They’re ubiquitous, obtrusive, and sometimes excruciatingly annoying, but banner ads have been the primary advertising vehicle of the web for more than a decade. Most are seen and ignored by the viewer. Some are as irritating as a carnival game hawker, trying as hard as they might to get your click-through. We’ve all learned, either from confirmed suspicions or experience, to avoid them at all cost, and as a result, they’re not the most effective vehicle for getting your message out.

But if you don’t advertise, you don’t get seen. Banner ads are one of the easiest ways to rent a piece of property on someone else’s high-traffic url. As a business model, it can be valued, tracked, and measured for success. If you don’t spend a dime on banner advertising, your internet marketing campaign may never get off the ground.

The first problem with a banner ad is that the viewer is usually interested in driving to their destination, and they see your banner advertisement as a distraction. The viewer has more interest in what they’re trying to accomplish than in what you’re trying to sell, so they don’t give the banner ad much value unless it appears to be a more direct route toward their intended destination. That doesn’t happen very often, which leads to the second problem. The result of clicking on a banner ad almost always leads to disappointment. It’s like someone changing the channel during your favorite television show to make you watch the commercial on another channel. Yuck.

The solution is simple–promise and deliver. Promise the viewer that when they click on your banner ad, they’re going to find exactly what you tell them is there, and when they click on it, give them exactly that, and exceed their expectations. Inform and delight them. Entertain them. Reward them. Make them glad they clicked on your banner ad. Be consistent in never failing to delight and reward the viewer. Do that, and people will look forward to finding your banner ads when they surf the web. Can you imagine that? An advertising campaign where people look forward to being distracted every time they see one of your banner ads?

Banner ads are an invitation to party. If you have a reputation for throwing the best parties in town, everyone will want to come. If you are known for the lamest parties, who’s going to bother? Banner ads without a pay-off are a waste of money, and they squander your credibility. If you can’t deliver the goods, stop spending your cash. Get your marketing campaign on track. Create an advertising vehicle that rewards the viewer when they visit your landing page. Then start advertising. The results will be slow at first, but once you gain a reputation for consistently rewarding your visitors for banner click-throughs, you will be astonished with the results, and the return from your investment in banner advertising will make you a winner.

I’m a big believer in data, but I’m not sure what to believe about some of the data that is thrown around to measure the size of markets or count the number of eyeballs that will be exposed to an advertising campaign. This seems to be a problem for not only me, but for many customers who are trying to make intelligent decisions about where and how to market their products. Numbers that have been influenced by a vested interest only serve to undermine credibility. Let me offer two instances.

Magazine readership numbers are reported on the premise that for each issue in circulation, a multiple number of people read it. The x factor serves to improve audience value, thus increasing the value of ad space. This x factor is reported by the magazine, and then audited by a third party. Unfortunately, the auditors are not a consumer watchdog group. They are an organization funded by publishers, advertisers, and advertising agencies and exist for the sole purpose of lending credibility to magazine readership numbers. Bias is unavoidable. And while it’s reasonable to assume some percentage of magazines are passed-along to friends and family, the numbers often reported just don’t jibe with my experience. As an advertiser, I’m not supposed to question these numbers, but I can’t help it.

In another case I recently read two different social media impact reports. They both reported strong interest in social media marketing efforts by marketing professionals. The numbers were somewhat out of line with what I expected. A quick look at the audience who were surveyed showed that they were largely comprised of people who are already engaged in social media marketing. It makes perfect sense that they would have a high interest. If you pull your audience from those who visit social media websites, you’re going to get an abnormally large number of opinions that are favorable toward social media. Just like the magazine audit bureaus, there is a bias that is cognitively inseparable from the setting.

There are better ways to gather data. I favor data gathered through evaluating and measuring conversations within online communities. I believe unprompted discussions produce better insights. People share their opinions in a forum where they are comfortable, and therefore tend to be more honest and open. Unlike surveys, participants in these discussions are not influenced by the trajectory of questions. And because the data is publicly available, it can be independently verified, supported, or challenged.

Using conversation to gather data isn’t new. Carol Gilligan turned moral development theory on its ear by using open-ended dialog to develop an understanding of ethical relationships instead of the line of hypothetical questions used by Lawrence Kohlberg and others. By doing so, Gilligan was able to thwart a system of inquiry that generated a bias in the conclusions drawn by her predecessors. In the same way, new understandings about brands and product perceptions can be gained by looking at the conversations surrounding them. By following the threads of conversations, an overall impression of can be scored, the positive and negative traits identified, and trends over time can be measured and connected to events.

This process can be used to measure and track the public pulse of ethical questions such as how people feel about software piracy and what changes their attitudes, or to measure people’s like or dislike for consumer brands like Gibson musical instruments and Whirlpool appliances. It does requires skill and a great amount of time and effort to locate, analyze, and report on the data. Software tools certainly make the work easier, but ultimately it comes down to understanding natural language. Data points have to be hand selected and hand scored. And it is well worth the effort involved. We see consumers in a fresh perspective that isn’t readily apparent through other data. The results are often insightful, compelling, and sometimes assumption-shattering.

If you believe this is a service your brand can benefit from, please contact me through this blog, or at Keller Crescent Advertising.