Conventional advertising wisdom goes something like this: search advertising is best for online businesses seeking conversion (i.e., making users do something, like buying a product), while banner advertising is best for brand awareness. And traditional advertisers do little of either; they have few online products to push, and they believe that banner advertising is an insufficient medium for a brand experience. Instead, brand experiences continue to be sold on television, one of the most expensive mediums for advertising.
I suspect these biases are contribute to higher advertising costs than is necessary. Take car companies as an example. They are prototypical users of television brand advertising as part of campaigns designed to raise awareness of new models and increase the appeal of models new and old. But what about new versions of longstanding models? For example, the Toyota Camry has been one of the best selling cars in the United States for decades. Perhaps some low-cost display advertisements announcing the arrival of the new model year would be more cost effective method to alert potential customers, who are likely to consider the car regardless of what the new model looks like. Similarly, Honda has an established promotional cycle every year -- why not run those advertisements online?
For those looking to get started, Wikipedia has a decent summary of the extraordinarily complicated web advertising ecosystem. Check it out.
No comments:
Post a Comment