RE: UKNM: Brand-building banners

[Russell Goldsmith]

Having monitored the discussion from the start, and seeing wild statements

being made, I thought I'd share some opinions of my own and throw in some

research findings.


First of all - the banner is by no means dead, and I'll happily support

Ray's corner on that one.


1. Awareness vs Clickthrough


Take McDonalds.  We all know they sell burgers, we all know they sell happy

meals, so if my objective is to let my target audience know the latest Happy

Meal is for the new Disney film 'Dinosaur', do I need to drive the audience

away from the site they are on to deliver that message to them, if I can

achieve it in the banner?  My belief is no - therefore, Banners can work for

awarenss.


As an example, we set up Butterkist's sponsorship of www.popcorn.co.uk and

none of the buttons, sponsor slots or banners that appear throughout the

entire site, link away from the site - infact, butterkist dont even have

their own web site - yet, here is a quote from their brand manager


"Butterkist's strategy is to create an association between watching movies

at home and eating Butterkist - 'Stay Home, Watch the Movie, Eat

Butterkist'. By using a different and groundbreaking approach, the first of

its kind, awareness of Butterkist has been driven through www.popcorn.co.uk

which has enabled us to capitalise on already existing interests of the

movie buff. Coupled with the highly apt name of the web site, its high

traffic flow, and an on-pack website address the success of this contra-deal

has gone far beyond expectations. Prompted awareness of the brand has risen

to 69% and we believe the web activity has been instrumental in driving this

increase. By showing the link/logo on every page of the site, Butterkist has

optimum visibility and thefore a high recognition rate by the user as they

move around the site while the link to the competition page enables the user

to further interact with the brand. This highly innovative approach to brand

awareness taken by Marketiers 4DC has been instrumental in the success of

Butterkist and furthering the

Butterkist/Movie link."


Having said all the above, banners can also work for click-through.  We

created an HTML banner for TheSite.org that had a drop down menu allowing

people to search for advice on a number of topics within the banner itself,

and placed this in specific sections of Lycos, and against keywords - the

click-through was over 20% - so successful, Lycos aksed to use it in their

media pack.


2. Intrusiveness of Online Advertising


Part of the discussion was about consumers views of banners against other

forms of advertising - well if you visit Jupiter Research's web site, they

have a report there (granted last year's) that gives some information - for

example.  On being questioned about 'Which two types of the following forms

of advertising do you find to be most intrusive - (TV, Online, Radio,

Outdoor, Magazines, Newspapers) - 49% of those surveyed selected online

advertising as the most intrusive - second only to TV.  However, people tend

to tolerate TV commercial interruptions because it's a passive medium - the

ad is part of the viewing experience, whereas online advertising interupts

users search for information, or their choice of a specific form of

entertainment.

In the same survey, 69% of users regarded interstitials negatively - with

close to a quarter stating they find interstitials so annoying, they would

avoide sites that carried them!



_______________________________________

Russell Goldsmith

Market Tiers 4DC

29-55 Gee Street, London, EC1V 3RE

T) 020 7253 8888; F) 020 7253 8885


Control the Power

www.markettiers4dc.com



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