online advertising

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Accelerator Pedals and Online Ads

March 12, 2010 in Digital Marketing, Marketing, Search | 0 Comments

There was an article today in the New York Times by Stephanie Clifford about new ad serving technology supported by real-time bidding, allowing ads to be served based on keywords and cookied behavior.  Supposedly everything takes place in milliseconds — before the page even load. (Is it me or are page loads getting slower and slower?  Thanks ads. Thanks beefy Web 2.0 apps.)

It stands to reason that as this technology matures a good deal of these immediate, personalized ads will be price-based. And how do marketers lower prices?  By cutting margins elsewhere, meaning brand advertising budgets, etc.  Fast forward a year or two and think about all the low-cost, challenger brand/no brand, tailored ads filling up your screens. Likely, you will have bitten on a price ad or two and had a poor experience and now avoid these ads altogether. Your avoidance behavior may be similar to that toward telemarketers.  And it’s too bad because as the behavioral modeling grows it has an opportunity to be an important selling mechanism.

But initially it will be price, price, price!  A word of caution marketers: Don’t fall into the price war — web ad bidding war.  It will be hard to get out of. And some of your accelerator pedals might stick. Peace!

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Creating Desire.

November 25, 2009 in Marketing | 0 Comments

steak bw

Have agents of advertising forgotten how to create desire? I often think so. David Ogilvy –sorry, I had to do it– once said “our business is infected with people who have never sold a thing in their lives.” He was referring to artists more worried about the art than the sale. Until, you’ve actually looked into the eyes of someone while coaxing money for product, you haven’t sold. You haven’t learned about creating desire.

I saw a black and white ad for Omaha Steaks in the paper-paper today. Steak is one of my favorite things, with many mental images and smells conjured up simply by saying the word. But a poor reproduction of a plate of gray, less gray and glistening gray steaks is not one way to do it. The picture was more likely to create desire for turkey. “The ad’s headline “Give the gift that will thrill everyone” doesn’t create desire. Nor do the phrases “2 free gifts” or “now only $49.”

Advertising today has often jumped to the transaction without spending time on the sell — on creating desire.

The Internet as a selling medium is working because it offers up multi-media images: color, sounds, motion and a non-static storytelling. The problem is, the medium is doing more of the work than the creative department. The writers, art directors and creative directors’ fingerprints are hard to find in most of web selling today. Ergo, the industry’s fascination with consumer generated content.

The web gives sellers and selling agents an enormously rich canvas on which to create desire. Way more powerful than print and TV. Let’s use it people. Peace and Happy Thanksgiving to All!

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Storytelling and selling

May 5, 2008 in Marketing | 0 Comments

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?
 
 

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