Posted on Mon, Oct 19, 2009
by Claudia Hafner
When you visit your favorite websites for news, entertainment, socializing, or anything else, do you find the ads on those pages intriguing? Most often, if you are like me, you ignore them or even get annoyed by them. Generally, you are on these sites to accomplish certain activity, and if you noticed one of those banner
ads, and they were about something you didn't care at all about, what impact do they make on you? Think of the volume of traffic these sites may get, but how few eyeballs are interested in looking at those ads.
Banner ads, in internet marketing, are a form of interruption marketing. You aren't on these sites looking for what these ads are selling (much less looking for these ads), but they try to interrupt you anyway, wrestling you away from what you were trying to do. Think about what kind of traffic these ads are pulling in...or not.
On the other hand, you use search engines to find what you are looking for and sponsored ads on these pages can be selling exactly what you are looking for. Since you ARE looking...no interruption here.
Spending marketing dollars on what people are actively looking for will bring you more targeted traffic...people already looking for what you are selling. And most of these marketing dollars are spent only when your ad is clicked on (pay-per-click).
More and more, interruption marketing is getting less and less attention from consumers. It may be time for you to shift your marketing dollars to activity that gets attention...and not provide interruption.