A skyscraper misadventure

Return to What's important to someone depends on what's happening in their life

One of the first things NextStage discovered in this research was just how little people creating ads and placing ads knew about where their ads were going to end up. This is aptly demonstrated in this figure:

Remember my writing that knowing where to place an ad to maximize ROI means knowing things like age, gender, education, training, lifestyle, et cetera, of the target audience? The first figure has an OnStar banner and a series of sponsored links as a right hand wide skyscraper.

These are both good ads in and of themselves. However, placing them on a page announcing the passing of a specific demographic's cultural icon is not so good.

People outside of the demographic who knew Don Herbert as Mr. Wizard will receive a very different emotional and psychological impact than people familiar with Don Herbert's work.

The question becomes, who is this page intended for and who are the ads intended for? The ideal is to have the ads' audience and the page's audience synchronized. I'm particularly amused by the top ad in the wide skyscraper, "How to Sleep More."

I don't think that's going to be Don's problem, nor do I think people who were familiar with Don Herbert are going to read about his passing and think "Yeah, that's what I need, a sleep aid!" Similarly, "Get the OnStar Treatment". Umm...you mean death? In both cases, I think I'll pass.

Strangely enough, the OnStar ad would have worked on this page as a wide skyscraper. A simple skyscraper metaphorically going from earth to heaven, richer blue on top than on the bottom to give the sense of ascension, would have done the trick of passing to the non-conscious mind "Don's okay, hence I can also be okay with OnStar". This treatment would have been very successful with the audience who'd come to the page to read about Don Herbert's passing.

Next: Ads that work well within pages

Joseph Carrabis is CRO and founder of NextStage Evolution and NextStage Global and founder of KnowledgeNH and NH Business Development Network. Read full bio. He was recently selected as a senior research fellow and board advisor for the Society for New Communications Research.