Banner ads will be all but gone by 2020 replaced by native advertising and ads that exist directly within social media feeds.
That’s the view of Tejal Patel (pictured below), director of consumer engagement, who was speaking at Advertising Week Europe currently underway in London. Patel told the audience that ads that weren’t relevant to the user and weren’t geared towards the smartphone would fast go the way of the dinosaur.
“Millennials … are likely to sacrifice their privacy. However, they’re not going to do that for banners. Why would you? There has to be a value exchange there: good contextually relevant content,” Patel said, her comments reported on Business Insider.
“I think this whole word ‘banner’ shouldn’t exist, and probably won’t exist in three or four years, maybe less than that,” added Patel.
Instead, Patel believed Millennials would drive the change and want tailored ads via social media.
However, she was less sold on location-based advertising, telling the audience that the link between it and actual purchased was “very tenuous” at best.
“The ROI on (location based advertising) isn’t really there for us (Microsoft) at the moment,” she said. “That doesn’t mean it won’t work. Maybe for certain things like events location-based ads could work.”
Neither was Patel a fan of ads within apps, describing them as ineffective and unimpressive from a consumer’s point of view.
“Thinking about it from a consumer point of view, I’m really unimpressed with in-app ads. I can’t believe it. It feels like it is from the beginning of the digital era still. Someone please show me something really creative in in-app. I haven’t seen it yet.”
“What’s the stat? People might download 100 apps a year, but they’re only using four or five. So let’s not get too distracted with in-app advertising,” Patel said.
