Online advertising was a hard sell from the beginning. Advertisers, like anybody who spends money on anything, like to have something they can hold in their hands. Of course advertising has always been hard to put one's finger on, but at least in the days when it was limited to print, the advertiser could at least pick up a copy of the newspaper, flip through the pages to find their ad, and pass it around the office. Online advertising, which is merely a bunch of pixels on a screen, is even more tenuous of a product. Nonetheless, it has found its place, and it has become the currency that makes the Internet continue to grow.
Google is probably the one company that has had the biggest impact on the online advertising market. Early on, the company found its bearings by offering a useful search engine for free, but made its money by creating a massive advertising engine that actually defined online advertising for everyone else. It is because of Google, more than any other company, that online advertising has finally come to be accepted, both by consumers and by advertisers. Forrester reports on Google's new initiative, which holds the promise of making even greater changes to the online ad industry. Forrester's research report highlights Google's entry into the online display advertising market, with the beta launch of a site within its AdSense for Content product.
Forrester accurately predicts that Google will make lots of money from its new venture, but also notes that the new display advertising product will put a strain on existing publisher/advertiser relationships as more advertisers opt for the Google model of ad distribution rather than contracting with individual online publishing companies.
Every ad guy from the pre-Internet days is probably familiar with "Wanamaker's Rule," which states something to the effect that half the money spent on ads is wasted, but nobody ever is sure which half that is. Research and Markets' report proclaims this to now be out of date, since in the world of Internet advertising, everything can be measured. Technology lets advertisers know which reader is looking at which ad, for how long, where they come from, and just about everything they could possibly want to know outside of what color socks each viewer is wearing. Truth be told, they could probably figure that out, too. This report notes that the world of online ad metrics still suffers from many outmoded concepts, but nonetheless holds great promise of accountability. But perhaps we pay too much attention to click-through rates. The report notes that many ad companies measure the view-through rate, which takes into account any action taken by users within 30 days of viewing an ad--and notes that consumers are more likely to respond to an ad slowly than right away. So--low click-throughs doesn't necessarily mean a poor campaign.
But like almost anything else in business, taking online ad metrics is a constantly changing process. Advertisers have always relied on cookies, those handy little files that we place on user's PCs, to keep track of who's who and to personalize the Web browsing experience. Jupiter Research says however, that 40 percent of users delete cookies on a monthly basis. But the crumbling cookies doesn't necessarily mean crumbling metrics, Jupiter predicts that Web analytics vendors will adapt their tools to new methods.
Dan Blacharski has authored several books on technology, business and entrepreneurial concepts. He has been a freelance writer and editorial consultant for over 10 years and currently covers high-tech topics for the trade press. Write him at dan@blacharski.net.
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