Marketing is a huge part of our culture, you get ads on television, radio, in the mail, on billboards, even in the sky. It’s inevitable it would find its way to the Internet as well. But the key difference is how easily interactive the advertisements are online. Banner ads do not have to simply be magazine ads (although there a plenty that just show attractive people using products online too). With a little code they transform banners on pages into experiences where you could do anything from shoot a duck, participate in trivia, to control a dirt bike. This is powerful, as the user is more immersed, more likely to remember the product, or at least visit your web site.

But a constant flow of absurd ideas and no substance can lead to the ignoring of banner ads completely. Too much attention-grabbing becomes annoyance real fast. Ads do not need to flash repeatedly that I’m a winner, nobody gives away prizes for being the 1,457,023rd person to click past their ad. The banners that take over your screen and need to be closed before viewing the web site removes enjoyment from my web browsing process, and I can begin to associate that with the product. Or the constant trick ads: after you know that you’d have to sign up for 5 credit cards in order to get a “free” iPod Nano you NEVER want to visit one of those sites again. And yet they appear all over the web, announcing their presence through your speakers, with all four embedded on the page playing their audio at once.

It is little wonder that the average click-through rate is around 0.5%. People begin to tune these banner ads out, even the less Net-savy grandmothers who clicked on them in the beginning learn to stay away. There is a better way: web sites about products actually provide information to potential consumers, create a memorable experience in their mind, and increase your product’s recognition. People visiting a web site are much less likely to feel cheated or tricked because they could have found it searching the web or heard from another source that it is a good web site to visit. And what a great way to advertise your product: to have a web site that a person likes so much that they tell people (as someone they can trust) that they should also check it out. It is hard to imagine a nicer way of advertising than spreading around your concept virally without the cost of a multi-media ad campaign, and through a growing and impassioned fan base.

And in the future hopefully web sites will grow even more immersing, utilizing new technology that stimulates more senses. Imagine a little box next to your computer emitting a web site-related smell, or wearing virtual reality gloves that can change temperature and textures inside on your hands. Or in the distant future after we outgrow advertisements completely and start getting chips implanted in our brains that manipulate our emotions even more precisely and efficiently. Then “You could win a free iPod Ultimatron” could be your own inner voice (playing four times at once).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 10:00 am and is filed under Dynamic Persuasion, rantings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.