How to Make Display Ads Suck Less

Do They Know the Content They're Hanging Out With?

Posted by Noah Brier on 03.10.09 @ 09:50 AM

Noah Brier

Online display advertising sucks.

There, I said it. It's like everyone's been kind of skirting the issue over the last few months so as not to upset anyone. It seems like the conversations around the death (or at least decline) of display has been about everything but the ad itself. Funnily enough, that's exactly what I want to talk about.

I'd lose my director of strategy card (we really have those) if I didn't first acknowledge that these types of decisions should be led with objectives. Thinking through what you want to accomplish with online display will obviously help sort out what it should say and how it should say it.

OK, with that little disclaimer out of the way, let's get to the creative. Why does it suck? Well, first off, it's hardly ever aware of the content it is hanging out with. I'm not talking contextual ads here, just saying that display advertising needs to be aware of where it lives. At least it should know what site it's on and what people are there for. I mean, we spend a lot of time thinking about our consumer, right? We know what they like and don't like and roughly where they spend their time on the web. However, we give little or no thought to what they're actually doing once they get there. What content are they looking at? What's the difference between home-page visitors and lower-level visitors?

Most of the time we don't think about these questions because we're not given the opportunity. The math gets done early on and we figure out that we are going to do three variations so that's what we go with. It doesn't matter whether those three variations are going across a gossip, sports and gadget site as long as they fit the IAB guidelines. After all, standards exist so we can do less work, right?

Without thinking about where the display is sitting, the creative is left focusing on a totally-out-of-context consumer. The big problem I have with this is it pretty much gives up the biggest advantage the web has over other media: the ability to target smaller groups affordably with discrete messages. As soon as we go with a single message across all these sites we're left with a glorified TV ad.

As a side note, I feel like I'd be doing a disservice if I didn't mention that I understand that banner ads don't all need to be clicked on or interacted with; they can be quite effective acting in a similar way to billboards, embedding in our subconscious to hopefully affect some later decision.

So what is there to do about the dearth of creativity in the display space?

Well, I think there are a couple things to at least think about. First off, we're going to need to start doing more versions of display ads and at least doing custom ones for the larger sites. If you know you're designing something for ESPN.com, for instance, you would create a very different thing than if it were for Newsweek.

Second, by knowing what site it's running on, I believe we can start to design things that look like they belong a little more. Banner blindness is a well-documented phenomenon, but little has been written about why people ignore the ads. My suspicion is that it's in large part due to the fact that they look like they don't belong on the page. When there's a big orange ad amongst the black and white content of the New York Times it's kind of like wearing a big sign that says, "Don't pay attention to me!"

Now, I'm not suggesting that we should deceive users. After all I'd like nothing more than for display to be just as interesting as the content on the page (and yes, I know I'm not the first person to say that, but I don't care). What I'm suggesting is that if you want to grab someone's attention you need to do a slightly better job blending in. Try making something that looks like it belongs on the page and understands what content surrounds it.

With all that said, there are a few issues. First, it means we have to rethink the working/non-working splits. Second, this equation doesn't address the role of the publisher (which needs to adapt). Third, and most important, it doesn't even touch on whether you should be doing display advertising to begin with. But hey, can't get to everything in one article.

~ ~ ~
Noah Brier is head of planning and strategy at the Barbarian Group. Read more of his thoughts at NoahBrier.com.

36 Comments

By jreneking | little rock, AR March 10, 2009 11:16:50 am:

Noah,
Your blog is very timely. I listened in on a presentation yesterday where a partner was explaining how to customize online ads based on the viewer's perferred method for communication--i.e. right brain vs. left brain. It was a little more complex than that, but by filling out a quick online survey about their personality, online users would slowly begin to see ads that were targeted to their personality. It's an emerging technology, and one that is more at the individual level than many of the geographic targeting used today.

Thanks for your post and thoughts.

--Jennifer

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By dave | london March 10, 2009 11:24:39 am:

Good point and of course they are things to take into account.

But really the biggest thing missing is that the best writers in advertising tend not to write banners.

Unfortunately all the context and design in the world will not conjure you up a line of devastating wit or insight.

You want to make a sharply observed point - conjure up a belly laugh? you need to get Stephen fry to write your ad not hope that the fact your rubbish ad will suddenly be interesting because it is talking about VW Golf's and I am reading about Golf.

Unfortunately the very things that make ads work - wit, charm, insight can't be measured or formulated.

