125 banners, not so much clicking
I’ve read too many blog posts recently about pay walls and the future (or lack thereof) of journalism. With the debate raging and being nowhere close to resolution, I needed to remind myself of just how much online advertising sucks.
This chart is based on my browser history from yesterday (Monday 7 June). Over the course of my working day, 125 banners were displayed in my browser, some more than once.
I can’t say that I saw them, because my eyes filtered out every single one of them (and if it weren’t for creating this poster I wouldn’t be able to remember any of them either).
Needless to say, but I didn’t click on any of the banners.
I can’t help but think it’s a miracle that online advertising even exists.
9 comments
For anyone who wants to see ads that deliver on a social promise, I can recommend http://www.dogoodhq.com/ which basically substitutes banner ads for beautifully designed ads with a social/eco message.
http://www.dogoodhq.com/
And the publishers don’t lose out from pageviews etc. as their ads are served in the background. The user is in control and can view the original ads at any point.
How did you do that?
Yet successful marketers employing good measurement, analytics and optimization programs do have a good understanding of the role of online advertising. We run numerous successful online banner campaigns for clients where we can measure effectiveness based on any number of metrics, including e-commerce, so we have a clear view of the advertising’s effectiveness, as well as its place within the overall media plan. Yes, they still do those.
I think you’re violating the “focus group of one” rule.
I find myself spending a lot of time (still, in 2010) educating creatives on understanding the advertising in the context of a horribly cluttered medium. It’s simply the nature of the medium that you believe your eye has filtered all of them out.
JLB
I sometimes have my own misgivings about the effectiveness of online advertising (full disclosure: I make banner ads for a large agency). I myself rarely, if ever, click on advertisements online. Usually if I do, it’s because I couldn’t discern who was actually behind the ad, and I clicked on to investigate what they were actually trying to sell.
I’ll second Charlotte’s reco on the DoGood browser. I love it and I absolutely pay attention to the banners served.
Hi Jefferson, thanks for your comment and vigourous defence of the value of banners. One of the nice things about blogs is that you can get away with sending a rocket propelled grenade straight through the ‘focus group of one’ rule.
I’m sure that ad banners can be made to be seen to be effective if measured against a wide range of metrics and that just measuring clicks is a crude judge of performance. Perhaps it doesn’t help that the only studies I’ve seen recently about online ads say that 99% of web users do not click on a monthly basis. And of the 1% that do, most click only once a month. Less than 0.02% click more than twice (and it’s this % that makes up the vast majority of clicks). Perhaps you have some more up to date (and more optimistic stats)?
Whilst I know that many ad banners are about brand awareness it’s the cluttered medium that (for me at least) makes them so ineffective. Most of the ad banners above don’t seem to be about building brands. They’re more about brands standing in a dark corner, putting on some brightly coloured clothes and jumping up and down, desperately trying to attract attention. It would be nice to hope that there are more engaging (and dignified) ways of brands interacting with their consumers.
One thing I’d love to know is whether companies that serve banner advertising online are simply happy to receive clicks on their ads ‘in the wild’ or whether they’re actually expecting those people who click through the ads to actually buy whatever they’re selling.
I can’t imagine that Adobe would make many sales from people who’ve clicked on a banner ad somewhere and landed on a page sporting products that cost often in excess of $500 – I just don’t get what kind of user they’re expecting to just be surfing around, not aware of Adobe’s product and with a lazy couple of G’s laying around for when they click an ad and go, “hey I want that!”
I feel ya man. The thing that I find most interesting about your picture is the fact that I can only recognize one of the banners that you posted… how’s that for effectiveness? :)
Hi Isaac,
Can you elaborate on your methodology? Were you aware of what you were doing or was this an afterthought? Surely you would have unfairly influenced the outcome if this was premeditated? I think you do the subconscious thought a disservice. I’m not a display fanboy, but whilst you can’t say that you were influenced by online ads, you surely can’t truthfully say that you weren’t? When you make purchasing decisions online, or in the supermarket, how can you be sure that your awareness of the brand wasn’t enhanced by online display ads?