Hacking the Good Days...
Are you curious about world’s kick-a** ads that I just created based on scientific research? Let’s begin with the backdrop illuminated by this Wallstreet article:
As Microsoft Corp. makes a $44.6 billion bet on Internet advertising with its unsolicited offer for Yahoo Inc., there are signs that some of the biggest new places where consumers are flocking on the Web — social networking and video-sharing sites — are yielding advertising revenue slower than some Internet companies had hoped.
The argument is pretty clear. Social Networking websites are not necessarily making the revenue marketers think they would.
So what went wrong? And how can we rectify this?
Let’s continue with Mohan’s favorite cliches – which might have summarised the mindsets that non-marketing people (i.e. geeks) will nod and smile (with bracketed notes from me),
1. Its about the community (oh dear, we love you, too)
2. Make passionate users of your customers (what? ‘Make’ users? into customers? you mean they are like transformers and can ‘reboot’ into one another? you lost me here…)
3. Communities are built “one person at a time” (Right. So does baby-making i guess.)
4. The web is the biggest social network (what about China?)
5. Email is the best social network (what about women? or men?)
6. The lines of social networks between business and home are blurring (huh?)
7. Keep your community always in the know (of what though?)
8. Get inside your community’s head, but go for their hearts (did they dub this from how to loose a guy in ten days???)
9. Marketing to a community is evil (but making money is not. wait.. huh?)
10. Build a community for the sake of doing good, not profiting from it. (“help! I am attacked by personalised ads!!”)
While Bill’s diagnosis is the problem that advertisers are using old school methods for these websites.
But the main challenge is BANNER BLINDNESS. There are now generations of surfers who have distinctively different styles in web-browing. Yahoo!’s older baby boomers are very different from Google’s yuppies or moms who just redicovered the there is search functions on the internet versus business people who would only log in to check email, banking, and stock prices. How ‘permeable’ they are to advertisement solicits interesting psycho-social research, which I am not sure if ‘marketing people’ will see the value of it.
Nielson’s research illuminates the ‘problem’:
See – we are literally blind to banner ads. And his conclusion is that only ads that are:
-
- Plain text
- Faces
- Cleavage and other “private” body parts
stand a better chance of being noticed.
How exciting.
So we just need a lot of cleavage then. And probably there will be world peace as well… damn, Freud has been right!
Okay so if I aspire to be a word-class marketer, this is my campaign:
cleavage ‘abstracted’ from Flickr by C.P.Storm
Wonder if gum tree will hire me.
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“So we just need a lot of cleavage then”
)
But what if every free part on the site is covered with cleavages, then how can I find Yours (I mean Your research based kick-a** ad).
points to the end – sex sells, and it always will
Avar: oh boy – yeah that’s a good question (and thanks for the clarification lol)
Mukund: my traffic surges all of a sudden… mmmm if only this small pix of cleavage can get me here?
Okay it goes back to Avar’s point though.
*doh!
Banner Blindness work actually in same way outside the web too. Think about newspapers, billboards – how much we actually pay attention on ads? I agree with Jakob Nielsen what is concerning banners, but in other hand, web is a good ground for more effective advertisement methods.
To make conventional banner work, the first goal is attract user attention. But if this first goal is established, then there is long, long way to establish ultimate goal – i.e. to make user pay something, believe something, or trust someone. Cleavage definitely does job for first goal but hardly for last one.
I believe that we can skip establishing first goal altogether and instead of getting Your attention, we can monitor You, we learn about Your habits and in the right moment we make You an appealing offer.
We can track mouse movements to guess what You are looking (there is
significant correlation between mouse and eye movements), we can store
every action, keystroke and click, navigation patterns etc.
Think about online shop, say bookstore. And say You want to pay Fogg’s
“Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and
Do”, but You find it too costly. So you come back again and again and
always look for this particular book. This behaviour of Yours is very
easily detectable by system and maybe just in the right moment
system makes You discount or otherwise good offer.
In the very same time, when old fashion advertisers fighting for your attention, I silently listen Your story…
Yeah in that regard I think both google search and amazon are freaking scary – just when i thought i am immune to all these I actually click those ads rather often. Contextual relevancy!
PS: Fogg’s book is a pretty good one!
I hope that these scary opportunities – despite possible downsides – can lead us finally to new era in customer-marketer-manufacturer relations (at least in the context of web).
There’s no more such thing as an Average Joe, we are all individuals with specific needs, walking a different path.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
I tried to show fallowing image in the end of my last comment, but without much success, as I see:)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/avar_pentel/2264639726/