When we talk about online advertising with clients, there tends to be an immediate association with the pop-up, circa 2003. You of course remember those pesky things. We all closed them as quickly as possible and installed software to block them. Nobody wanted to click on them. If you did, you risked a virus or being redirected to a shady website.
This sort of connotation doesn’t inspire much confidence.
I had to get over this prejudice of online advertising. I had this dread that if I clicked on an ad, I would be redirected to some website that signed me up for a newsletter that would place me on some NSA watch list.
Recently I was researching rubber flooring for a gym I was remodeling. I found some decent options through Google, but nothing that caught my eye. A couple of days later as I watched a random YouTube video, I saw a small banner advertising a sale on rubber flooring. I clicked and was taken right to what I had been searching for just days earlier. They got my business.
So what changed between paragraph 1 and 2? Why was I willing to click on an online banner?
The more time I spend online, the more I view the internet as a public venue. When you are in public, what you wear, listen to, and where you go, tells everyone something about you as a person. The internet is the same way. Your behaviors are saying some general things about you.
With that being said, you expect to see advertisements in public, and you should expect the same online. A small banner here and there is not nearly as intrusive as a TV commercial during the middle of your show. The difference between online advertising and billboards and TV commercials? Your online ad world is tailored to your interests.
Very reputable businesses are using online advertising and you should be too. Your potential customers are online. They are seeing banner ads. The question is, will it be yours?
According to a recent report by Nielsen consumer trust for online advertising is steadily increasing. 48% of people trust ads from search engine results, up from 34% in 2007. 42% trust online banner ads, up from 26% in 2007. Every form of online advertising is gaining trust from consumers, with most falling around the 50% mark.
People expect to be advertised to online. You’re not going to annoy anyone by showing them an ad of something they would be interested in potentially purchasing.
