Informative Advertising: A Better Way
By Paul "the soaring" Siegel
Advertisers have tried many approaches on the Web. When one
approach bombed, advertisers tried a new one. The latest is
"contextual advertising." Sounds sophisticated. But it will
die like all the others. Why? Because none of these fanciful
techniques take into account the new online reality: The
visitor is boss.
A new approach, Informative Advertising, does.
The Advertising Cemetery
Since inception of the commercial Web, advertisers have been
busy trying innumerable techniques. I look briefly at the
major ones:
1 - PUSH - Early in the game they decided to send news
together with advertising directly to the Net user. Did not
get off the ground.
2 - BANNERS - At first banners seemed to work. But after
awhile they faded away. The cemetery is full of them.
3 - ANIMATION - You still see animation, though not as much
as was prevalent at first. It will die soon.
4 - FLASH - This seems to be the time for Flash. But it is
so irritating it will die soon too.
5 - POP-UPS - You try to visit a site and up pops a window
with an ad. Annoying. I don't give it much time to live.
6 - POP-UNDERS - Instead of the window popping up in front
of the window you want, you see the popped window afterwards.
This too will die.
The Latest Approach: Contextual Advertising
Now advertisers have gotten the brilliant idea of grabbing the
visitor's attention while he or she is in a related situation.
They say that if a person is at a search engine entering a
keyword, this is a good place to advertise a product or service
that fits under this keyword. This particular approach, it
seems to me, is an excellent form of advertising. It has been
done successfully by Google and other search engines. Some call
this "contextual advertising." But I have a better name for it,
as I will show below.
Here is an example of "contextual advertising." An outfit called
EZula sells keywords. But instead of supplying a search engine
EZula distributes a program called TOPtext. When a user of
TOPtext visits a site, he sees highlighted words, which enable
him to jump to sites that have purchased ads for these keywords.
These words are not highlighted by the website owner. They are
highlighted by TOPtext. The jumps take the visitor, not to a
site chosen by the website owner, but to a competitor site. Do
you think competitors will put up with this? More important, do
you think the visitor, when he finds out about this "contextual
stealing," will trust the advertiser for anything? This is the
most outrageous form of advertising invented so far.
Wells Fargo Bank, I hear, is one such "contextual advertiser."
Does this increase your trust in Wells Fargo?
The Big Blunder
Why do advertisers, who were so effective offline, not know
what to do online? Because the tricks they developed over the
years to ensnare the consumer do not work online. They do not
work because the environment has changed drastically. Before
the vendor was in control; today, online, the consumer is in
control. Before the vendor could play on the emotions of the
more or less "captive" consumer; today the consumer has an
infinite number of choices. Before ads were effective by
themselves; today you must get the consumer to do something - click.
In other words, the consumer is boss. Advertising, like
everything else on the Net must be helpful to the consumer.
Using wile to catch the consumer will not work. Annoying the
consumer with spam messages, or even with opt-out messages,
will not work. Stealing "context" from competitor sites
decreases consumer trust, and will not work.
Informative Advertising
Let us get back to advertising that works. What Google and
other search engines do is sell ads related to keywords. When
your chosen keyword is picked by a user, your website message
appears on the right side of the results page under Sponsored
Links. Other search engines list them under Preferred Sites
or similar headings.
These successful ads are characterized as follows:
> They do not try to ensnare you
> They do not try to interrupt you
> They do not try to hurt others
> They are obviously ads
> They are related to your current interest
> They are INFORMATIVE
The last item is key:
> THEY ARE INFORMATIVE!
Good online advertising is INFORMATIVE ADVERTISING. It does
not try to manipulate the visitor in any way. It earnestly
tries to be helpful. It earnestly tries to build trust. It
earnestly tries to steer the consumer to a site, but only if
the advertiser feels the site may be helpful to the consumer.
Of course context is important. Context is one way the
advertiser knows he may be helpful to the visitor. But
context is not enough. The important consideration is how
you use context: to exploit or to help.
Everyone agrees that newsletter advertising works. Why? Not
merely because the context is right, although this is
important. Newsletter advertising works because, for the most
part, it is Informative Advertising.
Summary
The old-fashioned advertising, which culminates today with
"contextual advertising," or as I call it "contextual
stealing," is dying. The best type of advertising - today on
the Net, but tomorrow off the Net, as well - is Informative
Advertising. Informative Advertising is part of an integrated
marketing strategy called Helpfulness Marketing.
About The Author
Paul -the soarING- Siegel is a provocative Internet speaker and author of HELPFULNESS MARKETNG,
a book stressing learning, cooperation and community. To subscribe to the newsletter, LearningFOUNT by
sending blank email to LearningFOUNT-subscribe@topica.com
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