by Gary Welz
Internet Advertising V: Buying Advertising
In a past column I discussed advertising from the perspective of the sellers. The other side of the advertising equation are the buyers. While more ads are being bought, buyers are becoming much more discriminatory about what they buy and how much they pay for it.The first "unit" of Web advertising was the banner placed at the top of a page--an image with text that may have been linked to a sponsor's Web site. Although the size was not standardized, it was usually about 450 x 80 pixels and linked to the sponsor's home page. This was considered analogous to the full-page magazine ad and the 30-second TV spot. As rate cards were developed for Web publications they frequently compared the cost per thousand or CPM of banners with the CPM of magazines or TV shows. But is a banner impression as effective at communicating a brand message as a magazine page or TV spot?
One of the most intense debates in the industry concerns the value of banners and the question of whether ad pricing should be based on the number of times users click on the banner and go to the sponsor's own pages. These are referred to as "clickthroughs" or just "clicks."
Publishers are not keen to tie their revenue to the number of clicks on an ad banner because they can't control clicks. They can guarantee a thousand impressions with a reasonable degree of certainty that it won't take forever to ring them up, they can't guarantee clicks with such confidence.
Advertisers, however, are not convinced that banners alone do them any good, at least not as much as magazine pages and TV spots. What can they do?
David Dowling of Grey Advertising believes that advertisers can't get a valuable message across with the present banner unit. He wants to identify relevant sites for his clients and "go above and beyond banners and buttons" to get more of a presence wherever he buys space.
Since the current ad unit is the banner, the best available option is to buy space based on "clickthroughs" to a more comprehensive message residing on the advertiser's or publisher's site.
Dowling acknowledges that clickthrough rates vary from banner to banner and site to site. He believes that increasing click rates is a shared responsibility between the advertiser and the publisher. He says that Grey is working closely with publishers to address ad unit creation, formatting, and positioning issues on an ongoing basis.
Grey wants to form "partnerships" with publications to create something of value for both parties.
Dowling believes that advertisers and publishers should jointly create and implement enhanced ad units that will provide value to consumers, advertisers, and publishers. He feels that click buys will become less important for image advertisers once publishers begin delivering comprehensive advertising messages directly to consumers as they are navigating through their site.
Another major figure in the Web media business is Jeff Minsky, Manager of Interactive Media for Ogilvy & Mather. Rather than disparaging banners altogether, he feels that they are a foundation on which to build a sponsorship program.
There may be times when paying by click is appropriate--such as in a direct response model. However, in general, by paying by click you say that the brand awareness is of no value, and we do not believe nor endorse that philosophy. There is certainly value in having your logo or brand message appear on the Web. What that value is is still a major industry discussion. But that discussion has taken place at the embryonic stage of every other medium as well, and is not unique to the Web.What do media buyers think is an achievable ratio of clickers to viewers? What will they pay per click? Neither Dowling nor Minsky will say because that gets into "proprietary information."
What do publishers think of this click thing? Bo Peabody, CEO of the alternative Web site Tripod, Inc., seems eager to take up Dowling's invitation to partnership:
We've all clicked on ads, and we've all passed some over. The point is: Some work, some don't. And we've all read magazine ads, and we've all skipped some over. The point is: some work, some don't. Rather than blaming the publishers for low click rates, the advertisers should rejoice in the fact that they now can collaborate with publishers to figure out exactly what works and what does not. No magazine can do that.However, David Hyman, Director of Advertising for Addicted to Noise, offers this retort to advertisers who think the greatest value resides in bringing people to their site:
I'll bet my booty that very few people will get past the first few pages of Nike's 1000+ page site.Levis might be the FIRST ONE TO GET IT. They have recently signed on as an advertiser to five sites on the Web that will debut in a few days. The viewer will see an enticing image that you can click on. The image will pull you to a really cool shockwave animation (all under 50k so they load quick) and you'll watch this really cool animation with the Levis logo and then, when it's over, it will pull you back to our site. NO LINKS.
I think this is a breakthrough. They get the branding and name affiliation with something they think is cool and/or is relevant to their target demographic. This is the first kind of "commercial" I've seen on the Web.
So a range of views persists and probably will for as long as the medium remains in its present low-bandwidth, mixed-media form. But how long will that be? Two years? One? Then everything changes again.