Which leaves our industry in a bit of a pickle as there is nothing to then talk about at conferences.

Bernbach said it best: "Advertising isn't a science. It's persuasion. And persuasion is an art."

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By RichNads | Burlington, VT March 10, 2009 11:38:55 am:

Yes Noah, they do suck. Part of it is placement and relevance, but part of it has to be lack of creativity and understanding of the possibilities. There are a ton of sites promoting good site design online but very, very few promoting good online advertising.

As for blending in, IBM had a brilliant campaign in the NYT in January where its ad promoted actual NYT editorial content. A relevant ad promoting 3rd party endorsements from the site itself.

Take a look here: http://digitalstrategy.typepad.com/digital_strategy/2009/01/ibm-advertises-nyt-content.html

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By howie@skypulsemedia | Los Angeles, CA March 10, 2009 12:25:51 pm:

I think the 'advertising view' of display advertising needs to change. They are really just print ads/billboards. Why Brands insist on wanting them to be interactive is beyond me. They need to be measured by people seeing the ad vs how many click on the ad. I understand the unique ability to engage a consumer with a click through but the fact is if Coke shows me a new flavor on a banner ad I am much more likely to buy it in the store vs clicking through from a web page. Plus there is a reason I am on a web page! The reason is that page's content and not the advertising.

So the sooner the industry starts treating banner ads as billboards without the goal of clicking through the easier it will be mentally on CMO's!

The key in my opinion is to get them viewed at all. I myself use Firefox with Ad Blocking Software and No Scripts so I see very few ads if ever and none of the ad serving networks work on my browser. If there wasn't so many viruses I would allow the scripts so one of the banes of Digital Media is the hacker industry.

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By JASON | FLAGSTAFF, AZ March 10, 2009 01:49:41 pm:

Killer idea. Surely, some smart programmer could build an ad tag that reads the text on the page (like a Google bot) and then serves an ad based on those semantics? If Google can do it for Ad Sense, it must be possible for display ads too.

In that vein, I'd like to see more advertorial. Couldn't we have sponsored sidebar content that is contextually relevant?

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By brianjacobs | LONDON March 10, 2009 02:15:49 pm:

This is a highly appropriate piece. The technology does exist to allow for much more precise targeting (check out www.xtract.com as one example), but the fact is that sellers, and buyers are interested only in eyeballs. These online media forms are a fantastic opportunity for advertisers, for planners, buyers and even sellers, but basing everything on lowest common denominator click-through rates is destroying the medium even before it really becomes mainstream.

Advertisers deserve better - the online industry had better give it to them soon or any chance of it fulfilling its potential will vanish.

It's surprising to me that we continually fall-back on outdated notions like CPM when we have the wherewithal to do so much more. It just takes a little thought, and an open and creative mind.

Brian

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By ryanmoede | Falls Church, VA March 10, 2009 02:55:07 pm:

Great post, Noah. Aside from some of the recent work from Apple and Nintendo (http://socialmediaworx.com/2008/make-better-ads/) which are doing an awesome job busting out of the mold with something fresh and creative. While the technology will always play an important role, I think it's going to come down to cultivating big ideas and fresh creativity that will ultimately help banner ads grow up.

Ryan Moede
http://www.14four.com

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By deandonaldson | London March 10, 2009 03:10:59 pm:

Hoorah a fellow advocate! I have been preaching this for years around the place - display ads DO NOT equal clicks - take the message to the consumer, not the consumer to the message! In my own endeavours, I have been pushing for Environmental Statistics from the publishers - i.e. insights into what consumers do on thoe pages, do they spend 3 seconds or 30 seconds, sound on or sound off, type in banners or play games... only armed with this info can we stand a chance of developing more in-line advertising.

Technology can already read and adapt to page content - such as Mash-Up technology, or allow Dynamic updates of contents via XML feeds - Eyeblaster has something called Samrt Versioning which even brings CMS control to ads...

Display should be there to connect, draw eye off page - in interactrive world people may stop and play and engage and as a reult drive emotional connection with brand deeper in phsyche as a result - but then it will lead to search clicks, NOT display clicks. The data is all there, someone just needs to utilize it as opposed to keep pushing brochure-ware micorsites to advertisers like we did 15 years ago. That is NOT advertising...

So thanks Noah, good to know we're not alone! ;-)

www.deandonaldson.com

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By calebadams | VISALIA, CA March 10, 2009 05:05:18 pm:

So the cycle has changed back to "blending in" versus "standing out"?

