BBC Article: Why online ads do not work

Why do most people ignore ads on the web, even if they are amusing or interesting, wonders technology analyst Bill Thompson. ........

Why online ads do not work

What are your thoughts?

Of course "I would say this", but I think Bill is talking out of his bottom.

It's true, that we do mentally block some/most online adverts, we also block out TV ads too.. how often have you seen an ad then thought afterwards "hang on, what product was that for ?"

We see good clickthru ratios still, so there are people looking at them, and then clicking on them.

The reason online advertising is less captivating is that the advert is shown alongside what you really want to be looking at..

If they ran Nescafe adverts in a strip underneath Coronation Street, you would ignore that too.

There are plenty of sites that have done very well out of online advertising, so it does work.

Seems to me hes trying to compare TV advertising to internet advertising. A bunch of penguins walking up the highstreet eating chocolate bars or a family of chimpanzees making a cuppa dont sell anything.. it does however make it memorable, but thats not selling anything.

Quote:

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Click here to tell us what you would like Bill Thompson to write about.[/quote]

How about telling me why Radio ads dont work on billboards next week.

I could have aload of naked birds pop up on my shopping site, yes it will be memorable ... but I dont think im gonna sell much

Replied (and stole part of Aquanukes comment to back it up)

Hes idea of an advert that works is purley based on one thing.. memorability. Did he back anything up with figures and profits?

Nope.

Alot of companies would say, "look, I dont want any bloody animals sitting around pretending to be people.. just make me an advert that sells my product so I can pay the bills!"

That was about the most pathectic and pointless article I've ever read. Obviously with hes good looks hes wasted in that department.. maybe they could transfer him to the health and beauty section ::lol:

i wrote a long email detailing how online ads are not just banners and how content is used to sell online, and that the TV medium is essentially a branding exercise but online the call to action is 'click and buy' rather than 'watch and remember'

It was quite good and I was quite proud of it, but the bbc probably wont publish it and i dont have a copy of it now.

The "news" article is 12 days old, so I suspect it may be a dead issue as far as the comments reviewing team is concerned.

The Reason why BBC online ads don't work is because they do not target them properly. It's all a bit hit and miss and just another reason why we dislike traditional advertising. Don't we just love the experts!.

J

I agree with all of your points.

The trouble is that he has given the article the wrong heading. It should have been 'Internet Ads aren't as effective as TV ads for branding' (Shock horror).

In fact he has given the reason in his article as to why Internet Ad's do not work for branding when he was going on about how when he's searching for something on the Internet he ignores the banner ads. But if there was text link on the page inviting him to see the product or information he was looking for then he would have clicked on it.

Duh!!!

Well...................... all I can say is that they do know how to recycle a story. This is a very similar article to one which they published by the same author back in 2002.


news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/techn...179141.stm

he was no better looking back then it seems