Online Advertising Mistakes

Online advertisements have a lot of work to do. As with any form of advertising, before an ad can even begin to accomplish its purpose (persuading you to respond to or buy something), it has to get your attention. In today's world of information overload, that is not an easy thing to do! The ability to grab a consumer's attention is fundamental to all advertising; however, the amount of work required to do so (aside from how well an ad accomplished its ultimate purpose of positioning, branding, offering, and selling) differs between media. For example, those annoying advertisements that run before the previews at the movies don't have to work very hard in this regard. Assuming you're not running out to grab a package of Jujubes, these particular ads pretty much have your undivided attention. Television commercials have a bit more work to do since they have to compete with the refrigerator and the result of going to the refrigerator. Otherwise, television advertisements pretty much have a captive audience as well (unless you've been freed by the TiVolution like me, in which case TV ads have very little chance of getting any attention at all! - I digress...) Magazine ads have a bit more work to do because they have to stop you from flipping by as you peruse a magazine. Depending on whether you are seriously engaged in reading the magazine or simply flipping through as you wait for a doctor appointment, your reading activity will have a greater or lesser inertia. This reading inertia will be harder or easier to stop depending on how focused you are on what you are reading. The relative scale of how hard it is to stop a consumer's inertia is what makes online advertising so difficult. Unlike most of the other forms of advertising that tend to take advantage of captive attention, online advertising has to stop someone from active internet surfing, which has a lot of inertia. This is because nobody sits and watches their computer passively as websites pass by. Rather, they are online because they are pursuing a specific task or active interest. If someone is online to make travel arrangements, they are not going to easily change gears to respond to a banner ad selling a magazine subscription.