I'm not sure it's one or the other.

Dave Bedwood is right when he references Bernbach:"Advertising isn't a science. It's persuasion. And persuasion is an art." [below.]

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By gefen@eyeblaster.com | March 10, 2009 05:49:26 pm:

All good points Noah, thanks for putting this up front;
While banner ads are out there as billboards, rich media banners are there also to be interact with. This brings in additional topic that is well pursued in the e commerce world and less in Rich Media display ads universe - the notion of usability and intuitiveness of the experience;
This one also comes back to the objectives – if you want your user to stay and interact, what visual cues and virtual metaphors you use to make sure they know that? a simple "click to.." is almost scary when you don't know where will it take you.

Gefen

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By gdale922 | New York, NY March 10, 2009 06:07:45 pm:

You've got to check out the Apple Ipod Touch ad atop http://www.pitchfork.com -- the way they've interacted the ad with the header of the site is brilliant, along with a great song, it breathes life into the site as a whole and to a commercial which most are familiar with from the tv ads. Great stuff!

-Garrett

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By Martin | Robbinsville, NJ March 10, 2009 06:32:11 pm:

spot on, noah, as usual. but why just online? why not everywhere? why don't ALL media people work with creatives to produce work that takes into account what the consumer/viewer/reader is thinking when they're reading the magazine/watching the tv show/listening to the radio? across all media we are asked to create advertising as if it will live in a vacuum, though we know of course, it won't. the fact that this "logic" is at its most ridiculous online does not mean it makes "sense" elsewhere...

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By statiktv | STAMFORD, CT March 10, 2009 10:28:26 pm:

Nice and direct, great post.

Though you mention that display ads can act as a billboard would, and I agree. However, with billboards and most offline media, there are difficulties tracking and calculating ROI. But with the digital space we have become obsessed with incredibly precise numbers -- yet the value of digital is still questioned. Why is the imprecision in the offline world continually overlooked? Yet millions are thrown down, without question, time and time again on new TV spots.

http://twitter.com/keaneangle

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By thisisopen | London March 11, 2009 05:35:45 am:

Hallelujah! I've been bantering on about this for years....display ads completely suck and have NEVER worked. Existing online display formats are nothing more than a lazy attempt at monetising the internet. Wacking 'print model' ads onto the internet was doomed to fail. We've reached a stage where we think 0.2% CTR is good - in fact almost twice as good as average. Whilst this is an incredibly sad state of affairs - it does lend itself favorably to innovation. As the pressure continues to mount from above and budgets are squeezed, there will be a renewed vigour for accountability, performance and ROI. Let's face it - online is the only channel with more than a modicum of accountability - it's about time we used it. New online display models are in the works that are fit for purpose. Once usch format is the Open IMU. Among other marvellous things, it's an ad fomrat that knows where it is and serves contextual to the placement and the user preference. There are a few other tricks to it - but the results are what counts. CTR rates on average of 10%+...this is just the beginning.

joshua@thisisopen.com

thisisopen.com/blog

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By RichNads | Burlington, VT March 11, 2009 07:52:49 am:

Hey Noah, did you know this was in the works? Google announced today that they were launching "interest based" advertising today, making Adsense ads more relevant to the pages they were on?

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/making-ads-more-interesting.html

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By frostprioleau | Fort Worth, TX March 11, 2009 09:10:11 am:

Very timely article. Delivering ads targeted to the context of a page can easily be accomplished today using a semantic targeting solution like Personifi (owned by my employer, Collective Media, see demo at http://classification.personifi.com/ ).

In addition, if you want to dynamically create and deliver unique versions of an ad based on the context of the page where the ad will be shown, this can be done by combining a semantic/contextual targeting solution with a "dynamic ads" solution such as Tumri or Teracent.

By doing this, hundreds (or thousands) of versions of ads are dynamically created based on the content of the page, often generating lifts in the order of 3x.

Based on the performance of such ads, I would expect more advertisers to take advantage of this in the coming months.

