FEATURE: Bold revamp for banners - Advertisers are looking beyond the humble banner, leading to the creation of new and novel ad sizes online

Fewer advertisers and sliding click through rates are prompting a drastic rethink on the web's ubiquitous billboard as marketers look beyond banner advertising for a more effective sell. In place of the tried and failing banner, online media owners are pumping up the hype. They are encouraging the kind of intrusive Las Vegas-styled distractions in an effort to lure ad dollars amid the current crunch hitting online advertising. On a typical web page, the banner ad has commonly been squeezed into a rectangular strip positioned at either the top or bottom of a page. However, with fewer advertisers taking an interest in the online banner, web publishers are opting for braver, louder advertising to grab consumer attention. But can this latest initiative succeed now that surfers view the banner with more disdain than interest? ACNielsen eRatings.com, managing director, Hugh Bloch, says the banner has taken the brunt of the blame for the flattening growth in online advertising. "My personal contention is that this has been somewhat unfair and that the banner has been scapegoated and maligned more as a victim of circumstance than as a result of any substantial and objective evidence. "That is, like any advertising, there are poor and good campaigns. Our data is full of evidence that shows that like any advertising, creative banners, properly targeted to the right audience on the right sites can be extremely successful. If we take the most developed market from both an online advertising and measurement perspective, the US, there is evidence of many banners with click rates of well over 60 per cent, the kind of 'response' rates that advertisers in other media can only dream of," Bloch says. For the first time since 1996, the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) in the US has introduced new ad sizes. The idea is to bring out new online ads that are bigger and bolder. More importantly, the new shapes and sizes will be attractive enough to lure traditional advertisers to the web. The change is clearly a sign of the times. It comes as internet companies try to survive the current lean times in online advertising, which remains a crucial part of the ecommerce model. The seven new ads introduced by the IAB include a skyscraper (120 x 600 pixel); wide skyscraper (160 x 600); rectangle (180 x 150); medium rectangle (300 x 250); large rectangle (336 x 280); vertical rectangle (2,400 x 400); and square pop up (250 x 250). The ads are significantly larger than the 468 x 60 banner. For advertisers, the new ad sizes ring in good news. The additional space will allow them to illustrate products in a more compelling fashion. These virtual billboards will also allow users to click onto an ad without linking to the advertiser's web page. But this in itself presents an obstacle - an end to the clickthrough metric as an indication of the web's advertising effectiveness (although media sites argue this is an unjust measurement tool). Research, says PricewaterhouseCoopers Asia-Pacific leader for entertainment and media practice, Marcel Fenez, is another area for improvement. Rather than measuring the effectiveness of online advertising just by counting the number of viewers who click on an ad,he says online publishers need to conduct more research that is commonly done for other media. "The medium that can prove itself best through data will attract the most ad dollars. Buyers need to understand the medium, but unfortunately, not many understand the internet. At the end of the day, it is still an education process. Ad buyers need reliability - third party verification of data - to make spending worthwhile," says Fenez. One way, he says, is measuring the non-immediate response to an ad, or the number of people who see it, don't click on it, but visit the advertised site at a later stage. Web publishers could also look at measuring brand awareness. Bloch agrees, "The beauty of the internet from an advertising or marketing perspective is precisely that it is so easily measured and for that matter, in real time. This real time feedback means that poor campaigns can quickly be pulled and replaced with other better performing ones without the possible wastage associated with other forms of media. "That said, it is true to say that not enough research has been done on the effectiveness of online advertising, one of the reasons for its poor perception. While high 'click rates' don't necessarily mean effective advertising (that is, a publisher guaranteeing a near 100 per cent click rate by offering one million dollars for every click), click rates do confirm that a banner has been 'read' and 'acted upon'." Bloch adds that single source panels such as those that combine retail or television ratings panels with online measurement panels could offer a way of directly assessing a campaign "with respect to whether or not it leads directly or indirectly to an online or offline sale or to 'referral' to a particular site". Sadly, these systems do not as yet exist. While the new ad sizes are designed to expand marketers' options in online media, web publishers - the IAB acknowledges in a letter to member companies - "will have to go through some site redesign if they deploy the new units". The bureau adds: "But we believe that adopting some of the larger, interactive creative units will be for the betterment of publishers and marketers." However, industry analysts argue that it is still a risky play. This potential solution runs the risk of irritating internet users who - it would seem - are likely to be put off by more prominent product pitches on their screens. For consumers, it is a daunting thought. In the coming weeks and months, they can expect to encounter ads that are about four times the size of typical banners. There are also plans to offer a wider array of location choices on a page. According to engage president, Colin McIntosh, the advertising agency began using larger ad sizes about a year ago for clients such as Nokia and Digital Island. "Publishers such as ZDNet in Singapore have been using larger ad formats and have found them much more powerful for branding. It is always an advantage to give media buyers and marketers different ad sizes and formats, especially since advertisers in Asia continue to use online advertising