The Joss Group

So, Click Throughs Aren't So Important After All? Watch the New Spin on Online Advertising

I have never had good luck with online advertising--the kind you do with Google and the like and now LinkedIn, etc. By luck I mean sales, money coming in the door, cash flow improvement...I thought it was perhaps just the kind of services and products we provide: high-end, targeted market, B2B and so forth. Nope. Turns out the Emperor has no clothes even when you are talking B2C. More and more I am seeing reports of how clicks in online ads do not "convert" (turn into) sales for many companies, products, and services, which tallies quite nicely with my own experience.

So, the newest and latest spin on why companies should continue to spend money on such advertising is what magazines and newspapers have been saying for years about print advertising, especially display advertising: getting the eyes on the prize is what matters most. Only in Web-speak the terms are "ad viewability" and "hover time." These matter more than clicks, sign-ups, and purchases. Really now? If that is the case, then why not a big, beautiful, full-color print ad?

 

 

 

 

Musings about the Future of Digital Advertising

I have been amused lately by watching the full court press Google is doing to get small businesses to use its free Web site development services. I have seen the ads in print (oh, my, Google using print to advertise?? The world must be ending.), heard them on the radio, got something in the mail about it, even got news via mail about a Webinar Google was sponsoring, but I have not seen much on Google itself about it. Interesting. Could it be that Internet advertising alone is not effective enough for Google itself to get the job done?

Note: I am not saying ads on the Web are going to go away. We have the Web. It is a communication medium in many ways, so people are going to use it for advertising. But, I do not think, and have not thought for a long time now, Internet or online advertising is any more effective than print advertising. It is just another way to try to get people to pay attention to what you do.

 

The iPad Wow Factor--Flash in the Pan?

I read an interesting eMarketer article today about how full-color ads on the iPad seem to boost purchase intent (as in, give up some money) compared to print ads. The study, done by Alex Wang, PhD of the University of Connecticut, was sponsored by Adobe.

Participants were shown a print or iPad version of an ad in the May 2010 issue of Wired and then responded to questions about the ads they had seen. The participants read five articles and saw seven ads from the issue.

Bottom line: people who viewed the interactive version of the ad were more engaged and reported being more interested in buying the product than people who viewed the static version of the ad.

The executive summary characterizes the participants as younger people interested in, and familiar with, technology: "The study sample included males and females with various ethnic backgrounds. There were 29 male participants (45%) and 36 female participants (55%) with an average age of 22 years. Among the participants, 72% of them made less than $25,000, whereas 14% of them made more than $50,000. In terms of education, 76% of them had at least some college education. In terms of ethnicity, 45% of them were Caucasian, whereas 26% of them were Hispanic. While 14% of them were African American, 5% of them were Asian."

Overall, the interactive version got much higher marks than the static version. Not surprising, since we know interactivity and novelty boosts attention. What would be more convincing to me, as a publisher, would be the results of this type of research over time. In other words, once the novelty of the device (which many of these participants probably cannot afford to buy) wears off, does the difference between the two platforms (iPad and paper) even out or even flip the other way? I am pretty sure it would. Nice to have this info for now, though.

You can read the executive summary of the report and findings by clicking here.