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By abrandt | New York, NY March 11, 2009 09:25:07 am:

Noah - Thanks for this post. Creativity and performance should not be mutually exclusive. It's less about contextual relevancy and more about user relevancy. At Linkstorm (www.linkstorm.net) we believe the way to make ad creative "suck less" is by providing value to the user. Don't assume you know what the user wants, let them tell you. Allow users the opportunity to self-select how they want to engage with your brand and not only will the brand favorability metrics increase, but it will also increase your ROI. Ari

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By sarahlefton | BOISE, ID March 11, 2009 11:05:35 am:

I loved this piece...but I also saw my former company making hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on ad clicks - specifically when the ads stuck out like a sore thumb. Subtle, appropriate advertising is great for leaving a brand impression or maybe even for selling high end products, but if you're looking to convert a certain type of customer - say, a Facebook user - to fill out a certain type of lowbrow sales lead form or buy a ringtone or some other such impulse purchase, we found that loud, obnoxious banners were far more productive.

I absolutely join you in weeping for creative standards, and perhaps even humanity, in this regard, but I have to tell you what works.

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By DavidGriffith | BETHEL, CT March 11, 2009 11:36:33 am:

Banner click-thru rates are at an all-time low. Consumers have learned to ignore them because there is no value to the audience beyond awareness so media companies are desperately trying to find new ways to drive clicks. Here is an interesting presentation on how interactive promotions can add relevance & cut through the clutter.
http://promotions2.com/2009/promotions-20-the-future-of-interactive-marketing/

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By mondogrande | Ft Lauderdale, FL March 11, 2009 11:44:53 am:

Banner ads should be placed and measured in the same way as print. You will never see an ad for paper plates in the Robb Report and relying on Google for proper ad placement is a receipe for distaster. Misplaced Google ads effect both the advertiser and the website they appear on. Yes, some site owners actually care about what type of ad is placed on their site.

While the concept of banner ads may have been initially portrayed as the new wunderkind, it is still old fashioned repetive branding that counts. I may not be looking for a new online stock trading company today but I know which ones I will check out when I want one because I have seen their banner a million times.

Ad agencies spend big money producing print and television ads so why do they spend so little creating a banner ad? Agencies need to work harder for their clients by creating a quality online experience and searching out appropriate websites and content to place a clients ads rather than rely on Google.

http://www.proudtoliveinamerica.com

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By mruggieri | New Boston, NH March 11, 2009 11:50:07 am:

Great article! Couldn't agree more. I believe the problem lies in the basic online advertising equation. Networks like Google AdSense are driven to fulfill the contracts of their advertisers. As long as those ads show up, they make money. Who cares about the poor consumer? Any technologies that start to pay more attention to the other side of the equation, the consumer and their context, are going to improve life for website visitors and ultimately for the brands advertising.

My company, EchoCurrent, works purely on the consumer side of the equation (which is very liberating). We make affiliate product offers to consumers based on their online experience. We are not beholden to a "client" pushing advertisements...we just want to get the right product in front of the right consumer at the right time.

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By Aaron | Seattle, WA March 11, 2009 12:26:16 pm:

Noah,
Thank you for the article. We do have to continue to innovate on all fronts. But what about costs and scale? It seems like it would be a more expensive proposition on the creative front and certainly not extremely scalable at this point. Even now, when rich media ads run across any network you still get 25-50% of them delivering gif back-ups mostly because the publishers are not allowing rich media. Until everyone gets on the same page with standards it is going to be difficult to implement. In addition it will be hard and costly to deliver these products at scale to more advertisers. "Standard" banner ads are too expensive for the majority of advertisers. Especially when they need to try a dozen concepts to get to the best.

To me I would like to see us work on ways to make display advertising more accessible to more advertisers therefore increasing the relevancy of the ads even in their basic formats. Can you imagine how relevant standard banner ads could be if we had the 1 million search advertisers competing for display space? Last year all of display (4.5 trillion impressions) had 44,000 advertisers. What a difference 1 million advertisers could make?

Aaron Finn - Seattle, WA

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By pknegten | San Francisco, CA March 11, 2009 01:40:39 pm:

Sean Carton had a great take on this in ClickZ last week (http://www.clickz.com/3632961) -- how in the Display world there IS hope to make ads not suck by making them take relevant content from the publisher and use it to target the offers that appear in the ad.

We at Dapper do this -- and really believe that this is where Display advertising is going, with or without us. There is hope!