as a branding medium. Ultimately, larger formats will always be welcome in the industry," says McIntosh. Larger ad sizes, he adds, also enable greater creativity, which has been one of the biggest criticisms of online banners. Driving the development of new ad sizes is the belief that consumers no longer pay attention to banner ads. Survey after survey indicates the internet user is "bored" with the online banner and has "learned" to block the banner from view. The crux of the problem is that unlike television commercials or newspaper ads, online advertisements have essentially failed to generate sufficient revenues to sustain businesses reliant on ad dollars. But despite all the excitement and the IAB's efforts to counter the ad sales drought, advertisers remain slow to take to the new ads. A recent Jupiter Media Metrix report found that while 25 per cent of ad-supported websites experimented with larger online banner sizes, less than five per cent of those sites ran ads that complied exactly with the new IAB standards. The researcher also found that the number of unique vertical internet ads surged by almost 70 per cent in the fourth quarter as sites searched for new ways to become more attractive to advertisers, who have been disappointed with response rates to traditional horizontal banners. But Bloch remains optimistic. He says the new ads are likely to create a curiosity factor that will aid the effectiveness of the ads. "As with advertising in magazines and on television, there will be some interest in and tolerance of (more intrusive) advertising as a result of consumers' understanding with respect to revenue models. "However, over time, this is bound to wear off and advertisers and sites will be forced by the market to take consumers' opinions on intrusiveness into account, particularly with more intrusive forms of advertising such as pop-ups or interstitials. Simply, if consumers find the advertising overly intrusive, they will move to competitor sites." McIntosh stresses the need for standardisation. This means that advertisers can run their ads across multiple sites without having to execute a different creative work for each placement. "The only setback is that with a larger file size, pages can be slow to download for certain users. We're trying to standardise the larger ad formats for our 400 publishers. But I think it will take some time," McIntosh adds. "Since we started using the larger sizes, we have seen more innovation among our clients who are keen to try other things. I think the educational period has paid of. Traditional media buyers understand that a full-page ad in print is better than a quarter page. This is something that is logical and understandable to them." Speaking at an American Chamber of Commerce forum in Hong Kong, Mercatela director, Joshua Goldman, dismissed reports suggesting the banner is dead and is an ineffective tool to advertise or brand on the internet. "In 1997, banners made up 80 per cent of online advertising. Today, that figure stands at 50 per cent. Online advertising is more than just banners, but it is important to pick the right tools that are appropriate for your objective, as well as to adopt the right measurement tool," says Goldman. He urged advertisers to move beyond the banner towards sponsorships, buttons and interstitials to promote or brand online. However, he stressed the importance of integrating online ads with offline campaigns. "Previously, the response from banners as measured by click throughs was five per cent. Now it is at 0.5 per cent and the general response seems negative. "This is partly the misrepresentation of click throughs - also the novelty factor about banners has worn off, so people may not be clicking on them as much. Goldman cites the US IAB Ad Effectiveness Study/Millward Brown Interactive report, which evaluates the impact of click throughs against ad exposure on ad awareness. The study found that ad awareness after clicking on an ad is at 44 per cent, while awareness without clicks is only slightly lower at 43 per cent. "The increase from clicking on the banner is slight, but overall 90 per cent of the gain from advertising this banner was for it to be seen. This is still effective branding." Interestingly, a recent report by Myers found almost 85 per cent of US advertising and marketing companies believed the most important reason for using online advertising was to drive traffic to websites. Myers found secondary reasons for advertising online included brand building, branding and sponsorship opportunities. Meanwhile, web publishers may have to come to terms with disgruntled consumers as they feature oversized ads. Sina.com, the first Chinese portal to experiment with "Messaging Plus Units" has been asking users of its website for their understanding over giant online ads featured on heavily visited web pages. The animated ads were placed at the top or bottom of web pages in prominent positions, giving the impression they were pictures or articles to complement content. Rich media, both McIntosh and Bloch say, is likely to emerge as the saviour of internet advertising. While the IAB did shy away from recommending standards on the use of rich media, publishers such as internet.com have made new rich-media ad sizes ready. Despite the subtle refinement still needed to the online banner, various industry players agree the new, larger standardised ads should be easier to design and easier to sell. But it remains to be seen whether they will ultimately help publishers boost flagging internet media revenues. CLICK RATES ACROSS KEY ASIA-PACIFIC MARKETS (FEB) Average Click Rate Country for Top Banners Impressions Unique Audience Reach % Australia 0.28% 508,755 104,373 2.30 Hong Kong 0.78% 781,892 113,565 6.42 South Korea 0.61% 6,635,920 941,709 7.00 New Zealand 0.28% 215,977 40,591 4.27 Singapore 0.32% 512,148 67,659 8.57 Taiwan 0.32% 2,746,191 456,545 11.31 Impressions - The total number of times a banner has been served to the web population. Any web surfer can view a banner many times. Unique audience - The number of unique people that were served the banner at least once in the defined time period. Reach % - The number of unique web users that were served a web banner at least once in the defined time period, expressed as a percentage of the total web population. * Data supplied by Nielsen//NetRatings.

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