How to make web advertising work

Irrelevant and intrusive online ads can prejudice consumers against a brand, so Derick Hill, MD of online permission-based marketing company PDV, offers advice on how to get web advertising right.

People hate being forced to waste time - and this is particularly true when they are interacting via the internet where speed is king and attention spans are shorter than for other media.

Therefore, for those browsing the net to buy, seek information or just for fun, being forced to view the irrelevant material contained in a barrage of unwanted ads before, during and after a website visit is a major aggravation.

Far from persuading people to buy the products being promoted, intrusive ads can severely prejudice the consumer's view of the brands displayed.

It's not even the annoying and intrusive formats sometimes used in such ads which cause this brand aversion, it's when they contain messages which are totally irrelevant to the context in which they appear that they create the maximum counter-reaction.

If an ad is relevant, the recipient may be pleased that it caught her/his eye, but anything else is regarded as a time-waster which is - and deserves to be - ignored.

Irrelevant ads are likely to do more harm than good both for the advertiser paying for them and the site displaying them.

This is why relevance needs to be the priority.

There is no point in pouring money and talent into the creative interpretation if the targeted audience couldn't care less about the content of the resultant masterpiece.

The trick is to find ways of making ads relevant and the first step is for advertisers to understand their customers and their interests.

Then, just as with direct mail promotions, they need to discover where more of these types of people can be found.

The next step is to ask these people for permission to communicate with them and listen and respond to any comments they may make.

The internet's greatest marketing advantage is its ability to provide a wealth of instant consumer behaviour data.

It is the advertising industry's responsibility to collect this data and use it to understand consumers and construct products and advertising campaigns which match their changing needs.

Advertisers will then be in a position to show people things they know will interest them, at a time and in a format the recipient is happy with.

By exploiting the internet's advantages in this way, they can produce a genuine win-win situation.

It is also a good idea to recognise and reward people for their attention.

For example, a simple site like www.thedailydraw.com encourages players to specify their interest areas and play a free GBP1m lottery every day in return for seeing ads and special offers on their selected subjects.

The advertisers pay for an attentive and receptive audience and the consumers are being respected and rewarded for looking at ads which interest them.

If a person is already browsing a particular website it is easy to judge what to serve them.

But where no established behavioural pattern is evident, it is necessary to use information about their past behaviour to profile them, in the same way the traditional lifestyle mailing list companies profiled their clients' current customers to identify lookalikes on the lists.

Some advertisers will be in a position to target advertising based upon historical knowledge of individual customers and this process is much stronger than a one-size-fits-all broadcast ad.

But in the real-time media, the age of the data used is critical to success and no amount of analysis will make up for outdated information which can ruin the targeting.

As much data as possible needs to be collected in real time or very close to it.

Although some information never changes or becomes outdated, for example, date of birth and gender; this is the kind of data needs to be purchased or collected only once.

Most other customer and prospect information needs to be constantly verified and updated and the simplest way to do this is to ask those who visit a site what can be done to help them.

Marketers should accept nothing less than personal, individual data.

Just because I sit in the same office as my colleagues does not mean we have the same likes, dislikes, disposable income or taste.

People tend to make online buying decisions as they browse, so it is sensible to ask them: "Are you looking to buy or just seeking information?" If they're only after information, you can ask what they're seeking and use their responses to explain the benefits of top-of-the range items to try to increase their spend.

When they later return to the site, this information can be used to correctly direct them to the items you know will interest them.

Respectful and helpful questions are almost always welcomed and data collected and used in real time is always more responsive and indicative than older data.

Successful web advertising is permission-based and relevant; encourages feedback; listens to response and acts on it; and creates the opportunity for real-time communication.

Back to top