Digital Advertising: perhaps the worst is over (part two)
Digital can be fun, entertaining, interactive and worth our attention. Is it possible to get all of this into standard online ads?
My last post suggested that maybe (not definitely) Apple’s iAds could be good for digital advertising, making them a bit more useful and a little less interruptive. Only time will tell, of course.
In the meantime, the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has also come to realize it hasn’t done enough to make paid online advertising appealing or effective enough to attract spending commensurate with the amount of time people spend online. Click rates remain pitiful and no one has yet cracked the code on how to do display advertising or brand building executions in the online space.
While marketers spend $30 billion a year on OLA, $25 billion of that goes directly to search. According to Peter Minnium, who’s helping the IAB develop new standards, the big problem has been too much emphasis on response and too much dependence on the lowest common denominator units – typically the 2” by 3” ads that can be served by anyone from Google and MSN to your local blog.
According to Peter, as a result of standards that have to work for every website out there (in an effort to save advertisers having to create an excess of custom versions) creators face restrictions that drive them toward mediocrity and consumers live with tired, boring ads that fail to capture their imaginations.
The industry knows this. As search starts to slow, all the big portals are looking for ways to beef up revenue. That means Google, AOL, MSN and others will all try to figure it out on their own, but that approach could lead to confusion and fragmentation. Imagine if advertisers had to create totally different units, experiences and executions for every site where they ran ads?
Can the IAB change this? Well they’re trying. They’ve asked a number of creative folks from the advertising industry to help develop new standards. The objective is to come up with something that excites marketers, agencies and media planners.
IAB thinks that the solution, not unlike Apple’s approach, just might be to combine the sight, sound and motion of video with the web’s power of engagement and sharing, then somehow develop new formats that everyone buys into in order that brands can create fewer units and have the option of running them anywhere.
The big question of course is what is the role of branded display advertising on the Internet? In an ideal format, it will allow consumers to get the information they want, learn something meaningful, search directly from the ad, share if they wish to, and experience entertaining content in the process. Oh right, and it can’t interrupt.
Can this ever be achieved? Is there a model that works for both advertiser and consumer? How about the role of tablets to influence new formats?
Right now, advertisers need to move money out of TV and align budgets with consumer behavior. (Relying on memory here, but I believe the web accounts for 30 percent of consumers’ media time but only 10 percent of marketing dollars. Someone correct me if I’m off with these numbers.)
Running TV spots on the web doesn’t work. We’re online in order to discover what we want. Ads that interrupt us find little welcome. In fact, they’re disdained. And finally, as we turn to our social networks directly for the content we want, traditional search becomes less necessary and OLA close to useless.
Put that way it seems an insurmountable challenge.
The promise of digital advertising, of course, is that it serves us as much as the advertiser. It knows what we’re interested in without violating our privacy. It lets us opt in on our own terms. It includes all the best features of social media – sharing, ratings, recommendations from friends. And it’s exciting.
We seem to get more of the above in great social media executions and compelling viral ideas but not in paid digital ads, despite the few exceptions.
So, will we ever see standard units that are actually conducive to more inspiring advertising? Can the IAB win consensus from both big portals and smaller sites? Will iAds raise the bar for what consumers expect? Can paid digital advertising that lives on a website actually earn our attention? Lots of questions. But at least we have acknowledgment of the problem and a set of criteria that seem to make sense.
What do you think? Any chance we’ll ever learn to love online advertising?
Comments
jeff_shattuck I am not a tech/IT person. But I think the object of standards is meant as formats so one ad can run on any network vs having to create special code for each network or website or platform. Someone here could possibly correct my view if it is wrong. I agree with your thoughts that you can not standardize content or what an Ad is about.
HowieSPM HowieSPM Howie, I think you're right, it is about formats, but in my opinion, the only object of standards should be efficiency, not what's creative and what isn't and the IAB is clearly trying to codify what is most creative, as shown by this quote:
"the first list of ad units to be identified by the task force using qualitative criteria of perceived effectiveness and creative preference to encourage innovation and creativity in online advertising."
Here'e the page I pulled it from:
http://www.iab.net/about_the_iab/recent_press_rele...
The standard IT coding is covered by HTML, which is just a coding language.
jeff_shattuck I think I see the problem. Non-creatives trying to 'bottle' creativity like it's something you can write down on paper in hard language. If the folks running the IAB were really good at advertising they would be making more money at an agency. And the members who represent Agencies/Platforms etc probably are IT/Engineers or Sales folks.
I was on the North American Standards Committee for 18 months (2005-06) that determined the safety and performance guidelines for Natural Gas and Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle fuel system components. I have a Finance Degree (see Sales!) and I represented 4 Divisions of the company I worked for. Basically instead of focusing on what was best for the end user (drivers, vehicle owners, manufacturers) it was really a cluster-f*k of competing companies all trying to block their competitors out of the market by trying to steer the standards in their favor. CSA America (like the IAB) was the moderator and the big OEM's who made Buses, Cars etc sat on too to ensure they had a competitive pool of products to choose from.
The parallel here seems to be that whoever is on the committee is trying to steer the standards to favor in directions that could block competition and possibly innovation. I can understand a Brand or even a creative Agency to want their content to work on all platforms. But if someone comes up with a unique technology that rocks, outside the standard, my view is screw the IAB I am going with what rocks.
