Newsflash: Display Ads On The Internet Don't Work!

Is there anyone reading this who ever clicks on or even pays attention to Internet display ads? If so please stand up. Thanks. I didn’t think so.

Google has faked us all out. The gobs of money that Google is making has tricked us into a belief that Internet advertising really works. But search advertising is a hugely profitable special case. Essentially, search advertising only works on a search engine. But most web sites aren’t search engines and so they have no easy access to the users intent. That’s how search advertising works. Because you are actively looking for something, you are totally engaged in looking at the results, whether they are paid for (sponsored) or not.

If you are not a search engine and you are dependent on ads, good luck with that

For every site that isn’t a search engine, the advertising metaphor is banner/display advertising – either a text or a graphical ad on the page. We have different strategies for gleaning what type of ad to show, from AdSense, to keywords, to sponsorships. But the problem here is that it doesn’t much matter what ad we show because no one is looking.

Display ads don’t work on the Internet. Or at least they don’t work nearly well enough to replace the advertising platforms the Internet is killing. In other words, if one hundred thousand people are exposed to an ad on the Internet, that will be *far* less effective than one hundred thousand people being exposed to an ad in a newspaper. This is why, as advertising shifts to from print to the web, content producing companies are hurting.

The problem is a combination of psychology and physiology. Traditional media captures more attention and mindshare than Internet display advertising for a given amount of media consumption. In an hour of newspaper reading, your mind absorbs more of the advertising messages than it does in an hour of web browsing.

Why does physical print work so much better for advertising?

Part of the reason print works so well is that when we are in active mode, attempting to achieve some goal, our mind shuts out peripheral visual information. For example, when you are rushing down the street are you more or less likely to notice details in the periphery?

On the Internet, we are always rushing somewhere. Our intent is focused on our intended action. When we are reading a newspaper, we are not rushing down the street. We are calmly perusing the page. Perhaps we are on the train commuting to work. Or perhaps we are sitting at our desk having some coffee. But whatever we are doing, we allow ourselves to be immersed in the world of the newspaper, ads and all.

Some of the additional specifics behind the Internet advertising attention problem are as follows.

• Our eyes are faster than clicking – Therefore we will tolerate a higher ad to media ratio because we can easily scan the ads and the page. This relates to the slowness of redrawing screens, vs. the comfort, and speed of scanning a page. But even if updating a page after a link click was instant, the cognitive step of clicking takes us out of the passive mode of absorbing.
• Page turning is easier and faster than clicking through – And page turning is analog. We can scan forward a few pages and keep a finger on that old page in case we need to go back. Physical pages give us more comfort and control. This all facilitates scanning and comfortable ad perusal.
• Physical pages are bigger than screens – And even if screens were just as big, it is not acceptable to give half or all of a page that you thought was going to have content to an advertisement. It is fine in print because in print, the page is *their* world. But your computer screen is your world. In the print environment, you open up a double page spread and there is a mix of advertising and content. Your eyes and your attention can comfortably flow between them. And because you are in newspaper or magazine reading mode, and because some significant percentage of the publication real estate may be advertising, you are very likely to read at least some of it.
• We look at more of a magazine than we do a web site – We don’t have thousands of magazines or newspapers physically in front of us. Probably just one or two. A given web page feels a bit disembodied from the overall publication. A print publication tends to feel like something that should be consumed an issue at a time.
• Print ads can be truly beautiful – Web ads really can’t – or perhaps just generally aren’t. How many ads on the web are able to make you stop because they are so gorgeous?
• Print ads are persistent – An ad doesn’t go away when you read the next article. If you see an ad you will remember you saw it in yesterday’s Times which is in the den so you can go back to it easily. You can also tear the ad out of the paper.

In short, print advertising captures a truly awesome amount of attention from the consumer.

Web display ads capture *none* of my attention!

So all of us have the same amount of time available, presumably a maximum of 24 hours in a day. But as we shift more of our time to the Internet, we’re giving up less of our attention to advertising messages. In fact, for many and perhaps most of us, we are giving away essentially *none* of our attention any more.

I personally haven’t clicked on and ad in months. And aside from the dancing women in that mortgage ad, I couldn’t even describe one ad I have seen on the Internet. Even then I couldn’t tell you what company those mortgage ads are for. Conversely when I read print ads and watch TV, messages definitely get through. I am at times intrigued by advertising calls to action. This *never* happens on the Internet. And while this is not at all scientific, I am quite sure I am not alone.

Many forms of content production can’t survive

So if we are moving from mediums that can capture our attention for advertising, to ones that fundamentally, outside of search, cannot, how can traditional media survive in the Internet era? Unless we can come up with some other way to capture consumer attention for marketing messages, the media business is in trouble.

Display advertising may just be less effective in our new Internet future. And if that is so, then content will be worth less and will be less fundable. Certain types of content will not be fundable at all anymore. A magazine that could reach a hundred thousand monthly readers in a well defined niche could generate a reasonable revenue stream. It could support a small staff. But a website that reaches a hundred thousand monthly readers is a hobby that might generate a few hundred dollars a month. In essence, the same content production from ten years ago, say 20 articles in a month, is worth far, far less today.

The bottom line: The Internet sucks for non-search advertising. If you are an entrepreneur and this is your plan for monetization, think again.