Daily Archives: May 5, 2008

Storytelling and selling

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News flash! The click-through rate on banner ads is shrinking. Hee hee. Even clicks on large size ads like the leaderboard will continue to wane. The creative is getting better, as is the targeting, but let’s face it, the units are not very compelling.
 
The best creative talent in the selling business is not at online ad shops. The best storytellers, most “abruptive” thinkers, funniest writers and best artists, are not graduating college saying “I want to work at Organic.”
 
Ad agencies ceded the online business to the digital shops and are about to take it back. Digital shops grew not because they knew how to do banners, but because they could develop landing pages, ad server strategies, tracking metrics and optimization plans while the rest of us said “Say what?”
 
As social computing continues to take the lead in online traffic growth and banners become last year’s model, I look to the boutiques, then big agencies to take back creative storytelling and selling on the Web. Tom Carroll, are you listening?