Tattoo Projects Born to Blog

July 23, 2010

Internet Advertising: a work in progress

The Internet is a relatively new medium for advertisers and is still unknown territory in some respects. After the World Wide Web’s start in 1989, advertisers have come a long way, but there is still a long way to go. It is now 2010 and advertising still trying to crack the code on Internet advertising.

 

We have come a long way since the days of bombarding users with pop-up ads. Our understandings have been evolving just as fast as the Internet itself, and realizations such as content is paramount are now fully integrated. Users go to sites to view the content, not advertisements. Ads need to be relevant to the user’s interests or they will be viewed as interruptions. The idea of ads becoming a part of the experience is part of the holy grail of online advertising: behavioral targeting. Advertising media such as TV and radio only allow you to target based on demographic, psychographic or geography. With the new interactivity of the Internet, targeting based on behavior is possible. Past actions such as purchases or web history can compiled to determine what ads you will find relevant.

 

The Internet opens so many doors to advertisers, but there are still many failings. First and foremost, the metrics for monitoring the success of an advertisement are not accurate and aren’t even able to gauge the true exposure the ad is getting. Users may be on a page that has an ad on it, but they do not notice it. They may be clicking the same ad more than once. Also 16% of Internet users are responsible for 80% of clicks on ads, which may be a problem because the 16% tend to be the lower income individuals that may not be targeted for the advertisement.

 

World Web Network (WWN), a French technology company, is currently trying to bring their unique solution to the USA. WWN has been working to overcome the failure of the metrics for years and has recently unveiled their new metric: Brand Exposure Duration (BED). This revolutionary new system will precisely measure the exposure of banner ads. As opposed to counting the number of clicks it gets, it calculates the total amount of time that the ad was on an active user’s screen. BED will help people find the most efficient ad placement as well as allow agency to make changes to maximize the viewing duration.

 

Tags: advertising, industry

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