Blackbeaks Blog….All things Analytics

Media Buying still is one of the important traffic funneling system. You can get demographically targeted traffic right to your landing page with low CPM price.

I’d agree that mindshare is a more current goal, given that we’re moving to a pull, not push, model of commerce. As people have more options and data, it will take longer to make a decision. And even prior to this trend, the rule of thumb was, what, seven exposures before a brand was even remembered. Mindshare represents several opportunities: 1) to build trust and 2) to discover further opportunities. –Elisa

@spinal
You can, no disagreement here. However I think it’s wasting the marketing potential of what banners can be used for, hence this article.

I like the data shown to back up your opinion. Adidas has a great campaign but in my opinion every search done for specific keywords is another step customers are not willing to take.

@Elisa;
I don’t necessarily think it takes longer to make a decision, but there are many more options available. You can buy pretty much anything from anywhere with a bit of research.

However the 7 exposures rule I feel underlines more about what I’m talking about. We don’t currently use banners in that way. We expect direct response. We measure direct response and we think banners are a worse media than say search engine marketing because of it. This reflects 1990s thinking.

@B. Feltz
Maybe that is true. Can you show me some evidence of that? My point being that this is where we need to go.

The Adidas campaign is an example I’ve shown where their marketing has been proven to work in the way I described. As analysts we should be testing your hypothesis across our products and services.

Do customers act on attention driving campaigns after awareness has been created? Or not? If not is it your campaigns which were poorly crafted or is it that the method simply doesn’t work. All good questions not completely answered.

I have seen the success of this method in campaigns we’ve run in Finland but they are not conclusive.

Campaigns should be thought of not by channel or media but by purpose, like the REAN model or AIDAS, e.g.:

http://blog.jimnovo.com/marketing-bands-series/

By focusing in on a primary purpose the cmapaign can then be measured for success - you *expect* a campaign to generate Searches and design for this, both online and offline.

For example, if a campaign does not create Searches, then it may be creating Awareness, but not creating Intent. What is the purpose of the Campaign, to create Awareness only?

Is that really enough?

@Jim; Wise words. This is exactly what Adidas did (deliberately or not).

I’m pleased to hear you remember REAN, something covered quite extensively in my book. And you’re spot on with this as well. I’d measure both kinds of marketing in a REAN framework of metrics.

I think however you’re ahead of the game. I don’t think people think about creating intent when they create campaigns, at least not in the sense I’m talking about where the intent results in a search later.

I think that awareness is not raised by the majority of banner ads and other attention medias because they are crafted to entice a click-through, not to generate a later intent. That is why I’m saying we’re still using banner ads like we did in the 90s.

The need for awareness (as opposed to conversion) implies a prolonged decision process (even if some of it is subconscious). It’s always helpful to explore behavioral influences. Ex. If multiple entities are competing for your prospect’s mindshare (they are), what are they doing and how does it impact your campaign’s: content, channel, timing, etc. Furthermore, what other current factors are necessitating awareness over conversion and how can you act on them?

I am not that experienced in this but it’s interesting.

As a designer I visit a lot of design related websites and there are a lot of websites I visit every day. The banners shown on these websites are also often from the same companies.

Take Smashing Magazine for example. I know what companies are advertising there because they are just always there.
In the beginning these ads were just there and I didn’t pay much attention to them because I visited Smashing Magazine for the content. Adverts are considered annoying when surfing the web I people try to ignore them as much as they can.
Then later on I began paying attention to them. The reason I began paying attention to them was partly because I saw them every time I visited that website and partly, maybe more imporantly, because these ads were shown on every other related website that interested me. As a designer I see the same ads every day on almost every page I visite.
I now have already klicked on every single one of them to check them out because they actually began to interest me.
A characteristic of most these ads is that they don’t ask to act. The copy on them doesn’t ask to click them. The adverts are just there. They are quite but there, just generating awareness and recognition I guess.

I think good ads are ads that don’t scream for a click. A screaming ad pushes visitors away, well they push me away and I think I am not alone in that one.

@Martijn

Interesting. I think it partly illustrates what I’m getting at. People go on about the 1st click in analytics circles like it’s the latest holy grail, but when you’re talking about creating attention or awareness I think we now need to decide on measurements for this that can include brand awareness.

for a huge company like Addidas it’s normal to see those amazing ad campaigns, but what if the company using the banners can’t afford a campaign like that?
creativity is necessary of course but we all know the creative team that a company like Adidas has. and you can see it while watching all the things around the campaign.

@Banner hero

I’ve run similar campaign concepts at a cost of less than 10K euro media spend.

It doesn’t have to be as big as the Adidas one, I just used it to explain the point.

I enjoyed this article purely because this is currently what I am doing and I really think I need to change it in order to get better click through rates as they are currently not too high.