&A with Trebor Scholz which often focused on myspace and Facebook and how some community members have been and are treated. What does that mean as old media gatecrashes the new media party?

David observed

You could conclude that banner ads aren't reaching anyone new. The same old people are just being reached through mutliple channels. And they aren't any more likely to buy as a result.

Whatever the case, it's pretty clear we need something better.

While there is an increasing understanding that community, not content, is king, this understanding clearly hasn't reached as far as what we do about advertising.

For example, the exponential growth of social media is often judged successful because it means loads of people (users/eyeballs et al) are being dragged together in a huge fishing net of their own making. And there they are expected to flap helplessly, mouthing breathlessly, while the factory ship slaps banner ads all over them.

Like Girls Walker

David also referenced a Danah Boyd post over at shift 6 who asked Who clicks on Ads and what might this mean

Danah writes

Advertising is the bread and butter of the web, yet most of my friends claim that they never click on ads, typically using a peacock tone that signals their pride in being ad-averse. The geekier amongst them go out of their way to run Mozilla scripts to scrape ads away, bemoaning the presence of consumer culture. Yet, companies increasingly rely on ad revenue to turn a profit and, while clicking on ads ?may? be declining, it certainly hasn’t gone away. This raises a critical question: Who are the people that click on ads?

Banner Ads you see are the ghost in the machine, representing something and nothing. Because old media are trying to replicate an old way of doing things in a new ecology where the old rules don't apply.

So how about this?

A few years back, I asked this question to someone who worked in the world of web ads and I received a snarky (and condescending) answer: middle America. Over the years, I’ve read all sorts of speculations about search engine ads suggesting that people click on ads:

1). Because they don’t know that they’re ads.
2). Because they are perceived to be of greater quality than the actual search results (for example, in searches for travel).
When they’re searching for something that they want to purchase (intent to buy = desire to get to merchants quickly).
3). When they’re bored.
4). When they think that they might win something or get something for free.

And an AOL survey revealed Ninety-nine percent of Web users do not click on ads on a monthly basis. Of the 1% that do, most only click once a month. Less than two tenths of one percent click more often. That tiny percentage makes up the vast majority of banner ad clicks.

Danah has some other very interesting thoughts, which I urge you to read.

we know online ad response rates are .2%, whereas, Blyk response rates are 12 to 43% - what does that tell us?

Dave Cushman had some thoughts

Regarding the role of media as the interface between human and culture leads me to a handful of conclusions:

We should curate content compiled against a set of shared values, shared values which have been co-created with our community of interest. This content to include that produced by all sources. This represents our nuancing of the relevant culture.

We allow individuals (and self-forming groups within the community) to customise their experience – nuancing their experience still further and making that experience one they are more likely to market on our (and their) behalf.

Manage the web of peer producers – create the platform, manage the interaction of those contributing to it.
Contribute hard-to-do content. This is the one piece no one else can easily replicate. It’s our Boeing tail piece and represents a barrier to entry as compared to purely user-generated-content models.

I like this idea of media becoming the interface of experience, but that is a very different mindset of banner ads as they like ghosts can have no meaningful impact on our daily lives.

Comments

[AskFrasco]

Great post Alan! I am having this same conversation right now at work. Why are we putting money into banner campaigns when we could transfer that money into the community where engaged users are spending their time? We are in an age where word of mouth messaging is the most influential form of advertising, but our money is being controlled by the old regime.

[Alan moore]

Thank you Frasco, I checked you out at youtube.

Eventually it will change, its just process of change is slow. But we see some very interesting developments happening right now that wll have a significant impact. A better set of metrics, targeting and profiling and then understanding how to use that intelligence creatively and commercially.

Thanks for posting

Alan :-)