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Jan
26
2009

Do you have Effective Advertising?

By | Internet Advertising

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advertisingskyworkmediaIf you can spare some cash, a tight economy is actually a great time to do some advertising to expand your brand’s reach.  Your competitors may be pulling back on advertising, which makes this a good time to steal some share from them.  All of this is meaningless if you don’t have effective advertising.

I’ve seen many clients who have pretty good click-through rates for their ads (especially Google AdWords), but when you take a look at how much they’re paying for a conversion (usually a sale), it often is more than the product is selling for.  Here are some tips to make your advertising more effective:

  • Tout benefits to the customer.
  • Be clear and to the point.
  • Make your brand stand out.
  • Don’t be obnoxious – avoid too much movement.
  • Ads should lead to an effective landing page.
  • Make information needed for purchasing clear and consistent.
  • Minimize clicks for whatever action you want people to take.
  • Target your ads to places that actually have potential customers.
  • Don’t try to trick your customers.
  • Be attractive – your ad and landing page (and website) need to look good.

What else makes for effective advertising?  Please share any ideas in the comments below.

(photo by Skywork Media @ Flickr CC)

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Dec
23
2008

Best of 2008 – Advantages & Disadvantages of Rich Media Ads

By | Internet Advertising, News & Notes

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Rich media ads with which viewers can interact and may contain animation, audio and video. Rich media ads can be powerful way to convey your message, but these types of ads have some advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

  • Communicate more information – through different types of media (audio, video, interaction). Rich media ads can have video, audio, animation and even small applications or games.
  • Collect more information – either by programming in more sophisticated analytics or simply by asking for information.
  • More clicks - As annoying as these ads are, they are more likely to be clicked on because they catch people’s attention (please follow IAB guidelines), at least during the first week or so.
  • Powerful branding – Even if the ad isn’t clicked on, viewers are still more likely to see and remember the ad than traditional display advertising.

Disadvantages

  • May slow down a website – These ads tend to be larger in file size, which takes longer to download. Even with faster Internet connections being more prevalent, you should be aware of your audience and how many are on slower connections. Even with faster Internet connections, an overly large file or many rich media ads can still slow down a website. If your website is too slow, people will just go elsewhere.
  • May annoy – Since these ads tend to be more visible to viewers, they also can quickly become more annoying. So stick with the IAB guidelines and place ads for short time periods (no longer than a month) to maximize the effectiveness of the ad.
  • More expensive – They are more difficult to create and require a higher skillset. These types of ads are usually more expensive to place on a website as well (because of the larger file size and annoyance factor).
  • May be blocked – Although most people have the software installed necessary to view these ads, it is fairly easy to turn off this option in most browsers and in some ad blocking software. However, as more websites use the same technology to increase their interaction and functionality, viewers are less likely to block the ads.

If you are aware of these advantages and disadvantages, you can make an informed decision about purchasing these types of ads (or allowing them to be displayed on your website or blog).

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Dec
22
2008

Best of 2008 – Types of Online Advertising

By | Internet Advertising, News & Notes

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Advertising online can increase your brand awareness and promote a product/service. Online advertising has a major advantage over other types of advertising (tv, radio, print) because it is very easy to measure the effectiveness of online campaigns.

There are 3 Main Types of Ads:

  • Rich Media: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has defined these as “advertisements with which users can interact” and can include video, sound, animation. Ads which just animate but don’t have any interaction are just display ads (see below). Ads should follow IAB guidelines to maximize impact without being overly annoying (which has the opposite effect from what you want). There are many types of rich media ads, including:
    • peel-back
    • floating
    • expanding
    • transitional (interstitial, introstitial, exterstitial)
    • video
    • popup/popunder
  • Display Ads: These ads combine text, images, and animation (but are not interactive – those are rich media – see above) to convey a message. Display ads mostly differ in sizes (see IAB for Ad Size Guidelines). Here are some of the most popular sizes:
    • leaderboard (728 x 90 pixels)
    • skyscraper (120 x 600 pixels or 160 x 600 pixels for wide skyscraper)
    • banner (468 x 60 pixels)
    • half-page (300 x 600 pixels)
    • square button (or tile) (125 x 125 pixels)
    • medium rectangle (300 x 250 pixels)
  • Text Ads: Text ads are typically just that, text. These ads typically are cheaper, but have the added bonus of usually being searchable by search engines and are less-ignored by readers than some other types of ads. Some of the more common types of text ads:
    • link ads
    • contextual ads
    • search engine marketing ads (pay per click – ex. Google Adwords)
    • online directories
Oct
20
2008

Looking for a Different PPC Network?

By | Internet Advertising, News & Notes

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LookSmart may be one to consider.  They’ve just added enhancements to make it easier for advertisers to target their customers.  Ad Operations Online has the details here.

Sep
15
2008

Advertising Network Vibrant Launches Related Content Product

By | Internet Advertising, News & Notes

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Vibrant, a leader in contextual advertising solutions, has launched a related content product.  The related content system uses Vibrant’s patented contextual technology to automatically link to related articles, video, images, and audio on the website.  Ad Operations Online has the full story.

Sep
11
2008

Interview with Jonathan Rivers, Executive VP of AdJuggler

By | Internet Advertising, Interview

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adjugglerlogoAdJuggler (originally covered here) is an ad serving and management system which targets small and medium-sized publishers.  Jonathan Rivers, Executive Vice President, took a few minutes to explain how AdJuggler is different from the big ad serving companies like DoubleClick and what the future holds for the company.

