Informative Advertising: A Better Way

 Advertisers have tried many approaches on the Web. When one approach
bombed, advertisers tried a new one. The latest is "contextual
advertising." Sounds sophisticated. But it will die like all
the others. Why? Because none of these fanciful techniques take
into account the new online reality: The visitor is boss.

A new approach, Informative Advertising, does.

The Advertising Cemetery

Since inception of the commercial Web, advertisers have been
busy trying innumerable techniques. I look briefly at the major
ones:

1 - PUSH - Early in the game they decided to send news together
with advertising directly to the Net user. Did not get off the
ground

2 - BANNERS - At first banners seemed to work. But after awhile
they faded away. The cemetery is full of them.

3 - ANIMATION - You still see animation, though not as much
as was prevalent at first. It will die soon

4 - FLASH - This seems to be the time for Flash. But it is
so irritating it will die soon too

5 - POP-UPS - You try to visit a site and up pops a window
with an ad. Annoying. I don't give it much time to live

6 - POP-UNDERS - Instead of the window popping up in front
of the window you want you see the popped window afterwards.
This too will die

The Latest Approach: Contextual Advertising

Now advertisers have gotten the brilliant idea of grabbing the
visitor's attention while he or she is in a related situation.
They say that if a person is at a search engine entering a keyword,
this is a good place to advertise a product or service that fits
under this keyword. This particular approach, it seems to me,
is an excellent form of advertising. It has been done successfully
by Google and other search engines. Some call this "contextual
advertising." But I have a better name for it, as I will show
below.

Here is an example of "contextual advertising." An outfit called
EZula sells keywords. But instead of supplying a search engine
EZula distributes a program called TOPtext. When a user of TOPtext
visits a site, he sees highlighted words, which enable him to
jump to sites that have purchased ads for these keywords.

These words are not highlighted by the website owner. They are
highlighted by TOPtext. The jumps take the visitor, not to a
site chosen by the website owner, but to a competitor site. Do
you think competitors will put up with this? More important,
do you think the visitor, when he finds out about this "contextual
stealing," will trust the advertiser for anything? This is the
most outrageous form of advertising invented so far.

Wells Fargo Bank, I hear, is one such "contextual advertiser."
Does this increase your trust in Wells Fargo?

The Big Blunder

Why do advertisers, who were so effective offline, not know what
to do online? Because the tricks they developed over the years
to ensnare the consumer do not work online. They do not work
because the environment has changed drastically. Before the vendor
was in control; today, online, the consumer is in control. Before
the vendor could play on the emotions of the more or less "captive"
consumer; todcay the consumer has an infinite number of choices.
Before ads were effective by themselves; today you must get the
consumer to do something - click.

In other words, the consumer is boss. Advertising, like everything
else on the Net must be helpful to the consumer. Using wile to
catch the consumer will not work. Annoying the consumer with
spam messages, or even with opt-out messages, will not work.
Stealing "context" from competitor sites decreases consumer trust,
and will not work.

Informative Advertising

Let us get back to advertising that works. What Google and other
search engines do is sell ads related to keywords. When your
chosen keyword is picked by a user, your website message appears
on the right side of the results page under Sponsored Links.
Other search engines list them under Preferred Sites or similar
headings.

These successful ads are characterized as follows:

> They do not try to ensnare you

> They do not try to interrupt you

> They do not try to hurt others

> They are obviously ads

> They are related to your current interest

> They are INFORMATIVE

The last item is key:

> THEY ARE INFORMATIVE!

Good online advertising is INFORMATIVE ADVERTISING. It does not
try to manipulate the visitor in any way. It earnestly tries
to be helpful. It earnestly tries to build trust. It earnestly
tries to steer the consumer to a site, but only if the advertiser
feels the site may be helpful to the consumer.

Of course context is important. Context is one way the advertiser
knows he may be helpful to the visitor. But context is not enough.
The important consideration is how you use context: to exploit
or to help.

Everyone agrees that newsletter advertising works. Why? Not merely
because the context is right, although this is important. Newsletter
advertising works because, for the most part, it is Informative
Advertising.

Summary

The old-fashioned advertising, which culminates today with "contextual
advertising," or as I call it "contextual stealing," is dying.
The best type of advertising - today on the Net, but tomorrow
off the Net, as well - is informative Advertising. Informative
Advertising is part of an integrated marketing strategy called
Helpfulness Marketing.

About the Author

Paul -the soarING- Siegel is a provocative Internet speaker and
author of HELPFULNESS MARKETNG, a book stressing learning, cooperation
and community. Learn about it at http://www.learningfountain.com/helpfulnessmarketing.htm
Subscribe to newsletter, LearningFOUNT; send blank email to:
mailto:LearningFOUNT-subscribe@topica.com.

 Paul Siegel

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