Felicity Jones just posted some good stuff to the Cluetrain list at Topica. Linking to this New York Times article (subscription required), she wrote:
> Interesting article, and pretty right on the money in most respects, but
> what really made me choke was this statement by Kevin Ryan, the chief
> executive of DoubleClick :
> ---
> "... online publishers must increase the amount of space devoted to
> advertising from about 20 percent to something closer to the 60 percent
> seen in newspapers. There is not enough advertising on the Web ... and
> it's not as intrusive."
> ---
> thhhhpppppptttt!
"thhhhpppppptttt!" is absolutely right and remarkably restrained of her, considering. Tom Matrullo had similar concerns, succinctly expressed in his blog here (scroll down to the "Big Buckeroos" post).
This kind of thing is the corporate equivalent of those seamy web sites that pop up billions of nested browser sessions when you try to leave them - resulting in a furious game of whack-a-mole as you shut one window after the next after the next. It's intrusive, intensely irritating, and just plain rude. This is MY machine and MY browser session - how DARE they try to take over my browsing.
Similarly: throwing up these vomitingly large ads across the face of even the best content sites will quickly prompt the typical netizen to run screaming from the site, never to return again.
Kind of OT:My home page of choice always used to be the ZDNet News page. Not anymore - not only do the blighters start force feeding me with those bog blocker large format ads; but they then go and hand the editor's reins to David Freaking Coursey! Give me strength. I ain't unsubbed from anything so fast in all my life.
The NYTimes quote from Ryan clearly underscores yet again how totally, woefully clueless the Doubleclick drones are. One of the biggest single mistakes being made here is that you simply cannot compare advertising on the web with advertising for print media. Just as print advertising cannot be compared to broadcast ads. It's apples to oranges in either case. Worse - it's apples to cinder blocks.
The way we experience advertising through a glossy magazine - in fact the whole experience of the magazine itself - is completely and utterly different from the experience of watching TV, which is different from listening to the radio, which is different from surfing the 'net.
Let’s look at one really, really, really simple example here, Kevin: in a magazine people are quite accustomed to seeing a full page of content to the left mirrored by a full page ad on the right (or vice versa) – it doesn’t too badly disrupt their reading pleasure – most of us have learned to tune out the crap ads that don’t interest us. But you don’t page through a site full of content in the same way you flip through a magazine (when did you last start at the “back page” of a web site and flip through it, back to front – as you might do with a magazine off the news stand?)
Imagine if this very NYT article, for example, that runs across three “pages” of web content, were interrupted by full page, graphically intense, context-jacking ads. If you read to the bottom of page one and clicked “Next”, only to be presented with a slow-loading page full of anorexic Calvin Klein models, you’d pretty soon take your “business” elsewhere, wouldn’t you?
When you lean on this stuff ever so slightly, even the vocabulary starts breaking down – it’s convenient for us to talk about the web in terms of “pages”, but they’re not. There’s a world of difference between the way we experience web content and the way we experience the New York Times in print. Last time I checked, it cost something like $170K to buy a full page mono ad in the NYT. How much could they possibly charge for a “page” on nytimes.com?? There’s no relationship, other than brand credibility, between the two.
I KNOW there's some smart people on Madison Avenue - I even work with some of them. Why have they not managed to figure this out yet? Even the "science" is wrong - agencies still quote "CPM" rates for Web ads as if that's a valid way of measuring the reach and impact of banners. I shake my head really, really hard - but I still can't get any sense out of this practice.
A thought occurs, btw: I wonder how many times in the last 12 months, in how many office blocks across North America, two different but subtly interconnected conversations have taken place simultaneously, without the participants being aware of each other:
---- On the 14th floor, we have Bill & Bob Startup, pitching away to the greasy VCs - cartoon dollar signs hanging pregnant in the air, threatening to blot up all available oxygen, as the VCs dream of their next million fuelled by another dot-com IPO. “Our unique & innovative business model is entirely predicated on advertising,” say Bill & Bob. “We know advertisers will be falling over themselves to get their messages (*gag*) in front of this community.”
---- Meanwhile: 16th floor, offices of Redframe & Slimebeast, Advertising Agents – “This banner ad crap just doesn’t cut it. The click through rates suck, half the time the freaking things don’t even load, and there’s all these evil bastard ad blockers out there trying to keep us from earning an honest living. We’re not putting any more clients into Web ads until the market stabilises and we get some decent numbers in from Jupiter. Let’s sell some more Superbowl slots and 15-storey downtown murals to these dot-com cretins – teach ‘em a lesson.”
At exactly the same time as advertisers were coming to grips with the fact that web ads blow, hundreds of dot-com dreams were being built on the premise of ad-based revenue models. Oops.
BTW: I did some work last year with the “other” co-founder of Doubleclick – the guy who actually invented the technology behind the cheesy, clueless façade. He used to live next door to Kevin O’Connor and they cooked up the whole thing around the barbecue. He’s a very, very smart, tenured, decent guy. He bailed out of the whole sordid business as soon as forces beyond his control started to pervert the thing - taking unnecessary and unsavoury liberties with personal information was not what he had in mind. Nice guy, and another example of a decent, concerned netizen’s good intentions being corrupted by the spectre of mammon.
