Website ads and sponsors

Society Business and Career
1

Distribution of free information over the web and still making big money is as simple as a TV programm broadcasted over the air. You don’t pay for it, the sponsors do by buying the air time for their marketing ads. That’s how Yahoo people became millionaires, along with thousands of others.

But in reality, website marketing/ad compaign is tricker than TV. The difference is between mindlessly watching TV and pick an ad out of its unsual picturization or style etc and clicking on a banner out of interest and following the link and read stuff. In the case of TV, there are other elements like slick dialogues, cool music, colors and so forth. Not much mind work is involved and not much deliberate time is spent.

On the net, however, a lot more effort is needed on an average consumer’s part. Again, the differece is between watching and reading. True that there are a lot of animation works, sounds etc integrated into a website, but still to know about a certain product or service, you still have to browse through sponsor’s webpage.

Relatively speaking, it becomes tedious and cheesy. Cheesy because now you see ads all over the web with slogans like ‘Fell lucky, take a shot at winning $200,000’ etc. It seems everybody is offering free money these days. And following such a flow takes away credibility and interest from a prospective consumer.

The question is, is this just a hype or rapidly growing, solid marketing venue for companies? Will consumers eventually get bored or unmotivated to click on those banners, eventually causing web advertisement not so much a viable means of promoting new products and services? After all, even if ad of a company is displayed to say, 10,000 people a day, if nobody is following the link and looking into sponsor’s services, what’s the point?

What are the other innovative ways that companies can adopt to keep consumer interest in keep clicking? Is there any data that indicates the share of profits earned by companies due to web advertisement?

Web is a wonderful place, and big part of its wonderfulness is that you get a lot of info and knowledge free of charge. It can raise serious concerns over the usefullness of web if this is actually a hype and companies are not getting desirable exposure to consumers.

What are your thoughts?

2

Well the effectiveness of random banners may get advertisers the eyeballs but not much results.

The interactive medium's advertising has to be interactive as well, i.e. the message is adapted by the type of individual and their choices.

mass customization mah man, thats what is must be.

3

Fraudia,

What do you mean by mass customization in terms of banner ads and how do you propose it?

Recently, I have been receiving a lot of junk e-mails at my hotmail account, and it's just plain painful. I think a lot of consumers get turned off by that as well. So that's another area of web advertisement that may actually have adverse effect on consumers.

4

Roman

permission based marketing as it is called has to be the way. It has to be a trust based association between the consumer and the vendor.

Sharper Image is very good at that. I am a techno gadget freak so I am on their mailing list. same goes for Levenger the pen and stationary place. Through them I get other vendors that get my name and I get updates on new gadgets and products but they promise that they will not sell it so you get offers for cruises and vitamins from other companies.

I have no problem in getting info about products that i like or the type of products that I like, the responsibility is the vendors to make sure that I dont get any junk due to them selling my name to others, and have the understanding with the comoanies they do sell the name to regarding the type of products I am willing to be informed about.

As far as customization goes, look at Amazon, as soon as it knows who you are the entire page you see is different from others. If I buy biographies from them and you buy gardening books, our entire screen would be different.

In communication you always have the reach vs richness issue. if your reach is more i.e. you can get to a large audience, your richness i.e. the customization of your message is low. TV ads have a good reach, but richness? not really..specific industry publications or special interest publications have a better richness because you have profiled the average consumer that reads the publication but the reach is limited to the subscription levels.

Internet can allow you to have massive reach with intense richness down to an individual’s level. Spamming has hurt interactive media in its use of promotions and advertising, but with permission based marketing and mass customization the tide could be turned, and companies who do it first will do it well.

Sorry for the lecture, but thats what I do..e-business srategy

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