Monday, November 26, 2012

Towards the end of banner ads

18 years ago, banner ads were invented and became the main source of revenue for a lot of web publishers. Since then, the situation has remained pretty much fixed while the Web has been evolving tremendously. We know that advertisers are increasingly dissatisfied with banner ads. These rectangles pushed on the side lines of the web page that few people pay attention to. Banner ads are known to have very low CTR and advertisers start thinking there might be more entertaining and appealing way to advertise on-line, while not being entirely sure yet of what will ultimately replace banner ads.
Still, this article mentions some interesting potential orientations. For instance, full page ads that would appear between two web pages and that people could skip or not. Some companies are also already trying to innovate. For example, Foursquare has started an innovative way to publish ads to users who check in to their locations. Whatever the solution is, banner ads should slowly disappear to the benefit of more effective ways of advertising online. The replacement solutions though still have to be defined.

No comments: