Life, and technology, move fast in today's world-- and that's bad news for advertisers. Consumers can skip television commercials and watch programs at their convenience, sending advertising dollars down the drain with every fast-forward. This ad-skipping capability is forcing advertisers to rethink the way they deliver their messages to consumers and turn to the web for laser-focused advertising.
The online advertising trend is shaking up both the ad world and the internet. Advertisers are getting creative with web-only ads and incentives-- in fact, about $1.5 billion will be spent this year on rich-media ads, and by 2010 the figure will rise to $3.5 billion, according to Jupiter Research.
What's fueling this trend? Although the cost of broadband is still more than dial-up service, the benefits of broadband are causing more people to abandon their 56K modems for better, faster performance. Faster speed for watching video, sending photos and email, as well as for browsing the internet are the primary reasons why most people are opting for broadband over dial-up.
And with faster connectivity, consumers are spending more time online: Broadband users in the United States are expected to double from 45 million to 90 million by 2010. In fact, a report released by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and the Interactive Advertising Bureau indicates that overall online advertising spending skyrocketed to $12.5 billion in 2005-- a 30 percent increase from 2004.
In addition to running web-only rich media campaigns, some marketers house their TV ads online for repeat viewing, and many advertisers are using their television ads to drive consumers to their websites. Automobile manufacturers, for example, routinely tease consumers with commercials that end with an invitation to go to the company's website to see what happens at the end of the commercial.
The fact that more advertisers are including links to their websites in their on-air ads, as well as including high-quality video on their sites, is a sign that advertisers recognize the impact of the internet on their businesses. It also signals that they are willing to part with a portion of their budgets to gain the benefits, as illustrated in a Forrester Research report that states that the $26 billion that marketers will spend in 2010 in overall online display ads, email, search and classified ads will represent eight percent of all advertising spending-- rivaling spending on cable/satellite TV and radio.
The downside of sending viewers online
Every marketer wants a successful campaign, but sometimes successful campaigns create a problem: How to handle all the increased traffic to the site.
Advertisers with effective ad campaigns can place a drain on a company's website resources if the company is ill-prepared for the results-- they can experience site crashes, slowdowns and other negative effects without the right plan in place. Advertisers need to prepare a strategy for delivering their website content well before they launch a new ad campaign to ensure that traffic spikes are handled easily and to reduce the risk of financial consequences if ads aren't served correctly. With today's consumer demand for rich, interactive content, this is more crucial than ever before.
For example, in May 2005, hamburger chain Carl's Jr. launched a racy ad campaign featuring Paris Hilton washing a Bentley-- in fact, the ad was so risqué, it was only featured on a dedicated website, www.spicyparis.com. The site got so many hits in the first few hours that it crashed, causing the restaurant to lose visitors and with them, a chunk of its investment in the campaign.
Content Delivery Networks can help
With ads becoming increasingly more creative, interactive and fun, users are responding to them-- when the content does get to them. So what can advertisers do to ensure more eyes are seeing their ads?
First of all, the ad has to get to the user in as little time as possible, every time. Some companies choose to build out their own networks to handle this type of traffic. This is a fine solution for companies whose traffic doesn't fluctuate, but when an ad is working, a website can be overwhelmed and brought down in minutes.
Many companies instead choose to partner with a content delivery network (CDN). CDNs route customer traffic through the provider's network, providing an automatically scalable, always-on solution. This is ideal for advertisers experiencing success with their interactive campaigns.
After the delivery is figured out, adding intelligence to content delivery can make sure the ad gets to the right person at the right time by actually targeting the ad to appropriate demographics using CDN data. Additionally, it can help advertisers increase revenue and reduce costs.
For example, web logic can deliver personalized content, and other dynamically generated data to improve the website experience so that customers will browse longer and are more likely to return and buy more often. Unfortunately, implementing intelligent delivery features such as personalization often requires special expertise, costly development and added processing capacity.
The challenges faced by advertisers and their websites may seem daunting; however, with careful planning and the right mix of strategy and technology they can ensure that advertising dollars are maximized across the board to turn users into buyers.
Martin Hayward is director of marketing, Mirror Image Internet. Read full bio.
