That Interweb

Media Buying Online: Just Like Traditional Buying Only More Onliney.

A quick note about online media buying. CPM and Reach and Frequency and all that jazz all exist with online buying. So does day parting, geotargeting, demographic targeting, etc. It's pretty cool actually just how focused you can get with an online media buy. It all comes down to being better able to deliver the right message to the right person at the right place at the right time. That can be very powerful. Just a thought.

Microsites. Worth the dough.

The other day I presented a microsite idea to a client. They loved it. They gushed about how it really spoke to their target in a new, exciting way. They were ready to go until they saw the price tag. Then they asked, “Why would we do this when banners are so much cheaper.” Dagger to the heart.

Digital marketing pros face these questions every day. Most clients are looking for an advertising campaign and simple banners are an advertising campaign. But what consumers are responding to are engagement campaigns.

Engagement campaigns get users involved in your idea rather than them simply viewing your idea. And the best engagement campaigns include rich-media banners, blogs, search, and most importantly some kind of site or microsite to tie it all together.

Here’s why microsites are integral to an engagement campaign:
• give banners a highly relevant place to click through to
• are deeper and more engaging than a simple landing page
• are easier to produce than a full site
• can be optimized for search engines
• are a bookmarkable destination
• provide 3-5 minutes of interaction time
• are sharable
• are non-perishable
• are available 24/7
• are extremely measurable leading to better learnings
• are discriminating
• have a variable CPM
• can have a better response rate
• open another door for users to find our main site

So, the next time you present a microsite, present it as an engagement campaign that will increase the client’s ROI and do far more for their business than a simple banner campaign. Then hold your breath and pray for a, “Yes.”

Untrusted? Ineffective? Sign us up!

There’s a new study from Nielsen that shows consumers don’t trust banner ads. Only 26% of people surveyed trusted the skinny little bastards. Only Text ads on mobile phones fared worse at 18%. I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked.

Who’s on top of the online heap? Online consumer opinions and blogs came in at 61%, followed by brand websites at 60%.

Banner ads also have a notoriously bad click-through rate, usually below 1%. So why do clients and account folk turn to these untrusted, ineffective blights so often when developing a web strategy? I have several theories:

1. Most agencies don’t know how to make money if they’re not marking up media. To these agencies, buying a ton of banner space is just like buying a ton of TV.
2. Banners are easily measurable and clients love them some metrics.
3. Clients, account folk, and media people don’t really understand the full capabilities of the web. Banner ads look like print (kind of) and thus are more comfortable to people unaccustomed to online marketing.
4. Clients believe the fact that you can “click” a banner ad means maybe, just maybe, a sale is around the corner.

The truth is, banner ads are nothing more than billboards on the internet. Sure they can be flashy, interactive, and clever billboards, but they’re still billboards. And just like billboards, they have a part to play in most marketing campaigns. Just not the lead role.

Printegration bad.

      
  (Absolute print ad – good)               (Absolute banner ad - great)

Every once in a while I get a call from someone on the traditional side asking me to help out on a web project. I get very excited by this because we have killer clients and my mind immediately starts churning out fun ideas.

But more often than not, I learn that the “web project” is really just a bunch of banner ads in support of a print and TV campaign. And they don’t want my fun ideas. All they want is for me to smash their print campaign into a dinky 728x90 banner format. To many traditional creatives and clients, this is called integration. I call it printegration and not only is it the wrong thing to do, I hate it.

Would you show a static print ad on TV for 30 seconds? Hell no. It would be mind numbingly boring, a woeful misuse of the medium and complete waste of money. Same thing with turning print into banner ads. Customers don’t watch boring. They don’t buy boring. You’re not going to get the end results you need for your client with boring. And you’re not going to hold on to your client by wasting their money.

The first thing to realize is that TV is captive audience. On TV, the show you’re watching is taken away and replaced with something new. You control whether you watch it or not but you don’t control when your original content comes back. You’re powerless.

There’s nothing forcing you to view a banner ad. It’s like a picture of your relatives on the wall next to your TV. You only see it if you choose to, otherwise you’re intently focused on the latest episode of Top Chef. You’re empowered.

Now, if your relatives went all Harry Potter in their picture, you’d certainly notice that, and probably get off the couch to investigate. That’s what you want from a banner ad.

When you create banner ads, do everything you can to make them interactive, noticeable, clever. Don’t rely solely on witty lines. Try some motion or sound. Do something, anything that pulls the user’s attention from the latest misadventures of Ms. Spears and to your message.

Check out the Absolute work above for how integration should be done.