Web advertising
To understand online advertising, one must understand the different terms that are associated with online audience measurement; many are used incorrectly. As one who will practice online communication with a large audience, you should not make the same errors.
Audience measurements
Hits
- The total number of requests a server answers.
- One person viewing a single Web page could generate dozens or more “hits.”
- This is because most Web pages include several graphics and text files.
- Each item that is sent by the server is recorded in the log as one “hit.”
- Inaccurate measure of use.
Page Views
- A more accurate representation of usage, but still faulty.
- Every time a page and its parts are requested by a viewer, a “page view” is recorded.
- Unfortunately, a single Web user could easily generate dozens of “page views” from a single page, especially if that page has to be visited repeatedly for navigation.
Impressions
- Attempts to track visitors.
- Each visitor counted once, no matter how many page views.
- Most accurate measure of how many different people are exposed to an advertisement.
Unique visitors
- Like impressions, but counted once for each visit to the site, not the page.
- Cannot measure duration of visit but accurate representation of site traffic.
Click-through
- When a visitor clicks on an ad and is transferred to sponsor’s site.
- 2-3% click-through rate is considered very good.
- Advertisers pay for each click-through using CTR (click-through rate).
Types of online promotion
Social campaigns
- First seen in late 1990s; attempts to connect with younger tech-savvy audience and individual demographics.
- Elaborate creation, often interactive, depend on word-of-mouth, email forwarding to generate traffic, dependent on broadband adoption.
- Dove's Real Beauty campaign demonstrated social consciousness while building brand loyalty.
- Burger King’s subservient chicken (13.9 million unique visitors between April 2004 and Feb. 2005) used unique technologies to bring a massive audience.
- Burger King: Defriend people for a free "Angry Whopper."
Memes
- Ad campaigns be reconsidered by audience as a meme
- A meme is an idea that spreads from person to person.
- Like genes, the best memes spread the widest.
- Example 1: Old Spice guy
- From 2010 Super Bowl to Reddit
- Real-time exchange with audience through social platforms six months after Super Bowl.
- Meme generator continues campaign without effort from Old Spice
- Example 2: Most Interesting Man
Traditional display forms
- Banners: traditional format
- Origins in 1993; 468 x 60 pixels.
- Similarly, leaderboard (728 x 90 px).
- Flash- or animation-based; audience trained to ignored.
- Buttons: smaller banners
- Pop-ups (and unders)
- Origins in late 1990s; often employ “rich media” -- use of animation, sound, streaming video.
- Can fill bigger space than banner ads, allow greater possibilities with user interaction.
- Intrusive, prompted design of pop-up blockers.
- Interstitials: between pages
- Introduced in 1997; put on a separate Web. document when attempting to access content.
- Occupies entire screen for several seconds prior to showing content.
- Boxes: in content
- Usually ~ 250-400px wide, ~250-300px high.
- Placed inside content, difficult to ignore.
- Often Flash-based, interactive.
- Skyscrapers: vertical banners
- Usually appearing to the right of content, designed for wide monitors and page design.
- 600px tall; 120-300px wide.
- Use animations to attract attention.
- Hover ads: scripted
- Reaction to pop-up blockers.
- Use Javascript, DHTML, CSS to maintain position on page, regardless of scrolling.
Sponsorships
- Directly associated with site, “Brought to you by...”
- Million Dollar Homepage.
- Also known as “spam”: Undesirable search results.
- Little or no useful information, many advertisements.
- Contains contact information for contractors.
Email campaigns: "blasts"
- Subscription email for interested individuals.
- Unwanted, illegal = spam.
Google's contribution
- Advertising revenue has made Google massively profitable.
- The reason Google's model is dominant: use of simple text, which demands little download time, and its means of distribution, which is easier than traditional models.
- Its ads have proven successful, getting 4-5 times the industry standard of “clickthroughs.”
- Adwords: Search terms reveal customized advertising with results.
- Used to drive audience to an organization's site or campaign through hypertext.
- Adsense: Independent web publishers may embed Google's advertising on their pages.
- Plain text, easy to implement, provides profitable model for bloggers and independent publishers.
- Google has other formats as well.
Placement and revenue
Like audience measurement and forms of advertising, the means of distributing the content is unique to the site or medium.
Queue, static placement, search matching
- Most ads are “queued” -- rotating one after another as new visitors appear.
- Queued ads appears same number of instances, equal likelihood of an impression.
- Some sites sell static ad space on certain pages, ensuring the same ad at all times.
- Google’s AdWords: Generates 4-5 time click-through rates; charges $8-15 per 1,000 impressions.
Revenue -- how publishers charge
- Advertisers are either charged for impression (seeing the ad) or action (clicking the ad)
- CPM: Cost per thousand impressions -- sometimes page views.
- CPC: Cost per clickthrough.
- Clickthrough rate of average banner ad = .1% of audience; thus many ads hope to just be seen for brand-building purposes.
- Rates vary with site popularity.
Distortion of audience figures
- AdBlock Plus and other software (NoScript) blocks ads and scripting-based content.
- Great concern to publishers, advertisers -- how many individuals are using? Not all users are seeing ads.
- Reaction: Direct pleas to audience (DailyKos).
