The way people interact with the online space is different from other mediums so why are publishers still pushing standardised advertising space? Where’s the online ad model going?
You can’t copy/paste ATL strategy online and expect the same results
Traditionally, creative and media agencies have used a shot gun media approach in order to gain consumer interest/eyeballs. Make the message relevant to our consumer and get it in front of as many people as possible. It’s worked for a long time. Some of the sting has recently been taken out of this method given it’s harder to tell where people spend their time now days. With the CTR rates of today it’s obvious that the model is not winning favors with the online community. When was the last time you clicked on a banner ad from your private email account… a week… a month… ever? Can you name 3 banner ads you’ve seen in the past 2 weeks? If you can answer both with relative ease then you’d be in the minority. The big problem is that media agencies make their fees on a rebate from the media buy. So the more ad impressions they sell, the more money they make… why bother changing?
The model needs to change
So how do we update our ATL mates model to work for us digital marketers wanting to make a buck?
Firstly, enter contextual advertising systems which website text for keywords that trigger the system to send predetermined ads. Used in search engine results page, contextual systems show ads based on users search words. This model has been extremely successful for search engines and brought the monetization of search. This models ability to deliver relevant advertising and the consumer point of interest has meant search dominates both Australian and global online advertising investment.
In order to target consumers when they’re NOT searching, enter behavioral targeting systems, which collect information on a person’s Web browsing history, usually by way of cookies. Given the European Union’s Directive 2002/58 on privacy and electronic communications, and pending US legislation restricting the use of cookies, behavioral targeting campaigns via cookies can no longer be seen as a valuable investment. Additionally, home computers are oftentimes shared, and if cookies are enabled, users get to see ads directed by other user’s cookies. Again, badly targeted advertising can be a nuisance for the user, and a waste of advertising dollars.
Behavioral targeting is technique used by online publishers and advertisers to increase the effectiveness of their campaigns. Behavioral targeting uses information collected on an individual’s web browsing behavior such as the pages they have visited or the searches they have made to select which advertisements to be displayed to that individual.
Enter the semantic web
The semantic web, or web 3.0 will hopefully pave the way for successful advertising means showing the right product to the right person at the right time. The semantic Web puts data into semantic formats on the fly, and targets ads based on the meaning of data with a high degree of accuracy. But to explain semantic web or web 3.0, let’s get a handle on how it’s evolved.
Web 1.0 was basic connection via the Internet, where information flowed one way and was rarely updated, an online version of the company brochure. Web 1.0 ended in 2001 with the crash of the dot com era that some estimate cost in excess of $5 Trillion.
Web 2.0 saw the Wall Street investors leave and the geeks take over – ‘web for us, where we started using the Internet to talk to one another’. This interactivity generated billions of dollars in data – virtually for free. Though some great online properties have emerged in the true essence of web 2.0, think facebook, myspace, bebo etc etc their popularity far outweighs their ability to make money. The Web 2.0 lesson:
Web 3.0 offers detailed data exchange to every point on the Internet, with a machine in the middle. Some experts have been quoted to say web 3.0 will be the monetization of web 2.0.
Web 3.0 has with 3 key characteristics that differentiates it from previous web models:
1. Smart internetworking
The Internet itself will get smarter and become a gathering tool to execute relatively complex tasks and analyze collective online behavior.
2. Seamless applications
Web 3.0 theories suggest that all applications will fit together; a continuation of open source where all applications will be able to communicate. APIs (Application Protocol Interface) will read data from any platform and provide a single point of reference.
3. Distributed databases
Web 3.0 will need somewhere to store very complex and memory intensive information. It will require ontologies to establish relationships between information sources; search millions of nodes, and scan billions of data records at once.
Conclusion
The next stage of online advertising will see an era where advertising ads (no pun intended) to consumer’s lives with relevant information at the right time rather than being 1 in 4,000 distraction messages that bug them throughout the day.
