Banner Advertising

Thu, 02 Jul 2009

Eversince the dawn of the internet it has been a participative medium. The former consument gained unprecedented power over the information presented to him and with the advent of the web 2.0 technologies he himself became a publisher.

But once the web grew beyond a certain point, the convential media industry started to reach for it and, sad but true, the advertising banner came into being. In the beginning the banners mimicked system elements, tricking users into klicking on them. Though nowadays the bigger part of them is less deceiving, the advertising banner is still the manifesto of complete misunderstanding, a fully animated declaration of intellectual bankruptcy.

Peter Ogilvy once said that “you can’t bore your clients into buying your product. You can only interest them in it”.

True enough.

A Peter Ogilvy of the present day could add that you cannot annoy your clients into buying your product, either.  Why not? Because you can’t force the user to see your ad. There is, for example, a wonderful plugin for the firefox called adblock plus. It’s plain – if you want to “steal” their attention the users fight back. They win. You lose.

Again: you can’t annoy them into buying your product.

What else? Well for once: participate. As an equal. Be useful. Be creative. Listen. Speak with them, don’t shout at them until their eyes and ears bleed.

Yes, this is different.

But it’s good!