Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Ads and My.UserLand.Com

Author:Edd Dumbill
Posted:6/15/1999; 8:40:19 AM
Topic:Ads and My.UserLand.Com
Msg #:7388 (In response to 7380)
Prev/Next:7387 / 7389

Veen's article [1] is interesting, but still seems to be based on the premise that banner advertising works, which in most instances it doesn't.

I agree that targeted ads work better than random ads, but then not a lot. I think we've got to be a whole lot more imaginative about exploiting advertising on the web.

We're approaching a watershed on advertising in the same way we did with building sites -- at one point we thought it was easy to build sites, just throw some pages together and so on, but then we figured that it's a lot harder than that. You have to consider information architecture, usability concerns, site marketing (and a lot of sites still haven't got around to figuring that out yet).

So now we've got to put a whole lot more effort into web advertising: the "no-brainer" solution of banner ads (even targeted ones) is too easy and produces too few returns. Both publishers and advertisers go to more trouble over adverts in other media -- we need to take note.

Veen sums things up well when he says: "When the goals of an ad match the goals of a user at a given moment, the advertising will succeed." He proceeds to say that we need to move away from simple keyword targeting and target users based on much more information (environment, history, preferences). I don't agree. I don't want this information about myself to be made available to advertisers.

I think that the effort should be put in more in the way adverts are built and placed in sites. The solution cannot be just a mathematical one.

Apologies for not being exactly on the topic of the post.

[1] http://www.hotwired.com/webmonkey/99/25/index0a.html?tw=frontdoor

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