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By Max | Venice, CA March 11, 2009 02:57:29 pm:

As an interactive Creative Director, i always request meeting with media prior to any buys. This allows us to know who they are trying to reach and which sites they are thinking about.
then we can work to tailor our creative to interact with the audience in a more personal way.
Max Bean
OverKlok
http://www.overklok.com

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By Brad | St. Thomas, VI March 11, 2009 03:24:25 pm:

God bless the idea. Execution is the problem. Meta tag all content correctly, custom site specific creative and content match with surrounding content. That's an awesome dream. However, for a network like mine that places a billion ads a day, thats moving ALOT of levels up. I hate to rain on the parade, but to have significantly LESS display ads per page/site would accomplish the same result with supply restriction; with less effort and create more demand and higher inventory prices...

Brad Bastow
Kitara Media
kitaramedia.com

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By nbrier | New York, NY March 11, 2009 10:13:22 pm:

Okay, a lot of comments to respond to ... Here it goes ...

@Brad: Yeah, I don't think it's an answer for networks ...

@Paul K: Thanks, will check it out

@Aaron F: Yeah, what I'm suggesting isn't terribly scalable, but I think that's the point. Why do we need scale? There are other channels that work great at scale, let's start using the web for what it's best at.

@Philip K: Seems reasonable to me ...

@Sarah L: I totally agree and it's a great point. You need to address the objectives first. I just have found that too often the objective is "branding building" and the tactic is click-through advertising ...

@Rich N: No idea but thanks for the link.

@Keane A: I'm not sure. I would guess that it has something to do with things always being that way ...

@Martin B: :) You are 100% correct ... I have no idea why more of it doesn't take the context into account.

@Garrett: Saw those and liked them a lot. Though I wonder sometimes whether it's a little too intrusive ...

@Gefen: Yeah, totally agree. Interaction is a different objective. Unfortunately I think too often people say their goal is interaction when they really want click-throughs.

@Dave: Totally agree with the not a science bit, though I'm not sure the problem is that the best writers don't write banner ads ...

@Jennifer: Thanks :)

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By craigcooper | craigcooper.com, NY March 12, 2009 12:05:04 am:

Jason Baer: Google CAN'T do it with AdSense.

Have you not ever noticed how horribly misplaced those ads often are?

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By PATRICK | ATLANTA, GA March 12, 2009 08:41:24 am:

Maybe more ads would benefit with pictures of squirrels dressed as blacksmiths... all's I'm saying...
check it out @ http://www.thelintscreen.com

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By paynetaylor | ANDOVER, MA March 12, 2009 09:12:17 am:

Are you serious? "... if you want to grab someone's attention you need to do a slightly better job blending in." That's like telling a rock star not to be too conspicuous. It's not in the job description. In fact, it's so counterintuitive to the principle of advertising in any form that it is truly amazing the discussion even arises. Can you say, "product differentiation," folks? I think ya caaan.

Though she not only weeps for "creative standards, and perhaps even humanity," but mitigates her comment with the notion that it is restricted to a "certain type of customer" (hey, don't we all know and love dissing "them"), she is the only one essentially gets it right with the simple statement that, ultimately, "loud, obnoxious banners are far more productive."

Nevertheless, the advertising community persists in confusing what it is doing with some obscure definition of aesthetics. Well, wake up, folks. As advertisers, we are in the business of motivating people to spend money on our clients' products or services, not painting the Sistine Chapel. And the way we do that is to position those product or services as bigger, better, or at least different than the competition. Which means we are responsible for finding a way to differentiate them; for those at the back of the class, that translates into 1) make them look and feel different, and 2) make them stand out rather than blend in.

Major clue here: designing "things that look like they belong a little more," doesn't do that.

One summer long ago, in a land far away, before I'd even thought of becoming a Creative Director and later a CMO, I had a job washing dishes in a restaurant. It was hard to believe what came back on those dishes: encrusted yuck of all kinds, with cigarette butts ground out in it, dirty Kleenexes, indescribable mini-swamps of food made by bored and troubled children.

At first, I was totally loathe to touch any more of that stuff than I had to, until my, one day, my manager came in and yelled, "hey, gypsy (my given nickname at the time), scrape that crap off those plates before you put 'em in the washer," adding in his usual melifluous tone, "either get your hands dirty, or get out."

It's been a lesson taken well to heart since. Advertising is not for the faint of heart or creatively squeamish. Hey, there's nothing stopping us from paint paintings or compose symphonies if we want. In fact, I play out as an acoustic garage rock singer/songwriter once or twice a month myself. But I never confuse that with advertising, where I still retain the ability to get my hands as dirty as they need to be ... when necessary.

Christopher Payne-Taylor | Andover, MA

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By jkantor1 | St. Petersburg, FL March 12, 2009 09:37:41 am:

Display ads don't have to be fancy if they are well-targetted.

