Getting beyond the banner (and beyond the banner in disguise)

Forget about “awareness,” “image,” click-through rates, and ad unit sizes. As the Web matures, a single advertising issue will dominate all others. When the other distractions are pushed aside, we’ll find that advertisers face the same primary challenge as all other Web content producers: satisfying user goals.

Call them leader boards or skyscrapers. Make them pop, vibrate, or move across the page. Build them with Java or Flash. It doesn’t really matter because most current online ad vehicles are just banners in disguise and banners are little more than print ads in disguise. As early as 1704, “The Boston News-Letter” carried print advertising. Advertising has evolved for three centuries within the print medium, the core of which is the communication of one message to many people. However, the core of the Web medium is a single user and the content they choose to experience. Web users create their own context and this is what will ultimately make user goals the key to online success.

I’ve been developing Web products since 1995 and I can still remember being thrilled by fish tank cams and the early “cool site of the day” Web sites. But both experienced and novice Web users have now integrated the Internet into their daily lives to such an extent that it’s become pedestrian. “Googling” (browsing sites in search of specific information) has replaced “surfing” (browsing sites just for fun). Research suggests that people now expect to be able to use the Web to complete a wide range of both ordinary and extraordinary tasks.

“Notable numbers of Americans,” a May 2002 Pew Internet and American Life project reports, “Turn to the Internet as a basic reference tool to gather information and, in some cases, to compare alternative courses of action.” Another Pew report (“Counting on the Internet,” Dec. 2002) says that the combination of users becoming more skillful at finding information and an ever-increasing amount of information available has resulted in high expectations by users about what content they can get online.

But traditionally, banners (and banners in disguise like leader boards and skyscrapers) have been developed to satisfy the goals of the advertiser rather than the user. Both print and Web advertisers are focused on getting their message to potential and current customers. The higher click-through rates for ads targeted by user or click stream data are explained as a greater success in putting the advertising message in front of people who are more likely to be interested. I can’t dispute this, but it sounds a lot like the people who play blackjack in Las Vegas rather than roulette. The house advantage in blackjack is 0.80 percent, while in single zero roulette it’s 2.7 percent. But it’s all gambling and the odds are against the player in both games. I’d suggest that targeted advertising is actually getting better click-through rates because the advertising content is instrumental in the completion of users’ goals.

When your sales team tells you that a type of ad “works,” they’re saying that clients are willing to pay for it. When it’s your marketing team saying an ad “works,” they mean that users remember the advertising. When your editorial folks say an ad “works,” they’re really saying that the ad type doesn’t get in the way of good journalism. But how will advertisers define an ad type that “works” in the future? Marketing veteran and author Sergio Zyman suggests a simple answer:

"I don’t care whether you’re selling heating oil in Ireland, souvenirs in the Australian Outback, or fighter jets in 125 countries. If you want to stay in business, your goals are the same: Maximize your assets and sell more stuff.

“[Advertising] is about selling stuff more often to more people for more money.”

So if advertiser products and services are instrumental in satisfying user goals, then advertiser goals can be satisfied at the same time. I agree that there will always be clients willing to pay for what is now traditional online advertising, but I’m suggesting that banners in disguise, no matter how much bigger or better they are, won’t collect the lion’s share of Internet advertising spending in the future. The industry will be dominated by successful advertisers who have figured out how to satisfy their goals by satisfying their users’ goals.

Frederick Newell suggests in his book “loyalty.com” that companies are already figuring out how a user-centric Web is changing their companies. He says that we should expect much more aggressive potential advertisers:

“As advertisers continue to move forward with the development of customer knowledge, media that want their business must know as much about their own audiences as the advertisers know about their customers. Then the media must develop ways to cross-feed this information to support the advertisers’ objectives.

“Advertisers are now asking, exactly how many of my best customers are in your audience? Who are they? How can I best reach them? How many in your audience are just like my best customers? Can you help me find them and reach them?”

There’s no perfect advertising model out there right now that satisfies advertiser goals by satisfying user goals, but let’s talk about a couple of efforts that are headed in that direction:

Micro ads
Small text ads delivered as part of search returns were all the rage in 2002. Some speculated that the stark, simple text approach encouraged click-throughs from users exhausted by pop-ups and full screen animated ads. Other conversation centered on the traditional “right message to the right user at the right time” targeted advertising concept.

But I think what we’re seeing in the success of micro ads is an example of users pursuing very specific goals and using advertising content as an integral part of their efforts (as Pew says, “to compare alternative courses of action.”) I got an overwhelming 896,000 results recently while using Google to find an online business card vendor. The text of five sponsored links helped me understand the variety within vendors and gave me some key things to look for in all of the results.

Lowe’s
Lowes.com has put a great deal of effort into creating and maintaining informative content areas for home repair and improvement projects. The projects vary in scope (from “Automate Your Home” to “Installing a Programmable Thermostat”) and complexity (from “Build a Window Cornice” to “Clearing Clogged Drains”). Each project outlines the materials and tools needed (many available for online purchase), but the emphasis is very much on completing the project (thus satisfying user goals). This concentration on assisting users in the completion of their tasks leads directly to online and offline sales.

The use of illustrations and the level of detail in the how-to content surpass the capabilities of most content sites. In fact, part of the beauty of this advertiser-generated content is that a user will likely expect a hardware store to be the expert for home repair. If a media site created the same materials, they would start by calling a hardware store for information.

So what can content sites do to prepare today for the user-centric advertising of tomorrow? The answer will be different for every company, but let me offer a few general suggestions. Imagine your most important advertiser just called you to ask you some of the questions outlined by Newell:

“Exactly how many of my best customers are in your audience?” You’ll need to develop as sophisticated an understanding of your users as possible. This can be as simple as developing personas for product development or as complex as a full CRM solution.

“How can I best reach them?” Before you have to take this phone call, you should start experimenting with organizing some of your content around specific user goals. Avoid compromising user goals for company, advertiser, or editorial goals in these experiments or your efforts may provide you with too few lessons.

“Can you help me find and reach your users that are just like my customers?” How nimble is your company? You’ll need to go from concept to execution in as little time as possible. And unlike in the early days of the Internet, you’ll need to know exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing so that you can evolve solutions on the fly without sacrificing long-term strategy. Real nimbleness will require thinking done holistically and carefully, but done quickly.

Links

Micro ads