Re: UKNM: Mo' Banner Blues

[Ray Taylor]

From: jim smith <

jimspop3 [dot] mail [dot] demon [dot] net

>


>there are no complexities. the problem is that you're trying to make something

>work inappropriately.


>good advertising is a subtle process, but its fundamentals are simple: matching

>medium, brand and consumer desires in the best way to achieve a marketing

>objective.


So, it's not complex, but it is subtle? How I wish I paid attention to my

English lessons at school.


>banner ads on the web are as inappropriate as lineage classifieds on the

>cinema screen. that might sound like a slogan, but i'm dead serious: you

>wouldn't try to convince a client that all their cinema advertising should

be 14 >point times,


No, I wouldn't, 'cos the cinema audience may be 100m away from the screen,

the web audience which is no more than 0.1m away, and at that distance 14pt

can be read quite easily.


>..so why try to convince a client that a medium based around

>community and information

>is appropriate for short sharp branding efforts - particularly given that you're

>trying to imbue brand values through a technology (animated gifs) that is s

>limited as woodblocks.


No, you miss the point. It's not about using a technology to get to an

audience, it's about using a medium. The technological limitations of any

medium is something that you work around, not moan about. No good saying TV

is useless for selling purfume because you can't smell the product. You have

to use a bit of imagination to make best use of what is available.


>..banner ads are a low-budget, extremely-low-response medium


No, they are not. You can place a print ad for £50, and get millions of

pairs of eyeballs. To get 100,000 impressions, maybe 20,000 people, you need

to spend a couple of grand at least.


A banner campaign is anything but cheap advertising. Response is much higher

than in many other media if you have a response-led campaign and put it

together right.


>..giving

>someone a bit extra to do it "intelligently" is not at all cost-effective.

>particularly not when the media buyer pretends they're selling consultancy and

>strategy instead of haggling skills.


If it costs you _more_ to use an agency than do it yourself, even without

factoring in your own time, you are using the wrong agency. A decent agency

will reduce the cost and/or increase the ROI. Most media owners do not

volunteer 15% discount to direct buyers (as far as I am aware, please let me

know if I am wrong) whereas they usually give 15%+ to agencies. So it

doesn't cost anything to use a commission-only media agency. Some agencies

charge more than 15% of the media budget I know, but lots don't. But even

the smart agencies that charge a high fee instead of commissions to manage

the campaign will usually get a better ROI to the client per £ spent.


>> With £20 million pa being spent on web advertising in the UK, and rising

>> rapidly, isn't it about time that UK advertisers started to take web

>> advertising seriously and act professionally?


>they are: they're building sponsorship-led sites and becoming partners in

>portals. the smart money knows that banner advertising does nt work

>effectively in this iteration of the web.


Oh, back to the "banner advertising is nasty" routine. Fact is, banner

advertising does work effectively. Whole brands (such as Amazon) have been

established on the back of banner advertising, some companies have converted

a whole chunk of their sales to web channels using banner advertising

(easyJet, some 20% of all tickets sold, Dell? Can't remember how much).


Of course bunging an animated gif at a web site and doing nothing else is

unlikely to yield any kind of results. But chanting the mantra "banners do

not work on the internet" doesn't help either. It's the sort of thing you

might have heard a no-brain ad exec say a couple of years ago in a Soho

cafe, 'cept in his case it was probably "branding doesn't work on the

internet" which was a follow on from the previous year's "advertising

doesn't work on the internet."


Banner advertising works or doesn't work for the same reason any other sort

of advertising works or doesn't work. And there is a lot more to internet

advertising and promotion than banners.


But I guess this industry is bound to fill up with people who say you

_can't_ do this and you _can't_ do that. Thankfully, there are still some

who work on an old-fashioned can-do basis.


Ray Taylor


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