Making Online Ads Work
By Rich Hauck
If 80 to 90 percent of potential consumers disliked your method of advertising, would you continue using it? If statistics showed that your message was ineffective to over 99 percent of your audience, would you continue to broadcast it the same way? What if half of your message's recipients were angered by your advertising methods and transferred that anger towards your company? Oddly enough, despite the research of usability expert Jakob Nielsen (useit.com), advertisers continue to build armies of pop-up windows and banner ads to our viewing dismay. These methods ignore the interactive nature of the medium they inhabit, and as a result ignore the user experience. The current advertising methods on the Web, such as banner ads and popup windows, are found obtrusive and annoying by Web surfers. To more successfully generate brand awareness, advertisers should experiment and strive to generate innovative ads, ones that sponsor informational content, entertain users, and transcend the genre as a whole.
The interactive experience is the reason people surf the Web, and though creating such an experience as a commercial medium is new, it can be harnessed to grab the consumer's attention. If consumers prefer pre-packaged, pre-programmed content that's not navigable, they'd be watching C.S.I. with all its commercial interruptions or reading the sports section of the paper. No, part of the Web involves that adventure, that sense of forging one's own path through information as efficiently as possible (keep in mind that interactivity must complement content, not work as a deterrent to information).
Pop-up windows and banner ads, the primary weapon in the advertiser's arsenal, are rarely interactive and are generally a nuisance. Just like cable television, advertisers have discovered that planting their ads on specific sites can reach their niche demographic. Yet, despite this efficient audience targeting, the click-through rates of these ads dispel any notion of return-on-investment; click-through rates have been around .017 percent for years
Assuming these ads don't anger the user, they work the same way as billboards at a ballgame--they reinforce a brand through exposure. Unfortunately, that exposure doesn't last nine innings on a computer screen, as users immediately close unwanted pop-ups and ignore the annoying Flash banner running down the Web page column.
Salvation in online advertising can be achieved, though, and can be appreciated by sellers and consumers through interactive and entertaining content. One success story in the world of pop-ups is Orbitz. Convinced by their ad agency to avoid the norm, the travel giant transcended the static with a series of online games. Not only were these games interactive, but they were also easy to play and, most of all, fun. As a result, click-through rates doubled, and users were exposed to the Orbitz logo for a much longer time.
Of course, the most successful advertising in any medium is that which is actively sought after. We can attribute the runaway success of Google's sponsored links and eBay's auction listings to consumers actively surfing what is essentially a soup of advertising. The Internet is a breeding ground for viral marketing. If there's an ad on the Web that proves entertaining or amusing, it will be found migrating through co-worker inboxes during their lunch breaks. Case in point: BMWFilms.com. This series of short films, directed by and starring Hollywood talent, proved to be well-executed and entertaining. American Express jumped on BMW's coattails a few years later by featuring a series of online-only videos (otherwise known as "Webisodes") that featured comedian Jerry Seinfeld teamed up with Superman. What made these campaigns work was the detailed execution of an entertaining story and a passive sales pitch. Sure, BMW cars are driven throughout their movies, but at no point is the car juxtaposed with an explicit sales message. We don't see an American Express card until the end of Seinfeld and Superman's adventure, and by then, not only is it part of the plot, but we're okay with it since we've already received a down payment of entertainment.
Entertaining advertising needn't be limited to online video. Advertisers are still abuzz over last year's subservientchicken.com from Burger King. Rather than be subjected to the glorification of a sandwich, users were amused with having chicken their way by telling a someone in a chicken suit what to do. Then there's NikeLab.com, which for years has served as an online gallery for interactive artists. Neither of these sites included blatant sales pitches. In cases like these, users learn via word-of-mouth and will sometimes even actively search for the sales pitch. This method empowers the consumer: "Aha! I know who is sponsoring this! I recognize the logo despite them trying to hide it!" Yet, despite this success of subtle branding, advertisers should avoid any deception in their campaign. Mazda once used a fake blog to encourage readers to view one of their videos. Not only was it sniffed immediately by the blogging community, it created negative press for the car company.
Advertising conveys a company's identity, and just as our purchases give us a sense of who we are, a company represents who they are through their advertising campaign. An innovative and intelligent ad, unlike the typical banner or pop-up, is likely to present a more positive, forward-thinking company image than an annoying one. But this question remains: does any of this entertainment or interactivity really sell? Of course, there is no foolproof sales formula, and quantifiable results are difficult to attain (Or are they? Couldn't the Web about introduce direct consumer to producer interactivity? Is any company bold enough to use their site as a town hall for their advertising feedback?).
In the end no advertising campaign can rely solely on online branding. The sales pitch has to be consistent from the computer screen to the store. This means that the feeling that is conveyed in the interactive experience must be protected and reinforced across all mediums that portray it, all the way to the cash register (or the online checkout). How to initially spark that interest, though, can come through the Web, as long as advertisers and companies start exploiting what that medium is good at.