Hi all

Just wondering what everyones experience was with banner ads and their success. Has anyone changed one particular thing and found it made all the difference?

I work at a youth social website with thousands of members and am looking to crack the American market and need to know all the positives+negatives/ pros+cons/ dos+donts to create the ultimate, in your face and successful banner ads.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

NeedKarma

Remember the X10 camera ads? God I hated the ads and the company - most of the internet community agreed with me.

ScottGem

I agree, those ads were intrusive and annoying. What's worse was the company has a great product and an established place in the field (Home automation and security). But they turned off lots of people with those ads and wound up having to back off them.

LTheobald

Scott's got a point Fred. Show somebody who doesn't eat fast food the McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut etc. logos and they will probably still be able to tell you what they were. Doesn't mean they will go into the store and buy Big Mac though.

Brand regonition is important but not so much on the internet.

ScottGem

That's a key point here. Ads on other media are very different from Internet ads. The focus of such ads are different. Ads on broadcast media have a focus primarily of brand recognition. People watching TV or listening to radio tend to tune down when the commericals come on. Their minds wander (sometimes their bodies too ) So the ads main thrust is to subliminally make them remember the brand, preferably favorably, but still the goal is primarily brand recognition. On the other hand print ads have a different focus. Their focus is to grab the reader's attention and draw them in to read the copy to learn more about the product.

But Internet ads are a different animal altogether. Especially with Banner ads. The idea there is to capture the surfer's attention enough so they want to investigate more and they will click the ad. The problem is that people have become inured to Internet ads and mostly ignore them. Again that's what contributed hugely to the dot.com bust of the 90s. What resurrected Internet advertising was the ability to target ads, especially for searches.

fredg

Hi,
This tread has really turned into disagreements of opinions over advertising; not just banner ads.
I disagree with Curlyben's bad rating of my post where I stated that "banner ads, especially flashing, are annoying".
He rated me badly using the reason that "banner ads are annonying".
To me, this isn't a valid rating, due to the fact that I had already stated that!

The main objective of advertising is to get across the name of a product, or brand name, and have you remember it. That was my simple statement, which has drawn quite a few differing opinions; especially from ScottGem. He is entitled to his opinion just as everyone is. Me, too.
Here is another link with the same opinion as mine, as to the primary purpose of advertising:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising

I have not gone into, as another has, the "pros and cons" of advertising, and how to do it. My simple statement about Banner Ads must work, else CEO's would not be using them, still stands. Whether you like them or not wasn't the original question.

ScottGem

Fred,
Not everything is opinion. There are some long standing principles of marketing that some of what you are saying flies in the face of.

As for your link, it does not, as you contend, have the same opinion as you. It is a very brief and simplistic definition of advertising. Marketing and advertising is a much more complex field.

What proof do you have that CEOs use banner ads? If you look more closely at them, they are not greatly used by larger, major firms. Nor are they used as much on larger, well trafficked sites.

The key to Internet advertising is TARGETED ads. This is not my opinion, but an industry fact.

Curlyben

I was disagreeing to this Bold statement.

Banner ads have got to be the MOST annoying thing there is on the internet at this present time.
They take up valuable browser real estate and get in the way of the main reason that you have visited a site.

Now if advertising must be present then something more toned down and subtle is more acceptable.

The best thing about advertising is that by useing an alternate browser to Micro$haft's IE, like Firefox, then they can be avoided.

ScottGem

And things that are annoying give a negative inpression that carries thru to the purchasing decision.

Your last point is the reason that Internet advertising initially failed. With broadcast and (to a lesser extent) print advertising, the viewer had little choice to avoid the ads. With Internet advertising, there are numerous ways to avoid them. Advertisers and content providers learned that they needed to make ads less annoying and obtrusive and more targeted to get people to pay attention.

fredg

Hi,
Did anyone miss my point about being rated badly for something I had already stated?

ScottGem

Nope, didn't miss it, just ignored it.

The real issue here is that prior to your response 2 respondents had warned against them. You came in and gave some advice that went against established and reasonable marketing techniques. And you have continued to defend that advice even though several others have disagreed with it.