Interactive promotion report: display advertising

[Tags: interactive pr, pr, flash, SEO]. Today, Marie Williams looks at:

Display advertising (banners, Flash, etc.)

It’s the cookies that give information out on what adverts should be placed on each individual page.

Online Advertising

Every where you look you will always notice some form of advertisement; whether it be sitting on the tube, reading a newspaper, watching the television or walking down the road, you will always see, read and take in an advertisement; but most recently advertising on the Internet has become a new medium in itself.

No matter where you click, or what site you look on you will always be bombarded with adverts; whether they are banners, pop ups or standard adverts, you will always notice one when you browse the internet.

Online advertising is becoming a vast medium in which a huge amount of revenue can be made; placing your advert in the right place could be the best move you could make; ‘All advertising is tricking the reader into reading your ad with a clever, cute or curious head line.’ (Vitale, Joe:1997)

Online advertising can be anything from display banners to pop ups. Interstitial is also another way of advertising by inserting flash anagrams and adverts between pages, with the use of flash and rich media products, online advertising can be used to not only enhance sales and media distribution but also personalize and further more enhance product knowledge across the World Wide Web.

‘ Display advertising is a step above from both "in-column" and "listing" level advertising. Display advertising is available in many different sizes-from a quarter-column ad to two side-by-side pages ("Double Trucks")! Whatever your message is, you can say it all with a display ad.
Don't miss an opportunity to attract new customers! In fact, more than 54% of top headings users are new to the business. 88% have made or intend to make a purchase. Display advertising gives you a competitive advantage over other advertisers in your heading.’

( http://www.bellsouth.com/bapco/products/1.4.1.6.html 29/09/06 )

Pop Up Ads:

‘Pop-up ads or pop-ups are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to increase web traffic or capture email addresses… A variation on the pop-up window is the pop-under advertisement. This opens a new browser window, behind the active window’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popup (29/09/06)

Pop up ads such as those for casinos, credit cards, loan repayments and pornography can be blocked by using specials buttons such as the one on Google: http://toolbar.google.com/.

The new Msn Live network now has a large pop up box when you sign in; although this comes automatically with the new version, there are still some additional banners on this pop it self, one links off to msn games and the other to a windows live page, which advertises the Xbox. This once again reinforces the fact that pops ups and online advertising are used to create revenue and links between major websites.

http://www.bromleyfc.com/ is another website that’s uses pop up boxes. When logging into the forum, you have wait for a pop up box advertising credit or cars to load and then click on it too close, but like many pop ups if you accidentally click on the box it automatically takes you away from the site you want to look at. Not only can you not block this pop up, but there is no way of looking at the site unless you get rid of it.

When trying to find more sites a lot of the pop-ups kept getting blocked. The recent revolution of the pop up blocker has enabled viewers to look at web site with out boxes springing out from no where with content they don’t want to look at. The pop up blocker can be turned on or off.

Banner Ads:

‘Banner ads are less expensive than traditional media advertising.’(Pg139)

When looking on various internet sites it seemed to me that different groups of sites used banners ads for different purposes; take football club websites. Both http://www.millwallfc.co.uk/ and http://www.crewealex.net/ use banner advertisements on their home pages.

When you enter the websites, you are presented with a plan page with one banner across the middle, this normally advertises some thing to do with the club or the England team, and you have to look at this advertisement before you click on the small link below that takes you to the main home page.

With the obvious target market being men aged between 16-35, advertisements on these sites must have the ‘football theme’ running through them; ‘the consumer must have knowledge about what the product category or subcategory the brand belongs to and its unique characteristics that differentiate it from competitors.’(ps138)

Search engine websites are another key medium that uses online advertising.

These web sites are one of the most visited sites on the net, they use flash, pop ups, and more evidentially banners. When looking at http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ the top of the home page is a banner that doesn’t advertise for companies, but advertises other ‘yahoo services’ such as Email, messaging and chat. This banner has been used to try and promote yahoo as a brand but doesn’t complete the job successfully. There is nothing that stands out to bring your attention to the top of the page.

‘As the number of consumers with high speed Internet connections increases banner ads will become more complex and will also be able to communicate brand-differentiating information.(Haygtvedt,Curtis:1995:p140)

Case study: myspace.com

http://www.myspace.com/ is now one of the leading web sites for the younger generation. It allows them to communicate across one network, gaining friends and so fourth; however is also advertises a vast amount of information.

