Walking the Line in Internet Advertising

It is said that balance is key to living a fulfilling life, but balance can be hard to obtain when it comes to the world of advertising. How, after all, can you balance the advertiser’s need to get their ads noticed with the consumer’s desires to be left alone?

When considering traditional print or media advertisements, the balance is easy to discern. The advertiser puts their advertisement in a prominent place or on a prominent station, and the consumer has to the choice to either read it, or watch it – or not as they see fit. Internet advertising, however, is another ball of wax altogether.

Intrusive Internet Advertising

When considering internet advertising the advertiser is competing with a continual cacophony of interactive media and the ads, by necessity, become progressively more intrusive; ad capture pages that require some sort of acknowledgement, scrolling text, eye-catching animation, oversize images and videos or music that play automatically when the page opens. All of these methods are used on a regular basis to ensure that ads get the attention the advertiser believes that they deserve.

But what good does an advertisement do if it annoys your potential customers to the point that they move on to another website? In fact, intrusive enough ads have been proven to catch the consumer’s attention in the wrong way and studies show that consumers are more prone to remembering an advertiser or brand because of an intrusive ad and then avoiding the purchase of that brand.

In an interesting coincidence while the same studies showed that most internet users ignore banner ads and prefer to give their attention to simple PPC text advertising. So remains the most effective type of internet advertising, this should tell you something.

So how can you capture your potential customer’s attention without shoving your ad in their face and risk losing their patronage?

Subtle Advertising Attention Getters

Just because consumers tend to react adversely to “in your face” advertising does not mean that you have to take your chances with dull PPC text advertising. By using the tips and techniques of annoying advertisements – but twisting them to be of use to your potential customer, you can draw attention to your ad while maintaining a discreet distance and allowing the consumer to maintain a semblance of control.

Some ways this can be done would be by giving customers the chance to take part in a poll regarding a product, or be able to provide feedback on something they have purchased. You can use Flash animation to let the customer view a product from all angles IF they chose to do so. How about an embedded live twitter feed, or a chance to ‘like’ the product or company on Facebook?

Advertising Don’ts

Don’t detract from the page that is being read. This means avoiding the use of auto-expand ads, ads that automatically play music or videos without prompting; ads that incorporate loud and unexpected noises or which use animation that does not stay corralled in its own ad frame.

Each of these are examples of what not to do when creating your Internet ad, but if you should find yourself wondering if a particular advertising method is going to be too annoying for your potential customers, there are two things that you can do: First, ask yourself how you would feel if you opened up a page and this particular ad jumped out at you when you hadn’t asked for it. Would you be annoyed? Secondly, plant a small child of about age four or five in front of your computer and play the page. If they automatically start laughing and pointing to the ad, it is a fair bet that it is going to be too annoying for most adults.

The Balancing Act

Advertising in today’s media rich climate is a balancing act. As an advertiser you must be able to be interesting without being annoying; be informative without being condescending; and be able to be engaging without becoming the used-car-salesman of internet advertisements. You walk a fine line, and the future of your company may very well depend on your ability to keep your balance.

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