Don't let 'clicks' cloud online advertising
The first instance of the death of the Internet was caused by slap
hazzard banner ad placements by 'ad agencies' that thought 'any' placement
would generate traffic for their clients.
These were the glory years of the Interent and many a webmaster and
ad agency made out like bandits as they suckered corporations into
believing how successful they would be 'if they placed lots of banner
ads'.
Unfortunately two things happened. The flood of banner ads caused
many web surfers to simply learn to ignore the ads. This resulted
in less clickthroughs and hence 'no sales'.
The other thing that happened is that it became blatantly obvious
to the advertisers that the slap hazzard placement of banner ads on
web sites was not returning sufficient returns on the investment to
continue.
By some strange and mystical coincidence all the advertisers decided
to pull back on their online advertising at the same time. Hence the
first death of the Internet as an ad banner medium.
During the lull after the collapse of the Internet, many companies
learned that it was far better to try to sell their products via banner
ads on 'web sites that actually had some relationship to the product
being sold'.
Although this is not such a major revelation, it obviously is in
stark contrast to situations where once upon a time banner ads for
the likes of Oracle and CISCO were appearing in the back pages of
dating web sites and automotive topic based sites.
The advertisers are now starting to be a little more strategic in
their banner ad placements. If you sell comfortable shoes, then you
advertise where people with aching feet hang out on the web. If you
sell sporting goods, then you place ads where people involved in sports
are hanging around.
Things quickly began to pick up again for banner ad sales began to
return and the various media sources noticed the resurgence of ad
placements.
However, all is not well in banner ad land. There are two menaces
that threaten to bring about a 'second death of the Internet'.
On one had you have unscrupulous advertising agencies that are not
targeting their clients ads on sites that have some relevance to the
product or service being sold. Instead, these 'big name' agencies
are making placements on sites that are willing to give 'kickbacks'
directly to the ad agency for placing the ads with their sites.
Naturally the advertiser is kept out of this loop and is unaware
that the agency has 'been bought' with the clients own money. But
at some point the advertiser is going to become aware that they are
not generating a return on their investment - and hence the prediction
they will again withdraw from advertising as the ROI will not justify
the expense.
The other trigger for the next death of the Internet is also somewhat
related. This is where 'ill informed' advertising agencies make banner
ad placements on sites that have no relationship to the product or
service being sold. Yes, much like the example where Oracle's banner
ads were being flooded in the face of sex starved singles looking
for a date on the dating type web sites.
Another cause of the next Internet death will probably be related
to the 'click throughs' that are being measured for performance. Obviously,
if you place banner ads on a web site where there is no relationship
to the product or service, then it is not likely to inspire a click
through from the web surfer.
Web sites like Yahoo, for example, are what I would call a wide audience
type medium. In that case, you could advertise toothpaste, upcoming
movies or just about any product or service that would appeal to a
wide spectrum of potential future customers. But is there any real
reason to attempt to sell $100,000 computer hardware components to
such an audience ?
Instead, the company selling security products should seek out the
most popular 'security or networking' type web sites.