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Sep
09
2008

What is a Brand?

By | Internet Advertising, Marketing

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Our recent discussions on branding (here and here) brought up an important topic – what is a brand? Sometimes business owners think a brand is just a logo or a marketing message, but I think it’s much more:

  • Visual – A brand usually has a visual representation in terms of a logo or graphic that is easily recognizable.  Brands can also be identified by a spokesperson or icon (for example, the energizer bunny). Sometimes there are also visual representations that have been created by customers instead of the company.
  • Auditory – Many brands have a signature theme song or jingle (think rhapsody in blue for united airlines, or the Intel chimes) which can bring to mind the company when heard outside of advertisements.
  • Verbal – Through marketing, sales, and customer service, a company creates verbal impressions of what the company stands for in various situations.
  • Emotional – Brands evoke an emotional response in customers (hopefully good emotions), which are influenced by their interactions with the brand (advertising, purchasing, customer service, other customers, etc.).
  • Communal – With the ease of communication available on the Internet, customers can easily share opinions, feelings, and experiences about your brand with or without your influence.
  • Instinctive – Closely tied with emotional and communal influences, customers have instinctual feelings and opinions about your brand even before they’ve interacted with your company, formed through advertising and information from other customers.
  • Evolutionary – Brands are constantly evolving through interaction and shared experiences of customers, non-customers and companies.  A company can try to influence the evolution, but is no longer in complete control of the brand.
  • Descriptive -  By combining the various interactions with a brand, an overall impression of what the company stands for is shared among customers and non-customers. A brand is descriptive of what a company, product, and/or service stands for, in terms of all the elements above (visual, auditory, verbal, emotional, etc.).

What else does a brand mean? What does your brand mean to you?  What do other brands mean?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Sep
08
2008

ANA cautions against Google, Yahoo deal

By | Internet Advertising

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The WSJ is reporting on a letter, sent from the Association of National Advertisers to the Department of Justice, cautioning against the proposed deal between Google and Yahoo.  The ANA is citing the usual suspects when objections to mergers, acquisitions and partnerships.  The letter is short, so Ill post the pertinent half.

The letter, authorized by the ANA Board, notes that a Google-Yahoo partnership will control 90 percent of search advertising inventory and states ANA’s concerns that the partnership will likely diminish competition, increase concentration of market power, limit choices currently available and potentially raise prices to advertisers for high quality, affordable search advertising.

It is the last line that really rings true to the heart of the ANA’s issue with the deal.  The ANA is worried that Google and Yahoo will be able to raise prices on the large percentage of online advertising inventory they control.  It is a serious issue for the association, who represents institutional advertisers and who has a board made up of power brokers

ANA’s board, made up of well-known marketing executives including Brian Perkins, Johnson & Johnson‘s vice president of corporate affairs; Stephen Quinn, chief marketing officer at Wal-Mart Stores Inc; and Betsy Lazar, executive director of media and advertising for General Motors Corp., approved the group’s move. ~ WJS

I’m not a large Google or Yahoo advertiser and so I don’t have a good grasp on the merits of this raised objection.  Clearly, when customers of a service speak out against something like this, especially one as well organized and connected as the ANA, the DOJ is likely to listen intently.  In truth, there is the case to be made that Yahoo is threatened by the possibility of going out of business if this deal is not made.  This would surely hurt competition and concentrate control within Google more than a partnership does.  Microsoft has made similar arguments against the deal that the ANA is making.  Those pleas have been largely ignored in the media as the cries of a competitor in the online ad market.

Aug
27
2008

Need a Cheap Online Ad Management System?

By | Internet Advertising, News & Notes

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If you offer advertising (or want to) on your business website or blogs, you may have been holding off because of the cost of using online ad management systems.  Sure, there are “free” ad networks, but most of those don’t allow you full control over the ads that show up on your site.  Google’s Ad Manager allows you to sell ads, but also to supplement those ads with ads from Google AdSense and other ad networks.  TechCrunch has more information: Google Will Now Manage Your Website’s Ads, as well as Ad Operations Online: Google Ad Manager out of Beta; All AdSense Publishers Can Use It.

Aug
26
2008

To PR or not to PR

By | Internet Advertising, News & Notes

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There has been quite a lot of press lately about whether or not you need a PR firm for your business.  At the top of the current buzz is a blog post Jason Calcanis, CEO of Mahaolo, wrote: Jason Calcanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company.  An excerpt:

My philosophy of PR is summed up in six words: be amazing, be everywhere, be real.

You don’t need a PR firm, you don’t need an in-house PR person and you don’t need to spend ANY money to get amazing PR. You don’t need to be connected, and you don’t need to be a “name brand.”  Silicon Alley Insider – Jason Calcanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company

Obviously this post has caused a bit of a storm of PR and marketing folks looking for blood.  But the fact is that most small businesses (tech startups or otherwise) don’t have the budget for an expensive PR firm.  Jason has some great tips that businesses of any size can put to use – whether or not you use a PR firm.  An overview of the ten tips:

  1. Be the brand
  2. Be everywhere
  3. Always pick up the check — always
  4. Be a human being
  5. How to bond with a journalist
  6. How a CEO should e-mail a journalist
  7. How a CEO should speak to a journalist
  8. Invite people to “swing by” your office
  9. Attach your brand to a movement
  10. Embrace small media outlets

Do you have your own tips for PR?  Please share in the comments….

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