Advertising is the most well known and most popular form of marketing. Advertising has been around for hundreds of years and it has been used to encourage or manipulate people to be attracted towards a product or service, the advertiser that is trying to sell or pass a message needs to be persuasive while trying not to cross the fine line of being annoying.
The internet advertising world is full with too many examples of advertising forms that are aggressive, not user-friendly and just plain annoying.
It is a long list that includes the common Popup Banners, The Screaming Audio Banners, and Hidden in the text advertising and much more. The worst part about all these forms of advertising is that most of the time they are not related to the content that is in front of us. For example: an ad for a luxury car pops up while reading articles about how to make cool cupcakes.
Why does this happen? There is a myth that this kind of advertising is good. In today’s world and especially in the internet domain, there is a lot of “Noise”. This so called noise creates a situation where we, the users automatically screen and close most of the ads that we encounter in a matter of milliseconds. This routine becomes a daily annoying task, it is a hassle to scroll through web pages and “fight” the annoying ads that constantly “jump” on our screen.
So how can advertising become a good service for the users?
It is pretty simple, if the ads that appear are subtle in size and color this already is one step towards being less annoying. The second thing that has to happen is to match the advertisement to the related text. There are many ads a publisher can place on a webpage, but only content related ads will provide the users with relevant information that is not annoying and sometimes even helpful.
A good ad does not scream out loud with audio, it does not take half your page, and it is always with a relevant image that fits the written content on the page.
Advertisers can create emphasis on getting the word out, while still providing internet users with an added value and useful service. This will create more views-to-clicks and in turn create more mutual profit for the advertiser and the publisher’s site.
Posted by Avishai Sam Bitton, Publisher Success Manager