Did you know that in 2012, advertisers spend 12 percent more on Internet advertising than last year? To translate that into dollar figure, check this out: In the US, online advertising spending in 2012 ranked second after TV advertising at $39 billion (TV ads: $64 billion.) That means online advertising spending has surpassed print ads!
With regard to those stats, businesses should focus on online advertising more. However, there are some issues businesses need to take a look into when advertising their products and services online.
Did you know two of the biggest challenges in online advertising? That’s right: wrong-targeted audience (thus click-throughs and conversion rates are lower than expected) and ad blindness (people are “trained” to avoid certain kind of ads due to their familiarity in sizes and locations.)
This is also an issue with emerging offline advertising medium such as business cards. Businesses can easily print business cards online with a popular printing company, there is also an issue of “blindness” here – typical business cards get thrown to the bin right away.
For publishers (like me!) those are also the same issues we need to address. The big question for both advertisers and publishers is: What kind of ads that people are actually want to see?
I search the web and found an infographic that can give you the big picture – let’s check out the infographic and then let’s talk about it in details, shall we?
So, let’s discuss about it!
Wow – I must say, the facts shown in the inforgraphic is quite a revelation!
First off, now we know that in the US, Google still has the biggest pie of the market share, with 44 percent. Yahoo!/Microsoft only gets 12.3 percent. The much-touted Facebook ad? 3.1 percent. However, as social and mobile trends are growing quickly, you need to understand that what works on Facebook could also work with other social media sites and apps.
Let’s have a closer look at Facebook ads… Now, a whopping 72 percent of Facebook app users want captivating and interactive ad units. They also want more control on which ads they want to see: 63 percent say they want to initiate the video ads or at least having them shown during a natural break (I’d go with them – it’s annoying seeing ads on the apps I am using all the time.)
Now let’s combine those stats with these insights on consumers’ preference toward ads: The majority of consumers surveyed want ads’ messages to be tailored to their personal interest, specific to their location and relevant to what they are doing.
Okay – from those findings we can consider that it’s probably safe to say that non-personalised online banners and pre-roll video ads suck when it comes to social savvy and digital nomad audience. Quite a decent conclusion we have here, don’t you think?
Takeaway
So, here are two takeaways for you:
Advertisers: It’s crystal clear – you should invest on ads that are interactive and compelling. Static banners are getting less and less favourable, especially when it comes to social and mobile audience. Furthermore, you should display ads the way your audience want for better impressions and conversion rates.
Publishers: Stop slapping ads all over the place, especially above the fold! That’s not promoting good user experience, and with Google, you can have your site’s ranking penalised for spamming your site visitors with ads everywhere. Moreover, you might want to display ads on non-typical locations (e.g. not on sidebar and/or header) and in a way acceptable to your audience (ouch – I gotta work on this, too!)
So, what do you think about the stats? Can you relate with them? What kind of ad or ad placement that works for you? Please share your thoughts by leaving a comment down below.
Ivan Widjaya
Online ads (should be) fun to view!