October 27 will mark the birthday of the first time banner ads appeared on the Internet. These groundbreaking advertisements appeared on hotwired.com in 1994 and generated a CTR of 78% that created a $24 billion business. They were simple ads, one for AT&T and one for Volvo–the latter’s banner didn’t even send the consumer to the car company’s website but rather to a questionnaire on what type of automobile they’d be interested in. Seventeen years later, online advertising has grown tremendously, yet the average CTR of banner ads today is a fraction of a percent: a measly 0.1%. So how does one generate ad revenue in a world where online consumers have adapted to so easily turn a blind eye to banner advertising?
First, we must ask why the CTR of banner ads drop so much. It’s a two-part answer; banner ads are ignored and when they aren’t, they don’t convert a high rate because the advertisement is delivered at a relevant time. The solution to these issues is to reach visitorswhere their attention is and when they’re ready for it. In-content advertising allows advertisers to do just this.
In-content advertising is similar to product placement that you regularly see in movies or television shows. This advertising method is contextually relevant and tightly integrated and works for two reasons: Online consumers see and interact with these advertisements and they experience these advertisements when they’re actually looking for the information.
The easiest way to get through to your viewer with in-content advertising is with link insertion. Link insertion allows the viewer to hover the mouse over a word that will then pull up a pop-up to link to the relevant site. Kontera Technologies is one of the leaders of this technology with a decade of research and development. Their technology is able to predict intent by understanding the meaning of the pages and how users interact with the page. INTENTclick, part of Kontera, utilizes this technology while focusing on businesses and websites that have SEO driven making money or saving money content focused around purchase intent.
Read more about in-content advertising and link insertion in the eBook that I recently wrote,Content Monetization.
11 comments
Paul Salmon says:
Oct 17, 2011
It seems each year, the CTR gets lower and lower. Advertising, however,is big business, especially with companies like Google, so I don’t see it going away. Advertisement companies will need to find creative ways to get visitors to click on their ads.
I was never a fan of link insertion, but I have been thinking about giving it a try.
Richard says:
Oct 18, 2011
People are really becoming banner ad blind. It comes from seeing those poorly designed sites that are just littered with banner ads. Eventually, it will be the same with those in context pop ups as well. I think one of the best methods of advertising these days are completely in context. When people actually put the time and effort into writing about the product and embedding a link in the actual content.
Steve@Internet Lifestyle says:
Oct 22, 2011
I really hate to deal with banners. Actually I just won’t. This banner blindness is endemic. You see them so much you simply ignore them. The space they take up is almost better filled by something else.
I actually clicked a banner the other day. It was something I liked and wanted to find out more about. But the thing is I PERSONALLY must have been to this site a hundred times and never noticed it.
People just don’t see banners because they have ocme to expect them to be ‘crap’. Even when they are great offers therefore people miss them.
Lewis LaLanne aka Nerd #2 says:
Oct 24, 2011
My business partner and I were just talking about in-content advertising the other day.
What we’ve done is a loose version of it which is when writing our blog post and a theme comes up that we have a product for, we’ll insert a hyper link to that sales page in the copy but that’s fully manual.
What we were discussing is finding some kind of wordpress plug-in that did this automatically with the relevant sales pages.
It’s my understanding that this strategy is responsible for Agora Publishing raking in a ton of money with the selling of their own products and newsletters.
I’d love to hear if anyone knows of a plug in that can do this just for your own products and services. I know if you were gonna go deeper and tap into affiliate networks abound, you’d probably want to deal with intentclick but I’m not looking to do that.
Any help would be appreciated. 🙂
John@Beginner Guitar Lessons says:
Oct 24, 2011
Hey Murray,
In-content advertising is definitely great advice because it’s a great way to grab your reader’s attention and provide them with the information they are looking for at the same time. I have actually tried link insertion on one of my blogs and it out-performed the banner ads.
I think banner ads have developed a bad reputation over the years. When people see banner ads they normally think it has nothing valuable to offer them and overlook it completely.
Murray Newlands says:
Oct 26, 2011
@Steve:
There’s plenty of non-noisy banner options available. AdSense in particular is very non-intrusive and doesn’t usually take away from your site, especially if you place them at the bottom of your pages (though this produces less clicks and thus less revenue). If you’re running affiliate banners, just don’t choose affiliates with noisy GIF banners and they shouldn’t lose your site much traffic.
Satrap says:
Oct 30, 2011
Hi Murray,
Yeah, it does seem like more and more people are becoming banner blind. I have done so many tests and experiments regarding banner ads on my blog and non of them worked.
I think as someone else mentioned already, people come to expect banners to be crappy ads, so they simply ignore them.
I guess, you have to be really creative with your banner to be able to grab visitors attention and get a click out of them.
asteriia says:
Nov 1, 2011
Sometimes it’s better to add ads in the content, found much click through rates by doing that.
Christian says:
Nov 4, 2011
Wow! It is interesting to know the history of banner ads and the website on which the first banner was placed. I really like the banner ads than most other advertising formats. However, looking at the ctr rate, it is not much profitable though. Advertising trends have been changing every now and then and contextual ads are really making more clicks as they show products related to the searches. I use kontera and they work fine. Ofcourse there are many other intext ads now along with kontera.
kids bean bag chair says:
Nov 8, 2011
really hate to deal with banners. Actually I just won’t. This banner blindness is endemic. You see them so much you simply ignore them. The space they take up is almost better filled by something else.
Mitch Mitchell says:
Jan 15, 2012
It’s an interesting thought and kind of right. I say it that way because I use Kontera on one site and had it on another. One of the problems is that sometimes the ads offered are, well, ridiculous, based only on the word and not on the content. No one’s clicking on that. But if you get lucky and it’s in context, then you have a great opportunity.
It’s almost better to push an affiliate product or your own product through a link and have your own text pop up when someone hovers over it.
BTW, looks like your ComLuv link isn’t working anymore.