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A New Type of Banner
UK-Netmarketing Weekly Round-up - February 23, 2001

The poor humble banner, much maligned but still the mainstay of the online advertising business. It's days look numbered and despite the inclusion of whizzy multimedia the banner has never seemed less glamorous. So when C|Net introduced an innovative new placement for their Flash banners on their news.com website, it drew some interest from uk-netmarketing members.

Leslie Bunder spotted the banners, and wrote, "...what about the new style ads that Cnet is running, have a look at news.com and click on a story and see how they integrate an ad within the copy of the content... somewhat annoying compared to a banner as at least a banner is on the top and/or bottom, this is within the copy of the content you are reading! I'm curious to see what how it is proving with advertisers..."

James Cridland replied, "Those look nice, don't take me away from the site I'm reading, and display useful content. I do like that."

The positioning clearly didn't please Ashley Pomeroy, "Is this irony? The 'copy of the content' appears to be the advert itself. In fact the whole site is one big advert... Is this also irony? What's useful or interesting about a big square box with 'Oracle will run your website 3x faster than IBM or Microsoft' in it?"

Giles Turnbull summed up, "I think news.com have done something pretty clever with these big ads. They are more closely related to print-media ads than banners are - look at a typical page from a newspaper, and you'll notice that the adverts are placed on the page *first*, then the news stories are inserted so that they wrap *around* the ads in whatever space is left over.

The news.com ads are not like that, but much closer. My eyes treat them in the same way as they treat newspaper ads - I will flick over them (most of the time without even thinking) and only stop to read more if my interest is sparked.

At first sighting, the big ads draw your attention because they are so different from what we are accustomed to. But now, after just a few days, my eyes/brain are starting to take account of news.com's design, because now I am *expecting* to see a big ad in a certain place.

Just as I trained myself to consign banners to peripheral vision, I'm already training myself to ignore news.com's new ideas as well. But perhaps that is because they are always at the same point on the page. If there were more flexibility, the chance to embed ads in a number of locations, with the text wrapping around the ad - would it stand more chance of being noticed?"

Only time will tell, whether the introduction of adverts in a style much more akin to newspapers is likely to be more effective. Although the innovation is only a minor change the placement of the advert the copy does mean it's less easy to 'screen out'. The true barometer of success for this format will be if other publishers follow suit.

Kids' SMS/Web Usage

Use of text messages on mobile phones is growing astronomically, particularly amongst the younger age groups, so it's not surprising that agencies are slavering at the huge potential for marketing using this technology.

Matt Bennette asked, "Our client is looking into the potential effectiveness of using SMS and or /WWW to interact with 6 - 11 year olds. It's basically creating a junior fan club. Does anyone know where I can get stats on usage for this age group?"

Ben Thompson, raised fears about the ethical concerns, writing, "However, I would imagine that collecting phone numbers of 7-11 year olds will not endear you to either:-

The DMA (see their site for advice on targeting children).
Their parents (I would be seriously upset if a company was sending stuff to my children without me agreeing to it first. (Hint, I wouldn't)).
Zdnet.co.uk and very probably the Mail and Guardian as well.

Its strange that the US is so far ahead of us in this area. There everyone would run a mile from this, here people can't see the problem. As such I'd go for a website. It may be more work but at least you won't get any bad PR."

Mario Tilney-Bassett suggested there might be a way forward without upsetting anyone, "But that's where looking closely at what the client, any client, wants to achieve and working within the boundaries of legislation and technical restraints comes in to deliver on objectives as closely as possible. BBC Breakfast News had a piece today on teens' addiction to SMS. At a glance, for sheer number of users, its definitely the medium - but ethically and legally ?!?

An unviable campaign should be killed off in the planning stages, but another option will almost always present itself as a result of the investigation. And I'm convinced the US market only steers clear of mobile marketing because they chose to develop web marketing because of unmetered web access. For us, web use is hampered by call costs, so marketers looked for other routes to consumers - like mobiles and SMS"

Online Surveys

Can you ever know enough about your site's visitors? Surveys and the tools used to conduct them online are proliferating. Phil Barrett asked, "I've just looked in the UK-netmarketing links list and been pleasantly surprised. It's a good place to start for finding useful resources. I'm looking at online readership survey tools. The links list tells me of several... But can anyone give a personal recommendation for an online survey tool or company?"

Rod Kohler suggested, "Try http://www.survey.com/eu/index.html - they have a UK arm which is run by a couple of very bright guys who seem to know what they are talking about. Oh yes, they have also managed to pick up some very big clients in a short space of time. Speak to Guy"

Graham Humphreys, added, "Depends what you're looking for - but overall the best company I've seen is www.interquest.com. They seem to have a solid research background, which is helpful, and good analysis tools."

LINKS OF NOTE:
A quick round up of interesting, funny, useful and other links gleaned from the uk-netmarketing list, office gossip and other nefarious sources...we take no responsibility should you chose to click...basically, it's not our fault. Enjoy:

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