Online advertising agencies are missing the mark by using gimmicks instead of good ideas, with frustrated web viewers ignoring ads because they are annoying and bear little relationship to the content they are reading, according to an independent IT services consultant.
Theresa Cunnington, senior usability consultant with iFocus, said anecdotal evidence from around 100 web users involved in web usability studies had highlighted the need for online advertisers to lift their game.
Cunnington said the “distract and grab attention” approach was not working.
Web browsers were ignoring great slabs of web “real estate” to avoid ads with the five most despised techniques – ads that cover content, flashing ads, wandering and re-sized ads, high bandwidth ads and pop-up ads – she said.
Examples of effective campaigns included an ad for Virgin Blue’s velocity program, which was next to an online article criticising Qantas’s Frequent Flyer Program and ads for games, which The Age newspaper ran next to articles about gaming, said Cunnington.
“Advertisers need to ask, ‘why have they come to the site and how can we leverage that’, ” Cunnington commented.
“It’s not that users hate advertising, they just hate unsympathetic advertising.”
Matt Cumming, M&C Saatchi’s creative director, digital, said there needed to be a greater focus on more creative, online ads that enticed the viewer to engage with the ad as opposed to ads that “maniacally flag them down”.
“That’s going to be my objective,” he said.
However, the infrastructure was not yet in place to allow content specific advertising, Cumming added.
