Banner ads and intrusive pop up ads have become as much of a part of the Internet as my daily search engine use. Unfortunately, we are now so inundated with advertising on websites that it has all meshed together to become no more than annoying white noise. I sometimes wonder about the effectiveness of website banner ads or pop ups. I mean do people really click on all of that garbage? My assumption is that if you are looking for something in particular you search for it, you don't decide to purchase Viagra while reading up on the coming NFL Combine on ESPN.com.
The whole point of effective Internet advertising is to catch and hold attention and this has become lost in a confusing, annoying sea of ads. Much like the commercials on TV, though, people find ways to ignore them. With the advent of TiVO and DVR's, most people will either fast-forward through the commercials, or change the channel all together and "keep checking back" until their show is back on. Instead, I would rather close a pop up, ignore it, or go to a different website. In other words i always skip the ad.
Internet advertising, revision 2. Understanding how important time is to people, why not figure out a way to pay a person to view an ad or commercial? There are many sites that have now appeared that basically pay you to watch or take surveys, but there is a particular type of site that has hit the scene that I am impressed with.
A few months ago a stumbled on to a site called moola.com. The premise is simple. The site gives you a penny, and by playing games against other human players, or a computer bot, you can risk as much of your balance as you would like. The bigger the risk the bigger the payout. However, what happens if you lose all of your money? The site will keep replenishing your first penny. In other words, you can never go broke. Where, then, does advertising enter the picture? Before each game you play the players are subjected to a sponsored video, usually 20-30 seconds long. Once the video completes, the game begins. Sometimes you will even be asked a question about the ad and if you fail to answer correctly, it replays it - this makes it very hard to ignore else you will have to watch again. How does the site afford to keep replenishing people's pennies - the advertisers, of course. They have essentially found a way to show people ads and commercials, maintain their attention, and pay them for their time. This made for an effective combination and after a few weeks playing, I knew what commercial I was about to see within the first couple of seconds. The site also fosters a great community of players where people spend just as much time talking as they do playing. I found the way this site keeps people in their seats to advertise to them revolutionary. Moola.com (a link that contains a reference code to my account - shameless!).
Another example of this is a site that I recently discovered called centsports.com. The premise is the same, except the site emulates actual sports betting. Real lines, real bets, but the money is given to you and you watch an ad before every bet you submit. This is the safest betting I have ever seen because if you lose your money the site gives you more.
It's interesting to see how these types of sites avoid being classified as gambling websites because they do not let people deposit money into their accounts, thus the money that is being used is all generated by the site. That aside, I think we are seeing the next evolution of Internet advertising in sites like these.
Provided the site keeps your attention, the ads will too.
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