How A Little Honesty Can Boost Your Click-Through
by Bruce Simpson
Director of Marketing 7 am 

Advertisers and their creative teams are going to increasing
lengths to improve the performance of their ads. First, we had
the static graphic banner. Then animation. That was been
followed by "active ads" that used Java or Shockwave to
provide various levels of interactivity. Now, we’ve even got
some people building the point of sale into the banner. 

We also see sites playing with ad-positioning, trying to avoid
the subconscious blind-spot we’ve all developed for that
"top-center" position that where you find most banners. 

There have been audio-enhanced ads, interstitials… even
streaming video enabled banners, all trying to boost that
critical click-through ratio. 

Well, recently a large multi-national advertiser placed a banner
ad on one of my sites for a couple of weeks. Near the end of
the ad-run they contacted me and asked what was wrong with
my ad reporting. Why was my site apparently not registering
all the impressions delivered? 

Why was it that my site was delivering over twice the
click-through rate when compared to others around the Web,
which were carrying exactly the same banner? 

Well, since it is Christmas, and ‘tis the season to be giving, I’ll
let you in on a secret: 

I use "honesty". I ASK visitors to my sites to click on the ads. 

It’s that simple! 

I have quite a few Web sites which rely on adverting revenues
for their continued operation and here are some of the
statements I’ve placed beneath the ad banners I carry: 

"Please visit the advertiser, it pays the bills"
"Please support Aardvark - CLICK THE AD"
"Advertising pays for this page, please click on the ad" 

You would be astounded at the effect this has had on the
click-through ratio of ads placed on these sites. It is clear that
a significant number of visitors either don’t realize -- or simply
forget -- that the advertiser-funded model has to deliver
customers to the advertiser’s site to be stay in business.
Remind your visitors of this and, providing you’re delivering
content of reasonable quality, they’ll be far more inclined to
visit the advertiser’s sites. 

I regularly get email from people saying, "I regularly click on
your advertisers banners and visit their pages because I really
like your site." 

No doubt some of you are saying, "Oh, yes, but these people
aren’t interested in the product. They’re just clicking out of
loyalty - so is this of any value to the advertiser?" 

My reply to this is that my sole responsibility is to deliver
eyeballs to the advertiser’s Web site. Once I deliver the
eyeballs, it’s up to the advertiser to capitalize on that traffic by
turning visitors into customers. If their Web site works and their
product or services are good value, then they’ll make the
sales. 

So maybe good old fashioned honesty is more powerful than
even the most sophisticated multi-media technology. One
thing’s for sure ­ it’s a technique that I seldom see used on the
Web, which suprises me - because it’s so simple, inexpensive
and effective!
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
http://www.clickz.com/archives/120997.html
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -