Maxnpaddy - 9:19 pm on Aug 29, 2007 (gmt 0)

We hear much about how best to link, market, advertise etc etc, but this isnt about 'how to advertise, market anything, this is covered by books, the web, taught in colleges etc' - it's now about how to get noticed, without annoying visitors. Chances are when adverts annoy - the annoyed no longer sticks around to buy, so no sales for you today hehe.

I also think about why someone visits a website, and as a searcher myself, always hate it when looking for my DVDS or Videos, that I'm suddenly bombarded with ads. To give you an example, I'm at Yahoo, searching for whatever that day, only to get a sliding see-through advert partially block my view, which didn't exactly thrill me shall we say - so the first thing I did was click off that advert.

Another example was on my forum, I'm moderatoring as I often do and notice quite a few spam ads and links and stuff being plonked in the threads - now, I'm sure my members have joined to contribute by answering posts in a kind of social setting, so on visiting a social site, don't expect to find a drug related post. The intention of going to such a site isn't for the untargeted, uninvited plugs, it's for the entertainment - so the url drop has automatically failed (even though the spammer won't see it).

How much more proof do we need before folks understand marketing basics, and advertise in a more effective way. The same activity is the same for blogs and now these social sites such as Myspace, and I bet these sites fight what's NOT wanted, and if link dropping isn't tolerated, any link will be swiftly removed meaning zero effect for those links right!

So...... the question is - how to attract attention with advertising, but without being intrusive or untargeted, which I think is worse. Social sites deliever entertainment, and is all that is expected by visitors - so if I'm personally looking for something social, I'm probably not wanting to find a bunch of ads right, so why risk hurting a social site with bad and unwanted adverts, you wouldn't do it right.

What once worked years ago is now failing big-time, and the sites that allow it to continue will turn away visitors. Maybe it's more the delivery method that's ineffective, but if it's unwanted, then it's going to affect sales. That's a major problem for any site wanting to compete today, and important for social or entertainment sites as running such sites is now big business.