Does Digital Advertising Leave a Bad Taste in Your Mouth?

I came across a short blurb from Dianna Dilworth over on DMNews that talked about an experience she had on NYTimes.com.

I loaded the NYTimes.com this morning and as I read the headline “As Haitians flee, the dead go uncounted,” I was interrupted by an expandable banner ad that loaded and took over half of the page. As my brain was thinking about the poor victims in Haiti, I was interrupted by a new TV show called “White Collar,” the ad unit literally taking over and pushing down on the photos of the victims. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth and I wondered where the disaster tag was on the NYTimes today and why they are serving ads that seem very punishing against the content.

We’re Stuck in the 60′s

The answer here is pretty simple. As an industry, we can’t seem to get right with the fact that in order to engage a user, we have to present something that’s relevant to that user. We’re stuck in the 60′s, when interruptive advertising was the way to reach 80% of an audience, and we did that by running a TV commercial on 3 networks. Today, you’d have to run that same commercial on 100 channels all day long to have a chance to reach even a fraction of that audience.

Intrusion versus Engagement

The page takeovers, pop-ups, fly-ins, fly-outs, whoop-de-doos, and whatever other intrusive approaches we’re using just ain’t working. You can prove that at your next group gathering by polling the crowd with the question, “How many of you click on the banner ads on Websites you visit?” Follow that up with another question, sure to get you blank stares and perhaps even a chuckle or two: “Name a brand and the related offer you saw in online banner adverts today”. Forget the fact that advertisers will spend money on this type of advertising simply because they’ve done it since 1994.

It’s The User, Stupid

We’re busier today than ever and the amount of commercial messaging being thrust in our faces at any given time would be overwhelming, to say the least, if only we were paying attention. But we’re not, because most of it isn’t relevant. The NYTimes.com and a select group of other publishers with the expendable cash for a membership have jumped on the OPA bandwagon, employing larger, intrusive creatives that, according to an OPA press release:

…reflect the publishers’ desire to achieve four key objectives that will guide the evolution of online display advertising into its next phase:

• Inspire creativity and high-quality advertising: Develop display units that will inspire a creative renaissance in high-quality advertising by providing a larger canvas for creativity, content and functionality.
• Provide a greater share of voice for the advertiser: Increase the relative proportion of advertising space (in a single unit) to editorial content and, where possible, run fewer but more captivating ads on the page.
• Introduce a measurement to capture impact: Develop a metric that emphasizes the impact creative advertising can have on Web viewers while preserving the Internet’s well-established ability to engender response.
• Enhance interactivity to build user engagement with brands: Offer a broad range of interactivity built into units such as video players, lead capture and advertiser content that will be sharable and have permalinks to spotlight and encourage the best in creativity, while weaving the advertisements deeper into the social fabric of the Web.

Sadly, there’s no mention of the content consumer (the Website visitor/user) here. It’s 1960′s thinking. Interruptive. Advertiser-focused, with no consideration for the user or the experience. It’s the same reasons many traditional agencies are having trouble ‘getting’ and ‘doing’ digital.

The Times They Are a-Changin’

The consumer and her content consumption preferences are changing (read a print newspaper, lately?) We need to understand what these changes mean and also get a better handle on how we use choose and use digital technology.

Here’s an example I like to use when working with clients who can’t understand why their consumer engagement numbers are so low:

If I’m visiting your Website, I’ve navigated to a page to view content. I self-selected that page. I know what the content is about and with proper content tagging, you know what content I’m viewing (link to semantic tagging). It’s relatively easy for you to show me a relevant banner advertisement or pre-roll (or for the super-greedy publishers out there, a mid-roll and post-roll). It can and should be related to the content. If it’s relevant, I might actually take the time to consume the offer and possibly take action, instead of ignoring the adverts or worse yet, being totally turned off as Dianna described.

There’s Hope (But Remember, ‘Hope’ is Not a Strategy)

The issues we’re having are pretty basic and can be easily remedied. Here are a few suggestions:

• Put your users first. Really. Users first, advertisers second (technology last).
• Stop promoting incompetent people within your organization who don’t have the experience or vision to make things happen in the digital space (leaders – you know you’re guilty of this. knock it off.)
• Hire really smart, kick-ass digital business/technology people with vision and ideas to help you take advantage of all the great digital technologies out there you can buy and build to create better, more engaging experiences for your users (please read that two more times).
• Listen to the really smart, kick-ass digital business/technology people you hire.
• Embrace the present and leave the 60′s behind. It’s pretty bright outside the cave, but with some really good sunglasses, you can do it.
• Listen to the really smart, kick-ass digital business/technology people you hire.
• Use your head and follow your gut. Reject propaganda from organizations like the OPA. “Inspiring a Renaissance of Creative Advertising on the Web”. Geez…what does that mean and why on earth would you depend on the OPA or any other trade organization to help you do it?
• Listen to the really smart, kick-ass digital business/technology people you hire.

OK, I’m off the soapbox. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave a comment below and follow me on Twitter, here.