Attractive & Obtrusive

Yesterday, when I was browsing around to get the latest on the "Sachin

is a Cheat" controversy, on more than a few sites, I was confronted with

pop-up ads. They came up unexpectedly and put pressure on my slow dial-up

connection. One of them wanted me to fly Lufthansa and another wanted me to take

up a computer course for Rs 500 on the occasion of World Computer Literacy Day.

(By the way, who decides when these days will happen?)

The pop-ups were both an irritant and a vindication; irritants because it

took me so much longer to find out about Sachin, and vindication because finally

what I had been saying for four years was coming true. About four years back,

when I suggested that obtrusive advertising would come to the Web, most friends

and colleagues said that the Web does not work that way. They felt that

advertising on the Web would remain in the background forever. The implication

of this being that this new medium was different, and old rules would not work

here, and finally, those following them should step aside or get stepped upon.

But why are obtrusive ads increasing very dramatically? People see ads in two

basic ways–the first is when they know what they want and are looking for

sources or options. That is the time they go to classifieds, yearbooks,

directories etc. The second is when they are reading, viewing, surfing in

general and come across advertising. In such cases, advertising is very often

placed where the viewer is most likely to see it. This is nothing new.

Advertising has always worked this way. Its job is to attract attention by

whatever means possible. In print, it is done by special positions or by making

the ads more attractive.

Television does the same thing. It tries to attract attention by scrolling

bars at the bottom of the screen. Or by scheduling ads just before or in the

middle of popular programs. Or by using celebrities. Obviously, the best ads are

those which are attractive enough to catch attention but not obtrusive enough to

leave the audience with a feel-bad factor. On the Web, the art of advertising is

still developing, unlike the other, more mature mediums.

The sites which people visit as a matter of routine (viewing habits) are

still getting defined. There are few equivalents of the favorite newspaper or

the most-viewed show. Website data is patchy and difficult to analyze. Media

decision-makers do not have the tools to measure the visitor pattern and

profiles. Nor do they have the feel that has come over the years for more mature

products. Viewers are slowly developing loyalties and preferences. It is

difficult for them to do so for many reasons.

One is that many sites close down–just when you have got used to them. In

addition and paradoxically, sheer size and the number of options that it offers

limit the spread of the Web. With so many possible destinations and ease of

access, the surfer can go just about anywhere. The capture of demographics is

also more difficult. In a virtual, alias-filled world, how do you find out who

the real person is?

The inescapable conclusion is that we are still to master this medium. Even

as they create new options, website-owners have to undertake educational efforts

for the advertiser. They have to work on ads that pop up, stretch down, float

across, scroll through, rotate and stop, stop and rotate, create sounds, whistle

at you... and generally become some kind of a cross between the static print and

the dynamic TV advertising. And they have to walk that thin line between

attractiveness and obtrusiveness.

Media directors have to work on the same problems. Website-owners will create

the tech options. Designers will see how they can use them... in an attractive

yet non-obtrusive manner. So far, we have seen mainly the banner ad which grabs

top position but is fairly static. Since we all know it is there, it is easy to

ignore.

As a reaction to this evolving media, the few advertisers on the Web are

becoming a response-oriented lot. They measure and want to pay only by click-throughs

or similar devices that give them ways and means of measuring the return on

investment.

Advertising has always been a mixture of feel and statistics. Over-dependence

on numbers today is more caused by chopped-down budgets than well-thought-out

plans. That situation should change.

One hopes that just because the impossible promises of the Web were not

achieved, the possible ones will also get squandered.

Shyam Malhotra is Editor-in-Chief of

CMIL, Dataquest’s publishers