> Interesting article, and pretty right on the money in most respects, but
> what really made me choke was this statement by Kevin Ryan, the chief
> executive of DoubleClick :
> ---
> "... online publishers must increase the amount of space devoted to
> advertising from about 20 percent to something closer to the 60 percent
> seen in newspapers. There is not enough advertising on the Web ... and
> it's not as intrusive."
> ---
> thhhhpppppptttt!
"thhhhpppppptttt!" is absolutely right and remarkably restrained of her, considering. Tom Matrullo had similar concerns, succinctly expressed in his blog here (scroll down to the "Big Buckeroos" post).
This kind of thing is the corporate equivalent of those seamy web sites that pop up billions of nested browser sessions when you try to leave them - resulting in a furious game of whack-a-mole as you shut one window after the next after the next. It's intrusive, intensely irritating, and just plain rude. This is MY machine and MY browser session - how DARE they try to take over my browsing.
Similarly: throwing up these vomitingly large ads across the face of even the best content sites will quickly prompt the typical netizen to run screaming from the site, never to return again.
Kind of OT:My home page of choice always used to be the ZDNet News page. Not anymore - not only do the blighters start force feeding me with those bog blocker large format ads; but they then go and hand the editor's reins to David Freaking Coursey! Give me strength. I ain't unsubbed from anything so fast in all my life.
The NYTimes quote from Ryan clearly underscores yet again how totally, woefully clueless the Doubleclick drones are. One of the biggest single mistakes being made here is that you simply cannot compare advertising on the web with advertising for print media. Just as print advertising cannot be compared to broadcast ads. It's apples to oranges in either case. Worse - it's apples to cinder blocks.
The way we experience advertising through a glossy magazine - in fact the whole experience of the magazine itself - is completely and utterly different from the experience of watching TV, which is different from listening to the radio, which is different from surfing the 'net.
Let’s look at one really, really, really simple example here, Kevin: in a magazine people are quite accustomed to seeing a full page of content to the left mirrored by a full page ad on the right (or vice versa) – it doesn’t too badly disrupt their reading pleasure – most of us have learned to tune out the crap ads that don’t interest us. But you don’t page through a site full of content in the same way you flip through a magazine (when did you last start at the “back page” of a web site and flip through it, back to front – as you might do with a magazine off the news stand?)
Imagine if this very NYT article, for example, that runs across three “pages” of web content, were interrupted by full page, graphically intense, context-jacking ads. If you read to the bottom of page one and clicked “Next”, only to be presented with a slow-loading page full of anorexic Calvin Klein models, you’d pretty soon take your “business” elsewhere, wouldn’t you?
When you lean on this stuff ever so slightly, even the vocabulary starts breaking down – it’s convenient for us to talk about the web in terms of “pages”, but they’re not. There’s a world of difference between the way we experience web content and the way we experience the New York Times in print. Last time I checked, it cost something like $170K to buy a full page mono ad in the NYT. How much could they possibly charge for a “page” on nytimes.com?? There’s no relationship, other than brand credibility, between the two.
I KNOW there's some smart people on Madison Avenue - I even work with some of them. Why have they not managed to figure this out yet? Even the "science" is wrong - agencies still quote "CPM" rates for Web ads as if that's a valid way of measuring the reach and impact of banners. I shake my head really, really hard - but I still can't get any sense out of this practice.
A thought occurs, btw: I wonder how many times in the last 12 months, in how many office blocks across North America, two different but subtly interconnected conversations have taken place simultaneously, without the participants being aware of each other:
---- On the 14th floor, we have Bill & Bob Startup, pitching away to the greasy VCs - cartoon dollar signs hanging pregnant in the air, threatening to blot up all available oxygen, as the VCs dream of their next million fuelled by another dot-com IPO. “Our unique & innovative business model is entirely predicated on advertising,” say Bill & Bob. “We know advertisers will be falling over themselves to get their messages (*gag*) in front of this community.”
---- Meanwhile: 16th floor, offices of Redframe & Slimebeast, Advertising Agents – “This banner ad crap just doesn’t cut it. The click through rates suck, half the time the freaking things don’t even load, and there’s all these evil bastard ad blockers out there trying to keep us from earning an honest living. We’re not putting any more clients into Web ads until the market stabilises and we get some decent numbers in from Jupiter. Let’s sell some more Superbowl slots and 15-storey downtown murals to these dot-com cretins – teach ‘em a lesson.”
At exactly the same time as advertisers were coming to grips with the fact that web ads blow, hundreds of dot-com dreams were being built on the premise of ad-based revenue models. Oops.
BTW: I did some work last year with the “other” co-founder of Doubleclick – the guy who actually invented the technology behind the cheesy, clueless façade. He used to live next door to Kevin O’Connor and they cooked up the whole thing around the barbecue. He’s a very, very smart, tenured, decent guy. He bailed out of the whole sordid business as soon as forces beyond his control started to pervert the thing - taking unnecessary and unsavoury liberties with personal information was not what he had in mind. Nice guy, and another example of a decent, concerned netizen’s good intentions being corrupted by the spectre of mammon.