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By adexchanger | New york, NY March 12, 2009 11:11:27 am:

Noah - Enjoy this article. Totally agree that so much more can be done on the creative end.

And, let's be clear - any perceived failure of advertising due to "math" or technology is counterproductive. The "math" has improved advertising online to the point where online has quickly achieved "most-favored-advertising status" among media buyers who understand the Internet's unmatched ability to track and optimize ROI.

Within the next year or two, ad exchanges will take online advertising even further as transparency and control from technology serve the advertiser, ad networks, agencies and publishers alike by realizing better ROI and improved yield.

That said, creative remains a wild card and for smart marketers, implementing and consistently testing for improvements in creative in order to reach a chosen audience is essential.

Creative is not dead! In fact, it is more alive than ever by virture of technology and "math."

http://www.adexchanger.com

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By YuriyBoykiv | Cliffside Park, NJ March 12, 2009 11:29:03 am:

I think we should definitely be more conscious about where the display ad is placed and customize the message accordingly. Having said this, I also believe that by placing a bright orange and provocative ad on the black-and-white NYTimes.com IS a GOOD idea. Advertising should not blend in - it must stand out to attract attention and generate interest. This way, we can go beyond mere 0.2% CTR.

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By Sacha | New York, NY March 12, 2009 12:55:52 pm:

The dirth of display advertising can indeed be largely attributed to ever increasing out of context and sometimes embarrassingly misplaced ads. I mean what has an ad for knives to do next to an editorial piece on a stabbing or an ad for an airline next to a plane crash story or a plain smiley face ad on just about everything else.

The problem lies in the fact that most ad serving systems are unable to identify the true theme of each and every webpage it is serving its ads on.

The 1st step to solve this issue is to clearly determine what the true theme of the webpage is about. It is fundamental that the definition of the true theme of the webpage be based on the analysis of all the content on the page rather than simple keyword identification. With close to 3 meanings to every word in the English language you have 1 in 3 chances of getting your ad targeted correctly by taking the keyword contextual approach. I would say that in the current economic climate the last thing an advertiser should do is gamble with his marketing budget but rather seek to deploy the right technology to work around this constraint.

The use of semantic analysis of webpage content and semantically targeted display ads does do away with this industry problem and has demonstrated to be extremely effective at increasing advertisers ROI, brand safety and most importantly consumers interest as inferred by context. Our patented iSense semantic targeting technology has enabled advertisers such as Microsoft, T-Mobile, Fujitsu, 3M and many more to precisely target their ads at page level against content they have deemed relevant to their brand and specific offering. In the process, they have discovered that semantics is not a buzzword but a reality yielding demonstrable results and have incorporated semantic targeting as part of their ongoing media planning activities.

The best is yet to come for display advertising.

Sacha Carton
President, iSense
scarton@adpepper.com
http://www.adpepper.com
http://www.isense.net

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By Jen | Smithtown, NY March 12, 2009 01:20:18 pm:

Media and creative really do need to work hand-in-hand, especially with online display advertising. If the media has been targeted to reach a certain demographic, the creative must be relevant to that target, especially since the online world is so fragmented. And I definitely believe that the creative must stand out. Seeing an ad using colors such as bright orange or lime green on a website like nytimes.com that is so black and white will at least catch the user's eye, and at the very least allow them to see your brand.

www.smmadagency.com

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By etsvetkova | Toronto, ON March 16, 2009 03:49:15 pm:

Noah, thank you for the post! Definetely, the value of online media seems to be elusive. Although online media often has the ability to target "smaller groups" with "discrete messages" it may be of little use if we don't have audited traffic data to work with when deciding where to place online ads. As print media has, we need to develop an online media auditing program to increase accountability .

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By bejnastein | N/A, CA March 17, 2009 03:20:29 am:

Interesting note. Part of these new understanding are obviously in the graphical aspect of the ad. I do agree with the comments that ads need to stand out and grab attention (much like tv ads, this counts a long way by itself).
However, in order to fully monetize the power of the web, as more and more of the data is dynamic, there are no existing tools to help advertisers reach their goals...
I believe the market is heading that way. As the ad process gets more and more centralized, companies such as ContextIn will be able to help managing display ads traffic in a much more advanced methods than currently exists.
Without adoption of such semantic solutions, I doubt it would be possible to obtain relevancy to such dynamic environment...

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