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Doing targeted advertising that is utility is the best way to make ads not suck. The main reason advertising is annoying is because we are looking for somethin
by alttab 17y ago
Doing targeted advertising that is utility is the best way to make ads not suck.
The main reason advertising is annoying is because we are looking for something else, we don't need it right now, or its the wrong audience.
If you had a huge spare tire and wanted rock hard abs, and the advertisement could prove the safety of your purchase, you would say "HELL YEAH!"
When I was 16 the advertisement for Proactiv was very engaging. It worked and I was amazed. I'm no longer a zitty teenager so now I find their advertisements annoying.
I recently joined the Spiceworks team, and it is free software. It is advertisement driven, but most in the case where you need it. It is IT management software. As an example, if you see your SQL server getting slammed, you could see an ad that offers you RAM for that specific machine. Does this advertisement suck? Probably not.
One reason advertising could suck is due to audience. If you go to Digg (which has a wide audience) you are going to get wide or undirected ads. This is why targeted advertisement is all the rage these days - because its less annoying, and more to the point effective and win-win in more cases than not.
I'd say to make advertising not suck, don't involve yourself in communities without a common interest or goal. If you are an IT manager and you are in an IT community, you will more than likely get IT advertisements. If you are watching MTV... well...
- jasonlbaptiste 17y agoYup, that's a feeling I have too. One thought is: how can you involve your community more to decide which ads are useful and get feedback?
- jcapote 17y agohttp://reddit.com/r/ads http://reddit.com/r/ads is great for this
- alttab 17y agoIf these are lead generating ads, you could determine if a click lead to a sale. If you had this data (which was pointed out by the OP about tracking every click - although he insinuated its bad), you could determine what types of ads work and which ones don't. So this is two fold, you remove the ads that don't work (so you don't annoy your audience), which in turn creates a more potent advertising experience for vendors which makes that real estate more attractive. The trick is not letting every dog through the door and keeping some class.
- nzmsv 17y agoI'm personally fine with most ads, even the irrelevant ones. What I don't like are the animated banners, and especially Flash monstrosities that pop up over the page you are trying to read and start making terrible sounds. They are the minority, but they are the reason I run AdBlock. I put sites I like (and that have tasteful ads) in the AdBlock whitelist. I really wish there was a way to only block the annoying ads. Sounds like an idea for an AdBlock subscription list actually.