If someone offers you the opportunity to place your advertising using this relic from the last century, you’d better run like hell. We will explain what is wrong with this oldest form of internet advertising and which format is considerably more effective.
Banner Blindness
Banners appeared as soon as people realized that it was possible to advertise on the internet. In those bygone years this format really worked. The main content of the pages was plain text, so large images immediately caught attention and people clicked on them — even if only for fun.
The first banner in the history of the internet was created in 1994.
Two decades later it’s time to admit that banner advertising is dead. A study conducted by Infolinks in 2013 showed that 86% of people simply do not remember which advertisement they last saw and only 8% of respondents could name the product or a company. This is the so-called ‘banner blindness’ phenomenon. People simply don’t notice banners any more.
Nielsen Norman Group investigated how users browse websites. The most frequent patterns of behavior are rapid scanning, reading by blocks or at glance. During the last decade everyone has become accustomed to the fact that there is nothing useful outside the main text and content field — they don’t even pay attention to the margins. The following is a thermal map displaying attention areas on websites.
As you can see virtually nobody looks at or clicks on banners.
Ad Blockers
The moment banners stopped being noticed advertisers came up with even more annoying ad formats to interfere with content viewing. Ad blocking software like AdBlock, AdBlock Plus, AdGuard and others were developed to counter them.
In 2012–2017, the number of devices using blockers increased fifteen fold from 39 to 616 million. The majority of this growth is attributed mobile phones as they account for about 60% of the total. At the same time, the prospects for adblock software are bright as in the US only half of people are even aware that their mobile devices can block advertising.
An ad blocker is a direct financial loss instrument. The user does not see the ad, not because the content is somehow distorted, but because the banner simply does not exist when the ad block is activated. Juniper Research predicts that between 2017 to 2022 advertisers’ loss from ad blockers will grow from 17% to 19% — meaning almost a fifth of budgets will be wasted. Add banner blindness to the mix along with target audience miss and the losses multiply.
However, it would be unfair to say that advertisers do not need those who use ad blockers. At least 65% of ad block software users paid for online content at least once a month. It turns out that ad blockers only cuts off the most solvent audience — for whom another form of advertising could work perfectly.
Fraud
Banner advertising is a simple, even primitive format and it is not so difficult to use them to mislead. Actions required by KPIs and performed by bots are called fraud. For example, when ordering banners, if an advertiser requests redirects from residents of a certain city, unscrupulous contractors, agencies or webmasters can direct bots with adjusted parameters at the ads and thus artificially increase volumes of redirects. The brand will receive a beautiful report, but no customers.
In 2017 Juniper Research estimated losses from fraud at 14.2 billion dollars. By 2022 this is expected to increase to 44 billion. One third of marketers of large companies are sure that at least 40% of budgets for banner advertising go down the drain.
There are dozens of fraud schemes involving banners, including click farms, hidden ads, ad injections, cookie stuffing, domain spoofing, ghost sites, ad stacking, purchased traffic… the list goes on. Cunning webmasters are ready to do anything to get money for clicks and they regularly invent new forms of deception.
Efficiency
Banner advertising in 2018 is simply not effective — the average clickthrough rate (CTR) is only 0.05%. It turns out that out of 1,000 people who visit a page, only 5 will click on the banner. When you take into account the fact that half of mobile users click on ads accidentally, the effectiveness of banners slides closer and closer to zero.
Meanwhile, native advertising in social networks has an above average CTR on Facebook of 0.9%, and 0.99% on Instagram.
Much better results can be received from influencer-marketing. Advertising through opinion leaders on YouTube reaches a CTR of 2.3%.
Banners vs Native Video Advertising
If we move away from mere numbers the banners lose yet again. This is a static format that only accomplishes one task — making the user aware of the advertised item. Meanwhile native placement in videos has a critical advantage for the internet — virality. A video is capable of generating a wave of reactions from simple comments and discussions to full-fledged flash mobs. The Ice Bucket Challenge and the Mannequin Challenge, which were born from ordinary videos, received millions of reactions and thousands of responses.
Prominent video advertisement can become popular. In 2016, Apple released an advertisement with the famous rapper Drake. In the video he was seen training at the gym and singing along to popular songs. The result was four million views and mentions in articles around the world — it became one of the most successful advertisements of the year.
The brand FashionNova launched a native advertising campaign with Patricia Bright (2 million subscribers). The video lasts for half an hour and during this time the girl simply tries on clothes and shares her impressions. The result? 2.3 million views, 71 thousand likes, a lot of positive comments.
No banner, even the most beautifully made, could ever achieve such success.
If you need to advertise on the internet forget about banners. Start thinking about buying native placements from video bloggers. The AdHive platform can help to jumpstart your campaign and avoid error — you just need to select the target audience and specify the budget. Artificial intelligence will do the rest — pick bloggers, negotiate with them and control implementation. This kind of advertising will be noticed. No banner blindness or fraud — only effective ad placement.
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