Whilst logging in I noticed a variety of different advertising segments. There is always a banner which runs across the top of the screen, these change every time you click onto a different page; adverts for phone companies, efax free trial, credit card companies, smiley downloads, national lottery gaming are just a few examples.

Not only does my space have banner advertisements across the top they sometimes appear to the left or right hand side of the screen, these usually relate to some kind of design, or layout website and appear when reading bulletins or looking at other people profiles.

It was when I clicked onto my home page that I noticed a small arrow pointing upwards with the word advertisement against it, before any image had appeared I already knew that an advertisement would appear, even if the image didn’t load, I would still be able to click in the space and the link to the advertisement would still work.

My Space is a key place that advertising could really work; ‘Online ads must be posted where ads are permitted… Post any ad where it is not welcome and you will get flamed.’(Vitale, Joe: p118)

New display advertising gimmicks:

‘Google has announced a partnership with Yahoo to provide advertising and search services on Web wag.’ http://nma.co.uk/

‘Known as “AIDA,” it represents “Attention, Interest, Desire, Action”: a proven structure for a successful ad. But the online world requires a new formula.’(Vitale, Joe:1997:P111)

‘Online ads must be posted where ads are permitted… Post any ad where it is not welcome and you will get flamed.’(Vitale, Joe:1997Pg118)

Factors to consider when advertising online:

When advertising online it must be taken into consideration where, what and why you are advertising; ‘By positioning an advertisement? on a website which relates to the target markets specific interests, interest and further speculation should occur.’ (http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/ 15/10/06)

Conclusion

When trying to look at online advertising I was bombarded with information; so much so I looked to heavily into the adverts themselves and not the reasoning behind them enough.

Every page that you click on will have an advert placed somewhere on it, whether it being a mere small box or flash anagrams they all count. A continuous rise in the Internet networking will effectively help online advertising; ‘Online advertising will grow by 30 percent next year’ (http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3450801 15/10/06)

Advertising on line is vast becoming a strategy for businesses to promote products unknown to the viewer, by taking the viewer away from the site they were originally looking at it; ‘Strategically gets your web site or name where you want it. New Web sites can build strong traffic by strategically placing banner ads on sites that relate to what they offer.’

My final point relates back to banners and pop up advertisement. Banners are a very clever which to advertise, without annoying or obstructing the viewer, adverts can be cheaply put together and stand out whether they run across the top or down one side. Its pop up advertisements that I believe will not be used for much longer as software to stop these is becoming easier to get hold of people, will just block them all, and so money would be wasted. However this new ‘pay per click’ advertising strategy could be a good way to save money, you only need to pay when people are clicking on your advertisement.

Web sites such as http://www.bidvertiser.com/, promote this pay per click scheme.

The best way to use ‘online advertising’ is to look at the web page it as if you were the consumer, think about what they would want to see and how it would stand out, as expressed before “Attention, Interest, Desire, Action”: a proven structure for a successful ad.’ ’(Vitale, Joe:1997:P111)

http://www.bidvertiser.com/

Report Links

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/index.php?blogthis=1&p=117

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3450801

http://www.emarketer.com/SiteSearch?.aspx?pathID=770

http://www.lifeaftercoffee.com/2006/01/17/good-idea-bad-idea-internet-advertising

http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Main_Page?

http://http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Online_Advertising?

Bibliography:

Haugtvedt, Curtis, Machleit, Karen, Yalch, Richard; ‘Online consumer psychology’ New Jersey: Lawrence: 2005

Vitale, Joe ‘Cyber Writing’ USA: 1997

Internet sites:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/ (03/10/06)

http://www.americaint.com/(03/10/06)

http://www.bannerreport.com/

http://www.bellsouth.com/bapco/products/1.4.1.6.html%20%20(29/09/06)

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/index.php?blogthis=1&p=117(15/10/06)

http://www.bromleyfc.com/(01/10/06)

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3450801 (15/10/06)

http://www.crewealex.net/(01/10/06)

http://http//www.emarketer.com(10/10/06)

http://www.internetnews.com/(16/10/06 )

http://www.lifeaftercoffee.com/(15/10/06)

http://www.microsoft.com/(18/10/06)

http://www.msn.com/(01/10/06)

http://www.millwallfc.co.uk/(01/10/06)

http://www.nma.co.uk/(12/10/06)

http://http//toolbar.google.com/.(01/10/06)

http://http//wiki.media-culture.org.(15/10/06)

http://www.yahoo.co.uk/ (01/10/06)

: Note: as you will notice three of my links do not work I have tried to link them but haven't been successfull.