2009 August, 3rd

Mihaela Lica

Despite its low costs, online advertising is still “unpopular” (at least in Europe), while newspapers and television continue to lead the market. But, judging from an advertiser’s point of view, it makes sense: not only that the immediate, visible ROI generated by online advertisements is lower, but the efficacy of an online advertising campaign is questionable, when users seem to ignore banner ads, pop-ups, and the like.

Ad experts predict that advertisers will spend more online than in newspapers by the end of the year, but it is still difficult to predict how successful these advertisements will be, when online advertisers are poorly educated about how to use the various advertising channels available.

Google and WPP Group have joined forces to promote “science-based” researches on how traditional and online advertising affect consumer choices.

In UK ad spending in newspapers declined 12% last year, but papers still took a 25% market share. Internet advertising followed after TV with 20%. UK experts believe that this year the Internet will occupy the top position in advertising spend.

I have my doubts, as converting business owners to accept the Web as an advertising channel to be more efficient than Newspapers and TV is a hard hill to climb.

First, the online advertising experts would have to educate their clients on what works and what doesn’t. They’ll have to answer questions like: “why doesn’t Google show my AdWords ad in the top position?” The answers to this may vary, from “you set up your AdWords keyword placement wrong”, to “you don’t pay enough” and “Google rotates the ads on the top positions, because there are many companies paying to be first.”

AdWords is just a form of advertising, and from an ROI point of view, probably the most effective. However, remember that there is a time and a place for everything. A good advertising campaign online should take into consideration demographics, interests, peoples’ preferences and needs.

Banners are often generating the lowest ROI because web users simply do not click on such ads – of course, unless the ads in question have a very enticing design and message. Creating the perfect design for a banner has always been a challenge. Many marketing experts already wrote enough about this.

The problem with online advertising is that the advertisers are blinded by click-through rates, and often disregard the branding aspects and the long term benefits. As an example, either online or offline, the challenge for the advertising industry is to understand that the consumers might not have an immediate need to purchase a product, and that banner advertising (when done right) can have a huge impact on branding. A banner can lead to a site visit independent of “click-through.” A web user may remember the name of a company months after being exposed to a banner – let’s not forget that images and symbols are what sticks best.

For banner advertising (and this often works at a subliminal level) there are a few tips that might help you:

• Use large logos (at least 15% of the banner space) to create brand awareness.
• Use human faces – they give the suggestion of friendship, confidence and familiarity. The presence of a human face increase customer interest, subconsciously.
• Do not clutter the design. Too many elements distract from the message, which reminds me:
• Use short sentences, clear calls to action that motivate, entice and persuade.
• Large banners (for example 468×60) perform better than small banners (125×125).
• Banners seen with high frequency have a greater impact on building brand awareness than banners with a lower rate of occurrence.
• Banners with dynamic images (Flash animation, video) have a greater impact than stating banners. This doesn’t include banners with flickering messages like “new”, “click here” etc – which are purely annoying.

Assuming that creating the “perfect” banner ad is simple, another challenge is placement. How do you know where to advertise? How do you know which site will drive to your business the most consumers ready to buy? You don’t, but then again, here are a few things that might help you pick the right channel:

• Advertise on niche related sites – only these are visited more often by people who may be interested in what you have to offer.
• Check the Alexa/ Compete stats of the site you want to advertise on – these give an approximate indication of how many people actually visit that site, but:
• Without “site usage” it’s hard to evaluate the quality of a site. See how many comments appear under each blog post. They are indicative of user involvement and site usage.
• See how many citations the site in question has on other sites: for example type into Yahoo! Search query bar: linkdomain:examplesite.com -site:examplesite.com

In your experience, where and what type of banners might work best for an online advertising campaign?

• 2009/05/18 -- Google Opens the Gates for AdWords Spam
• 2010/02/03 -- China’s Government Is Too Big For Its Britches
• 2010/01/24 -- On Carol Bartz and the State of Yahoo!
• 2010/01/22 -- New Online Marketplace for Advertising Space from Advertiserbay.com
• 2010/01/21 -- The State of Bing Search Engine Address
• 2010/01/12 -- Google Battles Facebook with Friend Connect Now on Drupal, Joomla
• 2009/12/29 -- Facebook, Christmas, and World Domination

About the Author

Mihaela Lica is senior partner at Pamil Visions PR and editor at Everything PR. She is a widely cited authority on search engine optimization and public relations issues (BBC News, Force for Good, Reuters and others), with an experience of over 7 years in online PR and SEO. Mihaela writes for SitePoint, Search Engine Journal, and other online publications. She also maintains a personal blog called eWritings. Follow Mig on Twitter or send her an email at mig [at] pamil-visions [dot] com.

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