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*                                                            *
*                         CYBERSPACE                         *
*         A biweekly column on net culture appearing         *
*                in the Toronto Sunday Sun                   *
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* Copyright 1999 Karl Mamer                                  *
* Free for online distribution                               *
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A few weeks ago a user noted on news.admin.net-abuse.misc that 
the best argument that unsolicited commercial email (UCE) and 
spamming newsgroups simply don't work is that large companies 
that advertise heavily on the net, like IBM and Microsoft, 
don't spam.

The advertising method of choice by companies that don't want 
to piss off potential customers is the banner ad. While 
opposition to UCE approaches unanimity, a study sponsored by 
Wired Magazine's HotWired cyberzine found that only ten percent 
of netizens are opposed to banner ads. 

HotWired should know what it's talking about. The E-zine 
introduced those colorful inch-high, screen-wide billboards in 
late 1994. Yes, I do remember a time when Yahoo didn't have 
banner ads.

Banner ads have found general acceptance because they are 
solicited. No one forces you to read web pages. Most highly 
useful sites wouldn't exist it if it weren't for ads. The 
primary opposition to banner advertising is they hog common 
resources. A page might be 10 K of text. An ad can triple the 
amount of data that has to be borne by the Internet's backbone 
networks.

It's a valid argument ... from 1992. It carries little less 
weight today. Half a decade ago netizens were hyper-conscious 
about bandwidth because the vast majority of net traffic was 
carried on publicly funded networks. Netizens, most of them 
ultimately dependent on the public purse, were all too aware 
that government funds are a finite resource. Today the 
backbones are in commercial hands, Sprint's a biggie, and 
commercial interests are more than willing to meet demand.

Probably the biggest opposition to banners ads is from 
advertisers themselves. Like many things netish, business made 
a quick rush to the net expecting massive profits, and 
retreated when the mega-bucks didn't materialize. Companies 
snapped up prime ad spots on high traffic sites, expecting to 
siphon that traffic to their own sites. Advertisers experienced 
rates of what is known as "click through" as low as 1%. 

Sites and advertisers trying to reach a theoretically money- 
and time-laden audience had to rethink the paradigm. The notion 
of click through has given way to the concept of the 
"impression" -- a fancy way of saying the number of users who 
view the ad. Many web sites sell space based on impression, not 
click through. After all, is it a billboard company's fault the 
advertiser has a lousy ad?

Click through is important to many webvertisers. A number of 
strategies have been devised to increase the likelihood of you 
getting caught up in the company's web page. A banner ad with a 
simple "click this" can increase traffic. Really.

The advent of the animated GIF standard has been a boon to 
webvertisers. Animated ads can increase click-through rates by 
40%.

Ads that relate in some way to the material viewed can triple 
or quadruple response rates. Many search engines like Yahoo 
allow advertisers to purchase words and phrases users might 
search on. Yahoo charges $1000 per month per word. For example, 
one particularly enterprising extermination company has 
purchased the word "hantavirus" on Yahoo. In case you're not 
familiar with the hantavirus, it's the current "in disease", 
spread by deer mice. It wiped out 26 people in the American 
Southwest in 1993. It's probably going to be the lyme disease 
of the `90s. Anyone who searches on Yahoo for information on 
the hantavirus, will always an ad for a product called the "Rat 
Zapper".

If you ask me paranoia, not webvertising, is the hot marketing 
trend for the end of the millennium.

    Source: geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs/text

               ( geocities.com/lapetitelesson/cs)                   ( geocities.com/lapetitelesson)