Why we believe display advertising is broken (and what you should do instead)

According to the most recent figures, more than a third (33%) of internet users use ad blocking online. More than half of those over 35 also use them.

Consumers will go to great lengths to avoid content that they don't need or want. Brands who push for display advertising that interrupts content experiences in an increasingly ad-free environment, believing this will make consumers happy, may want to reconsider their marketing strategy.

According to a CEO of a media agency who has been working in digital advertising for over two decades on both the agency and client sides, this is the conclusion.

Are banner ads just a sham marketing tactic?

They won't let go, they will not die. Once I was asked my opinion on which marketing tactic was like "The Walking Dead" in marketing.

It was Halloween theme, and it happened during the streaming of that hit streaming show. It was an honor to be included in the list with my great friends Ann Handley and Joe Pulizzi, Doug Kessler and Neil Patel, all marketing thought leaders.

They recommended some old marketing strategies, including over-promotion and quantity over quality, as well as a lack of courage. These are all great marketing tactics. My recommendation of which marketing tactic was a zombie-relic like the living dead? banner ads

Why banner advertisements need to be thrown out: They don't work. Or, as I love saying, banners have 99 problems and one click is not the answer!

Why?

• They are ignored by your customers.
• You might be resentful at your future customers for interrupting their content experience.
• Banner advertising spending isn't declining faster because marketers continue to shift money from traditional marketing (print radio TV, radio) to digital formats.
• In most industries, click through rates for banners are below.1% (0.06% on average).
• Eye-tracking research shows that people ignore them. This tactic can be hard to justify, even for branding and awareness.

What if Marketing People Really Want It?

I love to talk about the compounding power that content marketing has. This is how it works. You create content that people love. Google gives you organic search rankings for this piece of content. Great job!

You still get traffic to that article a few months, years and weeks later. Imagine that this happened every week for five years, or ten years. This is what content marketing does. You get a compounding rate return. The results you get from the time and dollar you spend 5 years ago are still valuable today.

This is not like advertising where you lose all value once you stop spending. This video, which I recently made on the compounding power and content marketing, will give you more information.

Why banner ads are so bad

These are some of the most offensive banner ads I have ever seen.

• Hubspot has launched a Chrome extension that replaces your banner ads with images of baby animals. Bravo! (Sorry guys. No longer available. They were criticised for collecting data during the experiment
• AdAge reported that 23% have their ads served to incorrect urls by automated exchanges. Alex Kantrowitz, a reporter at AdAge, said that "url masking" is yet another form of fraud that plagues automated ad-buying marketplaces.
• The New York Times banner ads: "The Monster That Ate The Web"
• The Street does a fantastic job supporting the same arguments that I used.

You'll find articles saying banner ads are okay if you look at AdAge Magazine. Advertising isn’t broken. Advertising gets a bad reputation. The point is that their data proves they work. They don't disclose the data or refute any other's data with any facts. Their agency clients' traffic drops when they stop using banners because of their use of "complex analytics". The ad men or women. Who creates banner ads? . .

What marketers should instead do: Marketers must shift their banner advertising investments into branded content marketing experiences. Simply put, create marketing content people want. It's called content marketing. It's not. People want content (sarcasm aside).

Why interrupt your customers' needs when you can provide what they want?

Take a look at the statistics:

• According to Business Insider, you are 31 times more likely than someone clicking on your banner ad to win the lottery.
• The likelihood of you completing US Navy Seal training is 112 times greater than that of someone clicking on your banner ad. (Business Insider).
• Business Insider reports that you are 475 times more likely than others to survive a plan-related crash than people clicking on your banner ads.
• Users can't view around 31% of impressions. (Comscore)
• 85 percent of clicks are generated by Internet users who are 8%. (ComScore)
• 50% of clicks on mobile banner ads happen by accident. (GoldSpot Media)
• Kraft rejects 75% to 15% of all ad impressions because of fraud, quality issues or other issues (AdAge).

OK, Display Banners Are Dead

Banner ads weren't really alive so they can't be considered zombies. Because so many people and tech professionals depend on display advertising, the advertising industry has maintained that it works. Many businesses are trying to sell or acquire it.

In the article, the media agency CEO has not seen any evidence that banner ads worked for clients. These banner ads can be bought programmatically or on ad networks. It is hard to believe that $10 billion worth of industry has never been sold – something consumers would not miss if it vanished – but the industry is still valuable today.

The CEO stated, "We tried to sex something that was fundamentally flawed."

Display ads are useless if consumers don't engage or respond to them. According to the CEO of a media agency, it is making something fundamentally flawed more sophisticated than it appears. It is convincing marketers to join the display advertising train if they want to be considered sophisticated marketers. In reality, it is the reverse. Marketers who don't know what they're buying shouldn't be buying it.

Because of its reach, many marketers consider display advertising a key component of their marketing strategy. The bottom line is that the industry "fudges" metrics to make display advertising appear like it has high ROI, according to the CEO of a media agency.

Brad Jakeman, a Pepsi executive, made the same argument last year at the Association of National Advertisers conference. He believes that advertising is based upon a flawed model of creating "polluting content" that consumers don’t want. Marketers and advertisers know this. They continue to do this because marketing agencies still use outdated measurement systems to assess marketing performance. These vanity metrics prove that banner ads work.

This was the explanation that the CEO of a media agency tried to give clients. Surprisingly, many clients agreed that there was no evidence to support display advertising's effectiveness. Yet they continue to spend money on it as it is one of few options when it comes down running digital campaigns.

The Revenue of Big Brands that stopped spending on digital ads during Covid did not decrease when they stopped doing so

This article was my favorite of 2021 (or all of the 2020s). It's ironic that this article was published by Forbes. They will bombard you with pop-ups and banner ads during your experience there (and Google seems to not mind). )

The facts are:

P&G saw no change in their business results when they cut $200 million off their digital advertising spending. Chase saw no change in their business results when they reduced their programmatic reach to 5,000 sites instead of 400,000 (a decrease of 99%). Uber cut $120 million from their digital advertising budget to drive more app installations. They saw no change in app install rates after that. Nothing happened when big brands stopped spending digital ads.

Dr. Augustine Fou

He also refers to an HBR article on how eBay proved paid search did not produce a single dollar more revenue. You have to pay for this article. Ugh. The internet!

Smart Money Will Go to Customer-Focused Content

The CEO of a media agency suggested that marketers should focus their attention on digital video, which is a more efficient format than display advertising.

Since years, I've been urging marketers to stop using banner ads and instead invest in content marketing.

Smart marketers will not interrupt their content experience by creating irrelevant, unneeded content. Instead, they will concentrate their efforts on creating valuable, relevant content that consumers want and need. Provide real value to your target audience, whether it's written content or video content. This is how you can reach and engage them.

Lincoln Millstein, Hearst's SVP, thinks I will agree. He is the man who created Boston.com as well as the NYTimes.com . He also helped to remake the NYTimes.com . He believes there is still hope we can get rid of this zombie marketing tactic. How about you?

Let us know your thoughts. Display advertising is still an important part of your marketing strategy. Make marketing content that people want!