Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Rich media ads are very attractive and due to their animation etc they catch user attention.
Thought that Google and others introduced text ads because most people are tired of these annoying animations ;-)
The average surfer is tuned off to all graphics. They love clicking text though...
Flashy Adds are just so annoying that they are ignored and regarded has having some kind of disease (or something bad will happen to your PC if you click on one) that most dare not click on them in case they install some porn, change your home page, etc etc.....
I think only the Gig guns with very very good brand names can just about get away with animated, flashy and even those are low key in terms of flashy.
IMHO Flashy, Animated adds, Rich media ads in your face ads should stay on the TV.........
IMO, banners and advertisments are decidedly unattractive because they just do not fit in with your site. Yeh, they catch the users attention, but so does setting your shop on fire - you really want to do that to promote your business though? ;)
Scott
Flashy ads worked okay when the internet was brand new to so many. People were clicking on pretty much anything back then to see where it would go. As people became accustomed to the net, they became very annoying since they were pretty much everywhere.
If/when the internet transforms itself into something similar to TV where people can sit back and veg out watching instead of reading then movable ads have a real chance again. I've seen a couple really nicely done media rich ads which were very similar to a mini commercial. In fact, they were so well done I still remember them. The site only had them up very briefly. After seeing it a couple times, that too lost its novelty appeal. If other sites all started showing the same many visitors would quickly lump them into the same category as flashy tacky banner ads even though they take far more effort to produce.
For example, there are some great movie trailer ads on various sites (some of the few ads that I acutally do click through).
But when you visit a site looking for information and are faced with vibrating banners for smilies, pop ups and swirling images all over the place, it just looks tacky.
Scott
When I first read your post, I couldn't help but wonder if you were just looking for attention... ;)
I agree that people are fed up of Banner and Flash ads but dont you guys think that at some time in future we all will be fed up of text based ads no matter how accurately they target.
Banner ads aren't as dead as a lot of people think. When I was running affiliate banners on my site, the clickthrough rate wasn't great, but it wasn't bad, either. (I didn't get rid of them because they weren't performing; I got rid of them because my text links were performing even better.)
The problem with banner ads, IMHO, is that most of them are run-of-network ads for online casinos, credit cards, dating services, computer memory, inkjet printers, etc. that have nothing to do with the topics of the sites they're running on. It's as if you were to pick up a copy of POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY and see an ad for Harrah's Casino or the Fleet Visa card on the same page as a review of a digital camera.
Fact is, advertising adds value to a publication (either print or online) if it's of interest to the reader. Readers of POPULAR PHOTOGRAPHY certainly don't ignore the big section of mail-order ads in the back of the magazine each month, and you wouldn't see small ads for home elevators, European barge cruises, dog beds, Villa Rentals Abroad, etc. in the back of THE NEW YORKER year after year if those ads didn't perform.
To be sure, there are going to be some venues where reader "ad fatigue" will set in, because matching an ad's keywords to a page's content isn't the same as matching an ad's topic to the interests of a specific audience. And not all audiences are interested in buying things. Let's face it: An ad for crocheted Afghans or Afghan hounds in a WASHINGTON POST story on Afghanistan isn't likely to reach readers whose primary interest is in keeping warm with a shawl or a dog on cold winter nights. But an ad for crochet needles and yarns on a crocheting site is likely to be very effective, and an ad for Afghan t-shirts, trinkets, and pet supplies on Afghan-dog-fanciers.org is a perfect match for the site's content and what Agfhan dog owners are interested in buying.
And if the guy is selling porsche cars actually, then forget ROI ; 2 sales and he beats everything else. now comapre this with adsense ads , targeted as they may be they still want the viewer to go through them ; the advertiser has to be creative with words to ignite the interst of the reader. on the other hand graphics certainly play a big hand in "attracting" ppl. remember its like we used leaderboards and diff colors to attract ppl to view the adsense ads. thinkin that since they r so targetted, CTR will increase if ppl just take the trouble of reading them.
so what morpheus says is correct..so far in that the ads..rich media..need to be really targetted. and i bet advertisers would pay a lot higher CPC / CPM for those...in fact payments matching adsense would be great too. also since such ads wouldnt be text ones, they could be targetted and yet used with adsense.
ppl r fed up with them bcz if they r looking for electronics they c a dumb hit the monkey banner, or something for viagra etc etc. but for a person whos interested in the topic, that dumb , flashy,annoying ad may just b intersting enough to warrant a look.
just my 2 cents; but i feel that this region has potential if the right company (read that as enough time & money for R&D) looks into it.
Translation: "don't try to dazzle or even sell me, just show me that I can trust you and I'll buy from you as long as your product/service satisfies my need."
May seem too simple to some, but I think we (the sellers) are the ones that complicate the process so much :)
Just like I don't read a book with the television on, I don't want some flash-based "mini movie" rolling in the middle of a CSS tutorial or reading webmail.
Like marketing_guy's example of a movie trailer site - yes, of course RM ads work there - people are in "viewing mode" - but if I were trying to read the screenplay for the same film online, I most likely would switch to "printer friendly" mode, or lacking that, copy paste the text of the page into a word file.
That is why I think that adsense / adwords is working - people are already reading and read the copy and click. Otherwise, they'll spend a significant portion of their concentration trying to block out the distracting advert that they'll end up with banner blindness.
None of the banners is rich-media... I can see how a slick produce rich-media ad targeted by category could produce an even better CTR.
edit: the highest CTR banner in the network is 4%. I only wish my banner got one fifth of that..
If there is a targeted ad like that of adsense and a targeted advertisment in rich media which one the user is more bound to click.
I'd guess that AdSense would get more clicks in most cases, because it's more likely to get read than tuned out, ignored, or blocked by a software filter.
For what it's worth, when I encounter a flashing, scrolling, or otherwise annoying banner, I hit my reload button. I certainly don't click on the ad.
Actually thats a very good question but the answer is complex...
I would hypothesise that "all things being equal", the more "noticeable" option will be clicked on more.
But then there are many other things to consider such as...
1. whether the text ad provides better information enough to tempt the clicker better than the rich media
2. any negatives the reader may feel that their downloading times and memory had been hijacked by the rch media ad when the text ad would have provded all they needed.
3. some like me click more on text ads because we "Assume" we will get more serious text info as a result. I "assume" when i click on trendy animated rich media graphics that i will get even more of the same when i click.
PS another thing to consider also is ROI or conversions, not just click throughs. A well worded text ad may well provide far more qualifying information to result in better procpects than multi kilobytes of pictures and graphics.
Fact is, advertising adds value to a publication (either print or online) if it's of interest to the reader.
This is really a cogent observation. I find that AdSense ads complement and extend my content amazingly well, and the readers must as well, judging by the CTR I'm seeing.
