Running a digital agency one of the toughest ask is to get clients to put a premium on their online advertising campaigns. Take any IAMAI campaign we might have covered, almost all the while publishers and agencies would be found raving about the untapped prospects of online advertising. And this obviously to let the guys with the cash strings know of its potential.
However, regardless of how well clients begin to understand this, digital advertising won’t go anywhere without publishers pulling up their socks in terms of quality. I believe a lot of publishers sometimes by using dubious methods, and most often by practicing advertising methods purely driven by greed are killing the whole niche.
If we sit to debate or have a comprehensive talk the scope of this post might fall short, so I will try to keep it brief yet relevant.
I don’t want this to sound like a pissed off post at the number of advertising I am pounded with on most of India’s popular websites. However, I just understand how does it serve anyone’s benefit for a user to wade through 3 ads before reaching the home page of a site, which itself slips underneath under multiple roll overs. The result are only 3 – users become ad blind, they altogether stop coming to the site, and they repeat this behaviour for advertising on any other site they go. That obviously means lesser impressions and lesser clicks – the most basic requirement of any online campaign.
There is no excuse to irritate users, and that puts masquerading around with fake traffic numbers on a totally different plan. And add to this squirmy methods to increase traffic numbers which just delivers unrelated and low quality traffic. For instance spamming social networks to generate traffic which then goes to advertisers as factual numbers of people on the site.
You might be able to attract advertisers initially, however, such visitors can’t deliver results to them. The result, advertiser begin to believe they need more numbers to work with, thus killing any chance of small publishers to make the cut, and not to say reduce your own revenue.
Another important aspect is having transparent and standard rates for advertising spaces on a site. Ask any ad network guy on what is the standard rate of advertising on a site with X amount of traffic and he will laugh at you, there are none. Rates for advertising are purely on the whims of the advertiser and the demand he is getting from time to time. While it is alright in a monopoly, but at a time when people are trying to make advertising work, it really doesn’t paint the perfect picture to play with.
Standardization, transparency and a genuine will to improve conversations between brands and their audience is as much a prerogative of publishers as it is for advertisers.
Hi Maneesh
I would like to ask you something after reading this. Brilliant thoughts by the way
Anyhow, do you think pay-for-performance ad models can be more relevant then? What should the criteria for a campaigns success be? CTRs have been serving us well till now. How can you actually measure the ‘buzz’ or ‘conversations’ your campaign generates?
Do help me out by clearing these nagging doubts at the back of my head.
Aditya,
My post wasn’t on the same lines as the conversational advertising one I had posted before.. so this post wasn’t about the models of advertising..
Let me put it this way.. even a very simple banner with just a cos logo is also a conversation to an extent..but when a publisher fills up their entire real estate with banners..how is letting any advertiser benefit is the question I threw.
So I am afraid I didn’t quite get how pay for performance, or buzzz measurement becomes relevant to this post? Or was it a generic query from your end..on a tangent to this?
Hi
my general thoughts
I agree with the heading of this article. very apt and the truth..however there was something I do beg to differ..”That obviously means lesser impressions and lesser clicks – the most basic requirement of any online campaign.” This has become the basic requirement to any online campaign…as the advertising agencies and also the clients use this as the basic metric to evaluate a campaign and a site. and hence to deliver more clicks the publisher starts “inovations” which really irritate the surfers and the the surfer is lost.
I would say that, when advertisers and clients start looking at online advertising as “advertiing” which could be communication of the message or brand awareness and start synergising online with the traditional media…thats when when publishers and agencies and clients would actually benefit.
The other stuff which u said about standardization is very true and absolutely essential. However this could e done only when al publishers come togethr and agree on a certain rate that should be floated in the market. What say you.
And take the instance of spamming SN sites. One way it is a good thing, however like you rightly said, the content needs to be really good to get the surfer back to the site.
some sites are really doing some good work in terms of innovations. Innovations that are simple and really good to look at. However end of the day, how much does a surfer really engae with the brand is the question.
Its actually a bit of a catch 22 as well , many publishers start out with the correct thoughts – good interface, good content , a little SEM and SEO put in place as well , but then they dont earn – having then to resort to bulk inventory fillers such as Ad networks.
With ad networks, tracking quality of ads is not the easiest of tasks. Publishers use this ‘gap’ to place ads in as many places as they can reducing the friendliness of the site and increasing banner blindness. This further gets exaggerated by tying up with multiple networks.
Simple example – entertainment website – 4 ads from Tyroo + 4 ads from Komli = 8 ads which will probably go on to a single page – absolute madness from a design perspective.
@Venkat
Hmm.. when I say standard rates I don’t mean every publisher should have the same rates, rather it meant that every publisher should offer the same rates to all advertisers at all times.. you can’t have a price at the beginning of the month and another at the end of the month, one for a big advertiser and another one for a small guy.. that’s what I meant.. but yes, even for this to happen all publishers need to come together
And spamming on SNS or anywhere is not ok even if you have the best of content on the site..
@puchoo
True..