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Once,
advertisers told us that buying a certain brand of cheap cigar
could help us think that little bit bigger. Today, the net
is telling advertisers we will buy their stuff if only they
start thinking that little bit smaller.
The problems with web advertising have been well documented.
Despite the best efforts of the new media industry, banner
ads - the main vehicle of web advertisers - have remained
a blunderbuss. Banners are not good at reaching an interested
audience, and even if they do, most people have become so
adept at "tuning out", they couldn't tell you who
was advertising on a page they had just read.
There have been attempts to break through the surfer's disinterest:
pop-ups, pop-unders and the rest. But relying on irritation
to get the message across is not a great idea, advertisers
have found. Enter the web's best search engine, Google. |
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Google
was - and still is - devoid of banner ads. Yet the company
is boasting a web advertising success story by thinking that
little bit smaller. Google has rethought the business of net
advertising. The solution has been to focus on getting results
for advertisers - in the same way it has focused on getting
results for its users.
The upshot is the tiny, two inch by one text
advertisements alongside its very accurate search results.
Better still, anyone can buy the ads. Self-service advertising
on one of the net's most popular sites is taking off. Why?
We need to look back at the problem. Advertisers have treated
the web as if it was a mass medium from day one, quite like
TV. |
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We are all far too busy -
and too rushed, since most of us still pay by the minute -
to click on a banner that is only vaguely related to our interests.
Google's answer has been to pick what advertisements are shown
to you based on the keywords you have entered.
There is nothing new in this kind of ad selection:
search sites have done it for years. What is different is
that this is the site's only criterion for showing the ad.
If a rich advertisers wants more eyeballs, they pick a more
popular keyword. But they cannot buy a better placement -
only user relevance determines when and where (in relation
to other advertisers) the ad appears.
It means that every ad that appears on Google
should be perfectly targeted. Let's say I am a London florist.
I only want my text ad to appear when a user types the search
phrase "London florist", and Google helpfully provides
an estimate of how many times my ad will be shown if I pick
this phrase. It tells me that around 1,600 searches a week
are carried out using this trigger: my ad would be shown 1,600
times a week, costing $24.00. Normally, I would expect only
around 2% of surfers to click on a normal banner ad.
But, with users already searching for a "London florist",
I would hope for much more on Google. That is the theory,
at least. Anecdotal evidence from Adword users suggests many
are meeting with more success than "traditional"
ads, with clickthrough rates of up to 45% reported for some
(very tightly targeted) campaigns. Rates are much lower -
around 4% - for more general ads, with success appearing to
be in inverse proportion to the popularity of the keywords.
Moreover, the news aggregation site, reported a success rate
of 10.21%. The self-service ad isn't just good news for advertisers.
The websites that sell them are reporting healthy revenues
from this new form of ad. |
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