RE: UKNM: RE: Brand-building banners

[Tony Newland]

I disagree with the point and the prediction below. Affiliate deals whilst

valuable to the client do present a number of increasingly important

problems for media owners.


A number of principles are being formed which I personally think are

representative of bad business. Firstly, the media owners are being put in a

position where they are baring the brunt of risk. In no other business that

I am aware is the cost of advertising expected to be borne by the vehicle

carrying it. It is like saying to a magazine carrying a page advert, we will

only pay you for the people who have bought our goods/services as a direct

result of seeing our ad in your magazine. A page is worth x amount and costs

y amount to produce, why should the magazine take a risk when it is standard

that only 50% of advertising works. Until we know which 50%, it stops being

a business and begins being a gamble.


There is a fine line, and no media owner in the long term can really afford

to take this chance. Also, it does not take into account the value of brand

building, a thread which has been going on for a while. I take the point

that a person seeing an ad on a particular site may not then and there buy

from the location because of it, but may go straight to the (I say client in

this context, by which I mean the business buying the media) site at a later

date because they now know about it. Thus the client gets the business and

the media owner gets nothing.


Space is valuable, there is only so much you can reasonably have on any site

before the site becomes both slow and a pain in the ass to navigate.

Affiliate deals, which are risky for the media owner, offer no guarantee of

revenue, and take up space are I believe going to become increasingly

popular with sites where there is an urgent need for cash flow due to a lack

of ad reveues.


No bank manager is going to accept the promise of money, maybe, when people

start clicking on and buying from a site that the media owner himself has no

way of monitoring. The media owner knows how good his site is to navigate,

how many unique users he has and what sort of response he gets from them.

He/she has no control over the affiliates site or indeed how reliable it is

to navigate, and how good the fulfillment is on it. Also with any good

proposition there is repeat business. Once a customer has found a site that

he likes to buy from and has found reliable he is far more likely to go back

through a different route from the one he originally took from the media

owners site. I think this is an appalling stats of affairs and the balance

of power in this type of business deal is due to create tension even in the

most trusting of relationships.


Having said all of that (if you are still with me..) there are occasions

when affiliates do work, and that is as John said when they are sweated

over. We (you kow me well enough by now that I can never resist the chance)

recently entered into an affiliate with the Online Travel Company, and took

an immense amount of time over the look and feel of the section. As a result

we won the Guardians travel web site of the week award, and considering we

are a Gay and Lesbian content site this is no mean feat. I am not therefore

in principle denying the value of affiliation, but more the underlying

principles it seems to be establishing and the questions it raises of who

bears the brunt of the risk.


Banner ads aren't lazy, I've seen some very classy and effective ones in my

(short) time in this arena. It is the case however that many people seem to

becoming blind to them. The psychology of this blindness needs to be

understood and routes found around it so that the user "sees" the

advertising presented to him. Even if it means putting them halfway down the

page rather than the top. Why should banners be ablong, for instance? We

have at our disposal the most maliable tool for ad delivery ever (when you

take into account the expense of television) the only limits of which is our

own creativity. This is beginning to sound a bit too much like philosophy so

I shall stop there. Apologies if I've bored anyone, but hey it's Friday.


A prediction of my own: as with all historical tension I thik the banner

will still be with us in three years time, affiliate deals will be very big

but only on the sites that can afford to carry them (the others withered on

the vine long back) and alot more exiting forms of advertising that will be

born out of the perceived failings of both.


Have a good weekend y'all. (/idealistic rant)


T.


> Tony Newland

> Advertising & Sponsorship Manager

> Rainbow Network Plc

> phone: 0207 278 1105

> fax: 0207 713 7732

> web: http://www.rainbownetwork.com

>

> Any opinions expressed in this message are those of the author only and do

not necessarily represent the views of RAINBOW NETWORK PLC.

>

>



-----Original Message-----

From: John Braithwaite [

JohnBGBGdirect [dot] com (mailto:JohnBGBGdirect [dot] com)

]

Sent: 23 November 2000 10:24

To:

uknmchinwag [dot] com

Subject: UKNM: RE: Brand-building banners



> That's my point! That degree of creativity for TV ads is mega-expensive.

You

> could produce a small feature film cheaper. To do Flat Eric or Bud on web

> only would be a fraction of the cost, with a much bigger audience than any

> TV network anywhere in the world would provide.

>

> One day someone in some big fancy ad agency and/or

beer/tentcloth/razorblade

> company will cotton on (pun not intended) to this fact and start ordering

> the big guns to sort it.


But, the interesting thing is that, in many cases, the 'best' (marked by -

'I'm prepared to sit through this without throwing beer-nuts at the TV

screen' score) adverts are not the most effective. Flat Eric is a prime

example.... everyone wanted the toy, no-one wanted the jeans!


The truth is that Banner ads are perfect for lazy marketers who can't be

bothered to integrate their services into other sites and actually deliver

value to the end-user. That is why, in about three years' time, affiliate

marketing will be the real-deal - because the

'affiliate' site will work and sweat over producing QUALITY click-throughs

with EFFECTIVE results rather than just splashing another oblong flashing

thing at the top of that page that gets in the way.



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