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gazette
Issue # 212 (09-15-2004)
New Blood |
| Johnny's Ramblings |
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What's the next big thing? It seems like it's been a while since something completely new and radical came along on the Internet Advertising / Marketing front. Have we explored all of the logical avenues? Is it time to come back full circle? Online companies, ourselves included, are constantly finding ways to drive up revenues. It's especially tough on sites such as Virtual Promote, where we don't have anything to "sell" from a retail perspective. Yes, we do have some premium offerings, but the lion's share of our revenues come from advertising. The past few years, we've seen advertising models and methods run the gamut -- from being almost hidden, to completely "in your face." What started as a simple 468x60 image has given way to gigantic 800 pixel wide, browser dominators. Have you been to a Web site where you get a full-screen "commercial" that you have to watch before actually getting into the Web site that you came to visit? Have you actually watched the commercial... or did you just leave? We've seen the annoying pop-up ads, the supposedly less annoying pop-under ads, windows that launch when you leave a Web site, all manner of link exchanges, 404 page advertising, and people who buy old domains and throw up generic search engines that seem to live forever in your browser. We've seen the new trend in plain text ads (Google Adsense) and all sorts of inline advertising, such as that offered by Vibrant Media's IntelliText. All of these ideas were formulated with one thing in mind... to drive traffic to the advertiser, generate a lot of money for the advertising agent, and send a trickle of that down the Webmaster who's actually showing the ads. The other commonality to all of these advertising types is that not one of them is friendly... either to the Web surfer or to the Webmaster. Surfers have to deal with the ads in real time. They have to look at them (or past them), move them, install software to suppress them, and read around them to simply get to the nuts and bolts of what they're on the Internet for in the first place. Webmasters are forced into a spot where they have to design their Web sites to look good, read well, and yet still be able to fit the ads in. I'm personally tired of designing Web sites around ads, aren't you?
So, what's the answer? How can we as Webmasters make a decent income without having to design around an image whose purpose is to take our visitor away from us, without annoying our visitors in the process? We work too hard to get visitors to our Web sites to simply encourage them to leave the minute they arrive.Personally, I believe the answer to this question is simple. And by simple, I don't mean that the solution itself is simple, but rather the idea of "simple." Simplification of the process, the expectations, and of the implementation.Maybe, good old-fashioned sponsorships, backroom deals, and bartering are the real answer. Maybe a header that says "Virtual Promote's Search Engine Forums... brought to you by XYZ, Inc.", with a link to a page about XYZ on our Web site that then leads off to XYZ's Web site. Maybe instead of an annoying banner ad, we work internally to promote "XYZ," letting our visitors know that they help us make the site possible, and that because we are business partners, and have respect for their product/service, we recommend that you visit them. Mutual interests are served, the visitor isn't uncomfortable, and we all live happily ever after. Sure it's a pipe dream. But wouldn't it be nice to be able to make a decent living, design your Web site the way that you actually want to, and at the same time, not annoy and drive your visitors away or detract from your actual content? I think that if the thousands of programmers who spend their days trying to find new ways to inundate us with even more annoying ads were replaced by some old-school marketing guys who would make handshake deals over drinks, we'd all be better served. Technology and nifty- programming certainly has it's place, but maybe it's time to consider "simple and old school" as the way to venture forward... I think that the lesson we've all learned is that obtrusive and "in your face" advertising on The Internet does nothing to increase ROI. But what will ? Is passive, trust based advertising, rekindled from the 1950's a viable way to reach and hold onto an audience in the 2000's ? |
Read the Johnny's Ramblings section from the Last Issue or in the Following Issue
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