Why banner ads must die
With publishers struggling to monetise digital and marketers unable to achieve cut through John McLean argues it’s time to ditch banner ads and get collaborating.
In a medium infatuated and necessitated by innovation, display advertising has been criminally bereft of it since it’s inception 20 years ago. The first banner ad appeared in Wired Magazine in 1994* and little has changed since around 2000 when rich media placements became more common due to better connection speeds.
Still standard banners still have a maximum file size of 40k and for the most part are still developed in Flash. But broadband and the new mobile paradigm are finally forcing a shift and the dominant players are changing.
The first ever banner ad on Mashable
An innovate or die editorial and the writer cites Subservient Chicken and BMW Films, examples that are approximately 10 years old.
I didn’t have to waste my time reading any further.
I couldn’t agree more re the death of the banner ad and couldn’t agree less re that native is the way forward, native ads define deception.
Rather than reformatting banner ads and tvcs into mobile units publishers/advertisers need to innovate, I quite like the look of zapp360, a simple but effective idea for mobile.
A writer who claims ““Clicks” are the only metric worth considering” clearly has no idea about banner or digital advertising in general.
I’m all for improving digital advertising, but hyperbole based on lack of knowledge and blatant misrepresentation isn’t helpful.
I find it ironic that someone talking about how the ‘old must die’ to make way so they can be served to more devices with these newfangled native HTML/CSS placements….has a website still (in 2014!!!) in 100% Flash.
@Hugh and it’s a website that has a ‘404 Not Found’ when you drop the www from webling.com.au
There are still banner ads? Jesus, people
☑ Block pop-up windows.
Also, you should at least be running adblockplus (or even better, adblockedge) to protect your privacy and improve security. 😉
I agree @Geocities, pretty poor that they still have a website 100% built in Flash and don’t have their DNS set up correctly..
I don’t see a billboard on the highway, pull over and ring them up immediately either. nor do I see a TVC for hole proof stockings and suddenly rush out to Coles and embark on my cross dressing mid life crisis.
Advertising about brand awareness – not simply showing someone an ad and expecting them immediately come visit me and my store.
Same with online advertising.
This entire piece is part of a campaign to push the agenda of Native Advertising. And poorly disguised one at that.
We all understand the need for marketers to make a buck – but at what cost – if we utterly destroy our news content for advertising, leaving NOTHING to trust where does that leave us ?
Perhaps it will come to the point where only academics can be trusted – [Edited by Mumbrella for legal reasons]
sigh….
Unfortunately Publishers are hamstrung….
As much as the sector calls for innovation, engagement with an advert doesn’t move product leading to high eCPA metrics and forcing money back to “standard” banners.
Is this a native ad for native advertising?
JB, I couldn’t have said it better. But he has to flog that shit somehow!
@hugh – nothing wrong with 100% flash on the desktop so long as you detect for flash being installed and redirect – which they don’t. OOps.
Even worse – no mobile detection. However – they do have a mobile browser.
To be fair on flash – html5 STILL can not do half what flash does – so technically, flash is still years ahead.
One day – maybe – doubt it though.
Please go back and understand how advertising works before trying to write an article about it.
An ad neither has to be liked or clicked on to be effective.
Money companies spend on getting “in my face” when I’m browsing the web really is wasted, and sooner or later the market will realise. All they actually achieve is causing me to associate irritation with their brand.
As for “targeted advertising”, I bought a tie for a wedding the other week. It was a silver one. Never bought a silver tie in my life before, pretty much certainly never again. I did google before I went to the shops. Now, every page I look at is covered in adverts for silver ties, adverts for just about the last product on earth I’m now likely to buy. Somebody somewhere is wasting a lot of money.
As for the commenter above who believes its all about “brand awareness” – that may well have been true once upon a time, but the technological advances mean that awareness is now past a saturation point in most people. It is not enough to be made aware, it has to be positive and of interest, or it gets filed in “things I find mildly annoying” box, and actually has a negative impact on my likelihood to buy through some notion of “familiarity”.
“Success is often measured against ‘page impressions’ regardless of the fact that ads are often served out of view. “Clicks” are the only metric worth considering, yet a click rate of 0.01% is considered a success.”
This quote is one of many ridiculous statements in this article. Success was never measured against page impressions – in fact this metric doesn’t even exist when measuring delivery – it’s ad impressions. And clicks haven’t been “the only metric worth considering” for about a decade.
This article is an embarrassment.
I believe most people are getting better and better at avoiding ads – the eyes spot them and avoid them like the plague – the same challenge is for other media outlets like TV stations where thanks to downloading, Fast forwarding and Netflix, people will NOT sit through long ad blocks. I fact I believe most people in live show s like X Factor hop onto the internet during the breaks – We live in very challenging times when it comes to getting people’s attention
“Clicks are the only metric worth considering”
Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
What an idiotic hipster article. Banner ads can be extremely effective (when implemented correctly with a little help of analytics). The article doesn’t even mention remarketing, which I’m sure thousands of marketers can vouch for being very effective.
Must have a hit a nerve with the media types eh John?
Despite the error with the ‘impressions’, the basic point is right. With a medium offering so much opportunity, traditional display banners (not talking about re-marketing or highly context sensitive advertising) are a sad and lazy compromise. People have build build media empires around them but it’s time we moved one.
Also, *cough* mobile…
The following is a list of all the brands built on the success of banner ads.
Thank you.
Yep, got me on the ‘page impressions’ typo 😉
The deliberate use of the word success in that sentence was far more telling than the page impressions “typo” John.
@Long time listener first time caller That ‘impressions’ are a measure at all is at the core of what’s wrong with banners. Measurement of ‘impressions’ and their effect is voodoo and pseudo science at best. That a lot of people make money from this measurement has nothing to do with a mature discussion of where the money could be better spent…
@KA
The assertion that anyone considers ad impressions as a measure of campaign success is absurd and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of digital marketing.
I dare say most of the people who are so up in arms about this article work at media agencies!
Even from a brand awareness point of view….With so much re-marketing these days users are being exposed to less brands in favour of being stalked by those of a web site their visited 3 weeks ago.
“The following is a list of all the brands built on the success of banner ads.”
Apple. Oakley. Pilkington Glass.
Yes, want users want is more stupid narrowcasting (“p*nis enlargements and the like) and more memory-hungry, badly coded pop-up advertisements which slow down web browsing to a crawl.