Banner A**

I need to rant about something that is a pet peeve of mine: banner ads.

First I should say, from a practical value standpoint, banner ads suck. As documented a billion times, banner ads are routinely ignored, disparaged, and despised by web users. The actual trackable return on investment is almost always miniscule. The vehicles for these ads, the web sites and applications that can be used by millions of visitors, still do not encompass the greater pool of possible customers and cannot support the demographic targeting that might enhance your messaging.

Now I primarily swim in the B2B space. In this world, unlike the B2C, you are typically able to pretty precisely define your customers. By definition, they are engineers or architects or industrial designers in a particular vertical market. In this world trade publications really do have value because their audience really can be assumed to match our targets. The reach may not be all-encompassing, but at least you can be fairly sure that everybody you DO reach will at least have a professional inclination to pay at least a slight bit of attention.

Thus I grudgingly admit that banner ads (and its ancestor, the equally ROI-deficient print ad) in trade publications have some value. So we want to make good ads that attract attention, convey the proper call to action, support the brand, etc. etc.

HOWEVER: as important, or arguably more important, is what happens AFTER the reader clicks on the ad.

The genesis of all this ranting involves a client of my agency. We do not directly manage their interactive efforts, but we have developed microsites with them in conjunction with a very successful integrated campaign aimed at different groups of target customers. Thus we were a little surprised to see them in a banner ad on the web site of a very popular trade magazine in the building construction industry.

What I saw was on the site’s home page: our client had a square banner space in the middle, lower part of the page (falls below the fold in my browser). The ad was for a particular package of publications that our client has put together aimed at architects, which they sell via their online bookstore.

All well and good.

However, when you click on the ad, you open the home page of the client site. Problems are legion:
--the home page does NOT have a header or any other kind of graphic that mentions the Architect package
--there is no special call-out to point the users to the bookstore (where they can buy the item), only the standard navigation links
--if the user is intrepid enough to fight their way through 3 subsequent levels of navigation, they will eventually land on a purchase link for the product—but only a banal text list of the contents, no descriptions or other content that might get an architect interested in purchasing

Imagine the user experience: he or she sees the ad, interest is sparked, it is clicked, and…s/he lands on a home page with no mention of the subject of the ad, no links to where the thing can be purchased, no call to action, and no clear support for the user’s needs AS DOCUMENTED BY THE ACT OF CLICKING.

Ideally, the user should go to a landing page that echoes the message of the ad and speaks directly to the user, and preferably has a direct call to action that allows him or her to IMMEDIATELY purchase the item.

This is a classic example of how banner advertising can ultimately be *USELESS* no matter how much traffic it generates. I bet you that 99.9% of the people who click through the ad immediately exit our client’s site. All the money they spend advertising with this popular (and therefore probably expensive) trade publication is wasted because their site is not set up to properly receive those people clicking through.

The receiving end of an online campaign is as important or probably MORE important than the creativity or effectiveness of the ads themselves. It is almost criminal to have somebody click through (thus demonstrating that they are a qualified and interested lead) only to insult them with a lack of support for their interest on the site itself.

If you must advertise via banner ads, then you MUST consider the second part of the equation: what happens after the click. We have to help our clients think about their sites themselves and help them optimize the user experience, identify a conversion metric, and channel the users into that conversion—oh and by the way, help them track that metric and determine what users are doing and learn whether or not the $ they are spending on banner ads is really worthwhile. Those are foundational strengths of the web channel, and if they are ignored, why bother being on the web in the first place?

I have a colleague who has a colorful way of expressing displeasure with something. He’ll say, “That looks like a**” (using a term referring to the gluteal area, what the Hawaiians call the okole).

Well, that’s how I feel about banner ads when they are not properly supported on the web site receiving end. They are not banner ads, just banner a** when that happens.

Push Me, Pull You

In the interactive space, Push vs. Pull marketing means something a little different than in the traditional sense. I like to define Push as any tactic that thrusts itself into the user’s consciousness. In other words, by its action it causes the user to (hopefully) become aware of your products/service and hopefully will compel her to consider you and influence her to purchase.

Push works best when you have a captive audience, i.e. one that is unlikely to pull away from the media when your message is on. The old school model of broadcast television is the classic place for push, defined this way; a TV viewer in the 1960s would be unlikely to change channels during a commercial break, especially when watching a very popular show, although she might head to the bathroom. Thus anybody left in the room is almost certainly going to be exposed to the commercial.

Airing that commercial in a movie theater, before the Coming Attraction trailers, is another example. The audience literally has no place else to go (except to the popcorn stand or the bathroom).

Think about the language used with TV commercials; it can be pretty aggressive. Creative is expected to “grab” attention. A spot that is considered to have done well is said to have “killed.” You have a “target” audience.

On the other hand, a Pull tactic is set up to respond to interest on the part of the user, not to generate it. The content “pulls” the interested users to it.

Using this definition, it is easy to see that the web is really a Pull phenomenon. Participation with a web site is solely at the discretion of the user. All it takes is one click and that user is gone; you cannot force her to do anything at all, much less stick around on your lame site if it doesn’t meet her needs or answer her questions.

Push tactics don’t work on the web because the user has all the control. All she has to do is click her mouse and she’s gone to another site. And unlike the TV viewer of old, she has an infinite variety of other places to go, and she may not ever come back.