“Catch the Monkey” the banner ad says as the rascally monkey slides from side to side. Who can resist?
Online banner ads,those rectangular advertising strips that pop up all over the Internet,became popular in the mid-’90s. But as click-through rates have fallen, some say banner ads aren’t effective anymore, while others say they still have their uses.
By the late ’90s, banners had fallen out of favor and were considered a nuisance to users. Software makers even designed user-software to screen them out. But as connections continue to get faster, the dreaded download times of banners will continue to decrease, removing one of their main drawbacks.
Banner ads are effective because they can be finely targeted, said Kevin Flanagan, vice president of marketing for Broadband Interactive Group (BIG), a new-media company. BIG likes banners so much it bought into keywords like “surf” and “skateboarding” on Yahoo!’s site, so when a user punches in “surf” a banner ad for BIG’s Bluetorch.com pops up along with a list of surf-oriented web sites.
“The success rate has been very, very high,” Flanagan said.
But a banner on Yahoo! is not the same as a banner on any old site. Yahoo!,an early Internet leader,along with AOL and MSN host 45% of all Internet advertising, according to Forrester Research, a Cambridge, Mass., research firm.
It is estimated that about 50% of a firm’s online-advertising budget is spent on banner ads. And dot-coms aiming for immediate brand awareness have a whole lot of money to spend on marketing, especially during the pre-IPO stage. About 30% to 50% of a dot-com’s overall budget is spent on marketing, which can be anywhere from $1 million to $50 million per year.
While click rates may be down on banners, they’re still effective, especially when they are part of a branding program, said Craig Holland, president of Irvine-based Nine Dots.
When banners first appeared, their effectiveness was measured by how many times users clicked on the ad. But that’s changed.
“We actually don’t even care about click rates,” Holland said. What’s important now is how many users follow through by doing things like signing up for a contest or downloading a file.
Toni Alexander, president of InterCommunications, a Newport Beach-based agency, said banner ads have a place, but are not necessarily the best way to advertise on the net.
What businesses seem to desire more than anything else now, she said, is a web site.
“Web sites are the first thing they want done,” she noted.
So InterCommunications is exploring ways of getting more revisits to Web sites.
Others, like Allan Karl, vice president of Costa-Mesa based Priscomm, are even more dismissive of banner ads, saying they’re “dead.” Karl, who likens banner ads to highway billboards, prefers other Net-advertising methods, like opt-in e-mail marketing,in which users sign up to receive info on services or products they’re interested in,and sponsorships.
Laguna Niguel-based GoShip.com, a dot-com established in 1994 has $3 million to spend on marketing this year. Cathy Taylor, director of marketing, said she prefers print ads, trade shows and opt-in email marketing.
“I will invest in that extensively,” she said.
As for banner ads, she said, “I’m not convinced banners bring a lot back.” n
