Famous4 Blog
2007 Issue 4 - Online Advertising - Brand, Brand, Brand, Not Just Click Throughs Say The Experts
Experts argue that online advertising has been held back because of its tradition as a direct response mechanism with click throughs from an ad directly . However, this is changing with a trend emerging where branding is becoming the driving force from organisations in conjunction with their agencies and creatives.
Online users have become more sophisticated and are actively filtering out requests to 'click here' on banners and skyscraper ads. As a result, clickthroughs have become more sophisticated. For example, clicking doesn't automatically throw users to another site; instead the message or interaction is done within the ad space on the home site. Many more traditional brands are moving online with the realisation that you can have an ad with a branding message in it that the user isn't actually invited to click on. The net result is that the message will hopefully be lasting and build a better perception of the brand ready for when they are in buying mode.
In the future, there is great scope to develop branding online further with behavioural targeting techniques ie the ability to track individual interests according to what sites are visited. With this information, brands will have the weaponry to target better and be more relevant.
Factfile:
- Only in every 500 banners are clicked on (Source: Adtech)
- The most successful online branding campaign by webhosting firm, Net4Now saw an increase in awareness of its advertising by 90% (Source: Dynamic Logic research)
- Online display advertising (nearly all with clickthrough potential) was worth £453 million in 2006 - up 35% from 2005
- Online classified and search advertising grew by 45% and 42% respectively in the same period
- Money spent on online advertising is 2.4 times more effective than the same amount of money spend offline (Source: A study by ad agency, Carat for the Internet Advertising Bureau)
- Spending on internet advertising in Europe will more than double over the next five years and represent almost a fifth of total media budgets by 2012, according to forecasts from American research group Forrester.