So today I had a realization…
But before I continue, a question: how often do you click on an Ad, or better, when was the last time you clicked on an Ad?
Most people that I ask answer this question as follows: “not very often” or “long-time ago”.
Now the realization…
Today I saw someone clicking on an Ad, multiple times. This person *didn’t realize* it was an Ad, but part of the app!
(From the app-design perspective, this is “great” and it validates the fact that if you make Ads look as part of your app itself that people will click more often.)
So it occurred to me, could it be the long-tail of click-throughs come from people who don’t really know that what they are clicking on are Ads? And could this be the reason why all the people I ask (mostly folks who know computers and the Web and what are Ads are) don’t click on Ads that often? And also is the the reason why Click-through rates fall but interactions continue good performance?
And does this mean that *over time* as people continue to get more educated about the Web and Ads, that they will not click on Ads as often? Thus, Ads as a revenue model is in jeopardy?
I think so…
ceo
i think so too…
scary to think that lots of big businesses are built around tricking people into clicking
I never click on ads. I am not an impulse buyer. I really don’t trust TV ads or Web ads. I do a lot of research before I buy something. I talk to friends and look at reviews on trusted websites. I have found most places that have to over advertised do so because the item is crap or cost more due to all the advertising.
Think of all the “As Seen on TV” stuff or Buy Direct when they had an ad on every half hour.
I do think more and more people can ignore or block ads so they are not a solid business plan, at least not as solid as they once were.
I’m speculating, not being a marketing/advertising expert by any means, but in any case there’s more to it than clicking or not.
As you know, most Web companies rely on ads for revenue, especially the very biggest, as their services are completely free for the users, which is in turn one of the reasons they’ve been able to at all become popular. To get a lot of ad revenue you need to have a lot of users, but once you get there the sky seems to be the limit. Not just for the amount of users per se, but also that you have more users than the competition, which is obviously important to advertisers.
All try to make ads not look like ads. Read Google’s advice for mixing content with ads: same style, fonts, colors, insert ads between articles etc. Actually I find Facebook to be pretty decent in this area. Ads are kept nicely in the right corner. Web magazines are outright horrible (from a reader perspective) in terms of ad placement. Not just oddly placed, but there’s so much of it too, all over the place.
Print and TV ads are obviously never clickable, so why must a Web or mobile app ad be clickable or clicked to be effective? The company acting broker (Google, Facebook etc) and the companies providing the ad space of course want people to, as that’s the way they get revenue. There can also be pre-paid ad space, especially in Web magazines, but that’s not how e.g. Adwords works: Adwords relies only on clicks and ad ranking based on how much the advertiser is willing to pay, yet no money changes hands if the ad is not clicked. For the advertiser it’s not necessarily a failure if people don’t click, provided the ad itself tells the story intended.
I’ve used the above method, to some effect, asking that the user should go to a certain site instead of clicking on the ad, and at the same time setting a very high CTR, so the ad is shown. Didn’t cost much :). Not as easily done in an app though.
Also, the ad money is there. It’s roughly speaking a matter of selecting the (seemingly) most effective channels for the demographic addressed. Mobile and Web are now obvious choices for offerings to younger people, whatever other criteria apply.
A local, but one of the largest, magazines told me they get much much more revenue from print ads than Web ditto, despite the first not being qualified in any sense of the word. In other words, Web ads are cheap for advertisers, provided they can somehow prove they are enough effective. And it also indicates the print and TV ad businesses are severely over-priced, and companies will move away from them eventually, even for an adult audience, and the future adult audience is today’s Web- and mobile-savvy young people.
Hence, even if no one clicks or if people click for the wrong reasons, it doesn’t matter. It can even be better if people don’t click, as indicated above. Consider that for a minute.
In the long term I’m sure ad brokers need to charge for the ad space too, to balance this.
I’ve noted that Facebook is becoming a major competitor to Google. As both completely rely on ads for revenue, pulling over advertisers hurts the one pulled from, and that’s Google.
A few years ago there was a lot of talk about ‘mobile ads need to be engaging, and not just traditional click ads’. I only see the good old click ads now, and that’s the only thing offered by ad brokers. So much for that trend. The same people concluded SMS ads were bad, while click ads somehow were OK. That leap of logic is kinda interesting.
Admittedly though, I see more and more (rather amateurish) ads that are designed like simple games (shoot ducks, iPhones or whatever, or answer a question about an optical illusion etc). It’s of course a clever way to make people click. The site you come to after clicking therefore can (and often do) have nothing to do with what was shown in the ad, and if it had been (it’s often so called ‘free’ MMOs) people probably wouldn’t click. The companies providing ad space don’t seem to be very discriminating about what ads are shown. They are after the revenue of course.
The ad business is huge, and it will most likely never go away. It will only change channels. When we all get brain implants, ads will be there too.
See my new blog for more rants like this.
Large ad-supported sites can get a surprisingly high percentage of click-through traffic from accidental clicks. I’m not talking about people clicking on something they didn’t realize was an ad, but “I was reaching for the coffee mug and accidentally bumped the mouse” or “Kitty, get off the desk” clicks.