Tag Archives: Web Advertising

Are advertisers too obsessed with click-through rates?

From Nieman Journalism Labs comes a most excellent post “The Geico Gecko meets The AOL Way: Are display advertisers too obsessed with click-through rates?“

Before you give an answer go give the post a read (and don’t get all tl;dr, reading long stuff is good for your brain). It’s some smart, interesting stuff. The post is loaded with all kinds of stats including this one:

“To show the short-sightedness of such metrics, Battelle cited a comScore study that found in 2009 that 4 percent of Internet users drive a whopping 67 percent of all advertising clicks. Do we really want to target our ads, he asked rhetorically, to such a small user base — the online equivalent to those who respond to late-night infomercials?”

Of course they don’t mention if the late-night informercial is the one for the Time-Life Power Ballads collection, because only the most cold-hearted, dead inside people can resist that.

Friday Links: The Friday before a long weekend edition

• Ad spending up for the first time since 2008.
• Envisioning your future in 2020. Kinda awesome and kinda creepy all at the same time.
• Truth on brands.
• 138 Years Of Quirky Inventions From The Pages Of PopSci.
• The periodic table of imaginary elements.
• Great logo redesigns of 2009 & 2010.
• Adorable homemade robots.
• 10 clever Commodore 64 t-shirts.

Friday Links: Who likes to party? The Dark Side likes to party

• Business Card Etiquette In Japan – Boing Boing
• Fallon Planning: 6 Ways to Play Twitter – Winning Strategies for Brands On Twitter
• TV Shows That Cover Up Apple Logo on Mac Laptops and Desktop Computers
• 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design | How-To | Smashing Magazine
• 97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know – The Book [97 Things] : Near-Time
• How (Not) to Write like a Designer: 5 Tricks You Didn't Learn in Studio – Core77
• Opinion: Field of Widget Dreams: “There's a phenomenon whereby normally intelligent people at both digital and traditional agencies decide that people will embrace their new widget or app simply because they've built it. It's as if the Internet were a giant cornfield in Iowa and the mere presence of yet another branded widget or app is enough to get thousands of people clicking.”
• BrandFreak: '30 Rock' loves brands so much, it no longer wants their money: “Tina Fey actually says McDonald's didn't pay for the placement. But the Emmy-winning show generally revels in its over-the-top approach to brand integration. Fey has spouted a mini-infomercial for Verizon in the past, turning directly to the camera to ask "Can we have our money now?" after the pitch.”
• Fallon Planning: "Good Enuff" Production Values and the Death of Commercial Craftsmanship“"Good Enuff" isn't just for users, it enables us marketers to shoot more ideas fast(er), cheap(er) instead of rolling all our energies into a single overly produced "perfect" idea that just may fail. So fail fast(er). And fail cheap(er).
• Star Wars: Death Star Disco, Dark Side Inferno: “Who likes to party? The Dark Side likes to party.”
• 6 Tips for a Great Flex UX: Part 2
• 100 Free and Useful Open Courseware Classes for Web Workers – Learn-gasm
• Giulia Santopadre | Graphic Design | Nerd Glasses
• Does snark cast a shadow over online conversation?: The Social Path
• Connecting the Dots: Will Social Media Analytics Create a New Media Paparazzi?
• 6 Tips for a Great Flex UX
• Design: Create a Color Palette from a Single Image
• R/GA: Digital Agency of the Year 2008: “In a year when even digital agencies began to feel the pinch of a declining economy, R/GA plowed ahead, adding Hewlett-Packard, Mars and HBO as clients, and growing revenue by 20 percent to $126 million. As others scaled back, the Interpublic Group shop beefed up its London outpost to account for 10 percent of total revenue and opened in San Francisco in a bid to grab digital talent.For its financial performance and its continued success in proving the power of brand platforms rooted in utility, R/GA is Adweek's Digital Agency of the Year for 2008 — its fourth such honor in the past eight years.”
• The Advertising Age Timeline

Friday Links: On simplicity, etiquette, and inspiration

This presentation by Clay Parker Jones was one of the most informative, thought-provoking things I read today (read more about the presentation on Jones’ blog Exit Creative). Sure it covers well-trod ground — social media, web design, content — but what Parker Jones does is present his ideas with stunning simplicity using real language both of which just reinforces his ideas.

While the presentation is aimed at ad-folk, it contains the sorts of lessons that anyone involved in interactive marketing (from design and development to content and community) could benefit from. (found via Paul Isakson)

Now onto the Friday links.

• Forty inspirational speeches in two minutes. This one is great, watch it and it will help you make it through these last few hours on a Friday.
• Now that you’re motivated, go take a look at Ad Age’s tips to cope, even thrive, through the downturn.
• Also found via Lifehacker, The Ultimate Social Media Handbook. Which reminds me of a link one of my fellow nerds tweeted about this week Maggie Mason’s 14 Ways to Twitter Politely.
• The Top 10 Marketing Blunders of 2008
• From the more you know file: Tonight’s full moon will be the biggest it’s been in 15 years. [via]
• Christine over at Brain Traffic’s blog warns about the pitfalls of placeholder copy and talks about how proofreading should be the part of the Web QA process.
• Oh, this just in from Ryan: Take a listen to All My Internet Friends. Make sure to read the lyrics.

That’s all from me this week, I get to go meet with The Nerdery’s Wonder Twins. You’ll get to learn all about it next week. In the meantime, what were you reading on the net this week?