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Burnout
How
many times have you heard "I'd like to cancel my advertisement,
it's just not very productive anymore?" If you're a marketing
representative I'm sure you've heard it more times then you
actually care to remember. Companies that advertise naturally
assume that if their ad spot isn't doing as good as it once
did that it's the site they're advertising with that's having
a problem with traffic or some other issue. For some reason
banner burnout is always the last thing that comes to mind -
that is, if it's ever thought of at all.
Banner
burnout you ask? It refers to the decreasing responsiveness
that internet users have after seeing a given ad many times.
A banner shown many times to the same visitor loses its effectiveness
as compared to ads shown only a few times per visitor. Banners
shown many times yield decreasing clickthru rates which is how
banner burnout is normally spotted.
In
most cases companies will take out banner advertising spots
that run for many months or years and never once change the
banner yet, they still expect it to be effective. One resource
site owner says that "banners really only have a 30-day
shelf life, after that the webmasters slow down on clicks and
eventually STOP clicking all together." Never has a truer
statement been made.
I
personally recommend to anyone I talk to about advertising that
they rotate their banners out with newly designed banners at least
every 30 days. People get tired of seeing the same ol thing day
in and day out and eventually avoid that area.
An
excellent way for companies to make sure that they keep advertising
banners updated is to host their own banners. That way changes
can be made at any given time and they don't have to wait the
time it might take for someone to personally update them. Keep
in mind though that you'll have to place these banners in a
directory that you know won't be deleted by others that might
do work on the same site. There's nothing worse then going to
a site and seeing broken links to images that can't load because
of adserver difficulties.
I
also think it's an excellent idea to have different banners
for different sites. Many times in the adult industry webmasters
visit several different resource sites. It's nice if they can
see differences in advertising from site to site. If they're
looking at one banner on 10 websites that they visit they're
going to get burned out on them a lot sooner then if they varied
per site.
Sure
it sounds like a lot of extra work creating different banners
for each advertising spot you have. But in the long run it'll
increase traffic to your site therefore generating more revenue
for you business. After all it doesn't take much to make banners
look different. Sometimes just a little color change can go
along way.
Marsha Youngs
Rated Hot - Comprehensive Webmaster Resources
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