Display Ads and The Sky Is Falling

Part Four and that's all folks.  Conducted by Deepak Kanakaraju and also available on DigitalDeepak.com.

Display ads worldwide seem to have very low CTRs. People are developing ad blindness, what do you think is the future of display ads?

The Law of Familiarity is at the core of any successful advertising campaign.  Simply stated, the more familiar a customer is with your product or service, the more likely they are to do business with you.  It is one of the reasons politicians put out hundreds of posters and signs near the polling stations.  They know that when you are standing in the voting booth looking at a choice between two or more politicians, you are more likely to vote for the name that is familiar to you.  

I believe that banner ads still offer value to advertisers.  Not the Run of Site ads that are sprayed across any website that will cut a deal for the advertiser (More ads, cheaper ads, to the wrong audience is not a bargain) but on sites that are selected for their unique content.  Every website has a unique audience of visitors.  Speaking to this unique audience is why the website was launched in the first place.  Find the websites that your particular audience frequents.

For example, if you are looking at media websites and wondering which network TV site to buy, you should start with knowing your target audience.  If you are looking for an older crowd, you would start with CBS.  They have the oldest average audience among the networks.  If you are looking for the youngest, you should probably look at FOX, they have the youngest.

One of the reasons CTR are very low is that media buyers first need to know the demographic and psychographic makeup of their target audience and then measure it against the makeup of the audience on the website they are looking to buy.

I believe that if you ask a visitor if they want to view ads while they navigate the site, the answer is always going to be no.  If you ask them if they want to pay you in order to visit your site, the majority will again say no.  Everyone wants something for nothing.

But if you place ads that are related to the content and interests of the site - that the visitors find relevant to their own likes and dislikes, the ads will not only be tolerated, they will also generate better results (measured by the CTR)).  

This is why Borrell shows the spending on Targeted Display will rise from 30% to 70% of online spending over the next three years.  You must match the ad to the audience.  And there are a lot of new ad types that work hard to engage the viewer - like Liquidus -  that capture the viewers attention with an ad unit that can show large groupings of inventory in a single ad unit.  They are popular with real estate, automotive dealers, furniture stores, etc.  To the average viewer - they will exhibit ad blindness, but to someone in the market for real estate, the ability to see a carousel of homes for sale, targeted by the neighborhoods that are a match, in their price range - it is the best of all worlds.  

One of the other things that bothers me about the concept of ad blindness is that the CTR has become the metrics without giving attribution credit for the millions of impressions that have been generated by the banner ad.  The Law of Familiarity says that people are more likely to do business with companies with which they are familiar.  I am convinced that these millions of impressions (assuming the creative is on target) can drive specific behavior, even if it is not a click.  Perhaps the sales prospect saw the ad, it reasonated with them, they remembered the brand and later went to Google.com and searched for it.  Nothing operates in a vacuum.  

When I first launched InspectValue.com in 1999, I experienced click through rates of 16%-20%.  No that isn’t a typo.  As the newness of the web wore off on consumers, the CTR dropped.  It became more difficult to convince consumers to click on ads, but it never became impossible.  We simply have to work harder with our targeting and messaging.

Your ideas on content marketing, social media marketing and email marketing?

While there are multiple strategies on how to drive traffic to a specific website, the most efficient and productive way is to post compelling content.  Content not only drives recognition from search engines like Google, it draws in the proper audience of consumers; individuals who are interested in your products and services.  Isn’t that the primary goal of having a web site?  

On the SEO side, ask yourself, who is the primary client of search engines like Google?  The answer is not advertisers, it is people, with a problem.  Google wants to solve that problem.  The consumers search for appropriate information is their primary business.  Jeff wants to buy shoes, Google wants to make sure it offers up the perfect solution to Jeff’s desire to purchase shoes.  Every decision tree in Google’s algorithm is driven by this goal.  

So on the business side, your efforts should be driven by the same decision tree.  What can I do to get Google to recognize me as the preferred answer to Jeff’s shoe question?  The answer is not artificially building backlinks, buying links, stuffing your pages with keywords or any of the recognized blackhat marketing tactics.  The very best SEO strategy is to develop killer content, focused on the business services and products that you offer and continue to update that content constantly.  I believe one way to achieve this is to publish a blog.  Blogs offer fresh content in a way that demonstrates your expertise in solving specific problems.  And believe me, Google is looking!

So where does social media fit in?  There is growing evidence that an active social media strategy increases your SEO results.  Who cares?  I am all for social media sites.  They help you maintain a presence in the consumers mind (The Law of Familiarity) and they can also drive traffic to your primary online business - your website.  But social media’s strongest offering is the ability to listen to your customers.  Your former customers.  And hopefully your future customers.

Listening is what “social” means.  It is not designed for advertising (even though social media platforms offer advertising programs), it is designed for communicating.  Talking.  Listening.  Not planning your next message and scheduling it for distribution next Tuesday at 5:37pm (because that is when most individuals check their Twitter/Facebook/Google+ accounts.

Listen.

One of the problems with social media rarely talked about is that you are building your business on someone else’s property.  As explained in The Malling of America, you are investing your marketing efforts (time, energy, money) building the business of the social media platform.  You are “renting” space on their website.  What happens when they decide to raise the rent beyond what you can afford?  

Which brings us to your question about email.  From a business revenue point of view, email is powerful.  Email is the only opt-in marketing program available online.  “I like your products, please make sure I am updated anytime you have something to tell me.”

No one asks for advertisements on social media platforms or websites.  If you asked a consumer, they would tell you to abolish all advertising.  Except for opt-in email.  

Ironically, while the frequency of sending emails varies from one extreme to the other, I find that most small to medium size businesses send email too infrequently.  They will ply the trades with countless advertisements to uninterested consumers, but are afraid to market to their own clients for fear of scaring them off.