Edward some serious issues being discussed her, I must agree.
Just a few thoughts come to mind...
While iAd brings in a completely new approach to online advertising and the early results are impressive, didn't early banners too have high, double digit clickthru rates?
While we saw some nifty trickery when Steve Jobs demoed iAd with ToyStory, I have not been able to see the Nissan Leaf iAd working in a real online environment as the ad does not show up here in India. Don't you think the novelty of the medium itself will drive more clicks early on?
I have been reading Wired Magazine on the iPad and find that most ads in the magazine are only Jpgs of print ads. Very few have been optimised for an iPad experience in its true sense. Like the Land Rover one from the September issue, which takes out elements from webdesign and tragically fails to be anything but.
My view is that every format, be it a 30x30 pixel banner can generate disproportionate amounts of clicks if thought through imaginatively, because when we have done online advertising with multiple executions, some of them tend to do better than others.
If a brand were to do something truly unique online, like the Wilderness Down experience, I am sure there will be a lot of online conversations leading to millions of clicks. Isn't the opportunity for every advertiser and agency out there then to create their own Wilderness Down/iAd experience on every brief? Because once this is done then the world will see and interact with it.
Disclaimer: I am one of the few people who clicks on online banners once in a while when I find them useful to me...
Edward, you seem to be putting a lot of the faith in standards, as if the main issue was one of formatting. Maybe it is.
I think two of the bigger issues are placement and ad content. Think about the placement issue. In old traditional media, you saw clearer demarcation between ads and content (the program paused, the magazine had an extra page, the news story stopped and the ads ended). Online, it seems we canu00e2u0080u0099t really figure out where those ads go. I think one of the more interesting things with the iPad is that weu00e2u0080u0099re seeing a much clearer (and more attractive) demarcation. Iu00e2u0080u0099m not sure if it works better, but it sure is better to look at. Right now, though, when you look at digital advertising itu00e2u0080u0099s all over the place. It feels more like OOH than anything else.
There are some good examples of digital ad creative but theyu00e2u0080u0099re few and far between. Digital Buzz Blog is a good showcase site, as is Banner Blog, but itu00e2u0080u0099s a sorry statement when there are few to no sites highlighting digital ads. Compare that with how many highlight traditional ads or Web sites. Is it the format or the fact that the top creatives arenu00e2u0080u0099t playing with making this format into something exciting?
rnadworny Good points. But I think that the IAB and others have realized that they need to figure out how to make the web appealing to display and brand ads, not just ads designed to drive click through. Perhaps that's a flawed idea, but if you consider that we spend more time online and that the web is dominating our interest, perhaps there are new formats that can do what the best brand advertising anywhere does: capture our imagination, garner our interest, entertain us, even astonish. But since it's the web, it then needs all the interactivity and choice/control we've come to expect. As for where the ads go, some of that is editorial compatibility, some, of course, is cookie based, and perhaps soon it will actually be consumer issued RFI's. For example, I actually issue a "call for" flat screen TV ads, or island resort ads, etc.
Edward you nailed this point:
In an ideal format, it will allow consumers to get the information they want, learn something meaningful, search directly from the ad, share if they wish to, and experience entertaining content in the process. Oh right, and it canu00e2u0080u0099t interrupt.
Going from my comment on the last post when we are online we have access to pretty much every business in the world and most of us don't go to these web sites, except when we have a need to. Unless Websites that provide free content fix the 'contract' so that we understand the only reason content is free is from the Ad Support, are we stuck. Then the 2 options left are Content/Entertainment (Like the Leaf IAd) or Bribes. If you include one of these then you have potential to achieve the social aspect..sharing that you mentioned. But the first doesn't assure sales and the second could undermine gross margins or future pricing power if done wrong.
I have observed now in almost 3 years in the Industry that Advertising tries to force its way onto and into everything it possibly can without thought to whether we care or want to see it. And Brands seem to be on board with their $$. Will be interesting to see how things unfold.
BTW coming from heavy industry with many engineering and performance standards for machinery components standards are a good thing. Its the fight over them that can be brutal.
I believe that more user-centered design principles would help here. Interaction design methodologies are lacking in ad development where interruptive entertainment models reign. What if the user could control the "creative" presentation within certain bounds. If those preferences would control run-of-site ads throughout the experience? Maybe even ad cookies would be more acceptable if they carried creative presentation preferences.
chickfoxgrover agree with that. should have options for how user wants to engage, not unlike what the best iAds hope to be. Choice of video, access to different content, etc. That is the way that all social interaction is going, so makes sense.
I confess, I think the IAB is on a fool's errand. Or a make-work program. I mean, to presume that that standards could be created to ensure engaging online ads is the of arrogance. Would anyone presume to tell The Beatles what the standards were for a song that would engage people? Or Picasso a painting? Or Hemingway a novel? Argh, this academic masturbation perturbes me. I quote Gosssage: "People read what interests them, sometimes that's a an ad".
Sorry for the harumphness in my comment. But truly, the notion that some committee is going to create standards to ensure/allow maximum creativity rubs me in the most wrong of ways.
- spam
- offensive
- disagree
- off topic
Like