May 28, 2001– Newsletter #132

Greetings, Weekend Silicon Warriors,

Did you hear

AOL is upset at the owner of a new music swapping
service, AIMSTER. AOL is claiming they own the
name AIM as their instant messaging system. An
arbitration panel voted two to one that the names should
be handed over to AOL. This one I agree with. The
owner of AIMSTER, Johnny Deep (think that’s his real
name, hmmm?) set up the site to piggyback AOL’s AIM
in order to share files. This one seems pretty cut and dry.

Speaking of AOL, it’s now going to cost users just under
two bucks more to get mail. The unlimited access fee is
now going to be $23.90 per month. Users can’t really
complain all that much. This is the first increase to the
unlimited plan in three years.

ID theft is becoming a big problem on the Web. In an
attempt to put an end to it all, Representative Ron Paul of
Texas is suggesting scrapping the entire Social Security
number process over the next five years. He would like
for people to be given a new number that would be kept
secret by the government. Furthermore Paul would like a
new system whereas a person’s Social Security number
would not be used as an identifier.
It’s a thought, but I’ll bet that number kept secret by the
government statement will be the death of the idea.

Now onto today’s topic

So I’m rolling around my favorite online stops when I
became interested in a story on a major news site. I’m
happily reading along when, all of a sudden, a little
animated guy pops up, walks across my screen and
brushed up a bill for the movie Moulin Rouge.
The little man wiped the bill with his long-handled brush
a few more times, just to make sure it was nice and
secure, and then walked past it and off the left side of my
monitor’s screen.

I folded my hands across my lap because the bill was
pasted over the text I was reading and I couldn’t scroll
past it. It was attached to that specific part of the screen.
After 30 seconds or so, the bill slid off of the left side of
the monitor where the little guy walked off.

Huh.

I had seen something like this before on USA Today’s
site where an automobile ad sat to the left of the USA
Today logo and then an animated car drove behind the
logo text. It was a neat show but nothing quite as
advanced as this little Moulin Rouge guy.

Well! A newsletter in the making, I thought so I went
looking for some information regarding this new form of
advertising.

According to stories on Wired.com, this is the latest form
of advertising and it’s probably going to become popular
with advertisersuntil it hits a critical mass and is no
longer so effective.

The technically correct term for this new form of
advertising is Active Advertising. A couple of less
flattering terms are takeover and roadblock ads.

The stories I read were all about how Yahoo began
running a few Active Ads last Friday. The Yahoo ad is
for Ford. It begins with birds flapping across, and then
landing, on your screen. Suddenly the screen shakes and
a big Ford Explorer drives in and parks, sitting right over
top of the menu listing. I haven’t personally seen that ad.
I’m just relaying what was in the story I read.

Nicki Dugan, a spokesperson for Yahoo, said the new
form of advertising is simply a new option for persons
and companies who want to advertise on Yahoo. I think
that’s code-speak for, If you hate these ads, don’t blame
us the client chose the option to use it. Dugan went on
to say that Yahoo’s research shows that people really like
the ads.

So, what’s going on? Is the Web site that uses an Active
Ad attempting to make ads more fun for us? I’m sure
that’s a big part of it. If I think an ad is fun, I may stop
and watch it. I folded my hands and watched that little
guy, didn’t I?

Well, yes. I did watch him. I had never seen anything
like it before and it stunned me a little bit. I had to watch
it just to see what was going to happen. However, even
the 30 seconds the entire process took to run was too long
in my mind. Once the bill was posted, it sat thereover
what I was attempting to read. In just that small span of
time, it bugged me.

I wrote about more and more banner ads popping up in
new windows in newsletter 120
(https://www.htmlgoodies.com/letters/120.html). I made
the statement that the reason more and more banners were
popping up and off the pages was because inline ads were
not causing as much active audience effect as they once
had. By popping up the ad, it was put in your face.
The advertiser could be fairly sure you saw it. Since the
number of windows popping up proliferated, one can
only deduce that the effect was working for advertisers
since they all started doing it.

These active ads are, in my opinion, just the next step in
the process. They are little more than a pop up ad that
puts on a better show. Furthermore, the ad cannot be
quickly dismissed like a pop up window. I had no control
over the little guy on my screen. These ads have been
given the nickname takeover ads because that’s what
they do. I was dead once the bill was posted. I couldn’t
read what was under it so I had to wait it outor leave.

From an advertiser’s point of viewsuccess!

I have to believe that Web sites know that this type of
advertisement will burn quickly but they will still use
it. Why?

It’s because the amount of advertiser money is getting
smaller and smaller. There is less and less pie so one
must become aggressive to grab a bigger piece.

For example, Yahoo’s revenue dropped 20% in the first
quarter of 2001. Twenty percent! That is an
unbelievable financial hit. But it’s not just Yahoo. The
amount of global Web advertising is dropping
dramatically. According to a story on Wired.com, global
advertising prices have dropped by almost a third over the
past year. In June of 2000, the average cost for 1000
banner ad page views was 30 euros, or around $26 USD.
This month, the amount paid for 1000 ads is 20 euros.

The story stated that the reason for the drop in price was
that there were simply too many ad spaces available for
those who wanted to buy. Big deals were made to stop an
advertiser from going across the street. Supply heavily
outweighed demand. Furthermore, the story stated that
many traditional advertisers weren’t buying ads because
the price was still too high.

That’s all well and good, but there simply must be one
more element to the story, banner ad effectiveness. If
banner ads were effective, there would be no surplus and
prices would rise again.

The Active Ad, to me at least, appears to be the latest in
what will be a long line of attempts to force a Web user
to look, and react, to an advertisement.

The problem is you cannot force me to do anything when
I am surfing. Advertisers want the Web to be a mass-
media model where the content providers are in charge
and that a single signal is given or pushed to a mass
audience. It just isn’t so.

The Web is a one to one medium. A surfer is in charge of
his or her own destiny and the vast majority will not be
forced into looking at something they don’t want to view.
Sure, you’ll catch them once and again, but not enough
that a guerilla tactic will be effective over a long period
of time.

I lectured to my HTML class regarding putting
background music on a page and how people disliked it
to the point where they would leave the page. A student
was offended and suggested that some Web surfers were
just petty and neurotic and stupid (his words).

No, they are not petty, neurotic, and stupid. They are in
charge. That’s the difference. Why would people place
themselves into a situation they dislike when they can
easily avoid it? They won’t. Thus, forcing ads upon
people will never be successful past the original novelty.
I have no doubt these active ads will be very successful
for the next couple of months. Once they start to
proliferate and a surfer has seen the same ad three or four
times, the novelty will wear off and the little man with
the Moulin Rouge bill will not be so successful.

Look, we don’t dislike advertising. We dislike bad
advertising. We dislike ads that have nothing to do with
us. We dislike ads that keep us from getting to the
information we want. We dislike ads we are forced upon
us. We dislike ads that give the impression they are more
important than the content of the site.

We know that without advertisements, the Web will
become a pay-for medium. We proclaim to want
advertisements that are not intrusive, geared to us, and are
interesting. That can certainly be done, but in order to do
it, the advertiser must know a little about you in order to
deliver the ad that is geared to you, right?

Until we, as a Web audience, are willing to offer the
information that will better the ads for us, the advertisers
must take their best guesses and try to force us to look.
The battle will go on and we will get closer and closer to
having to pay for services because the ads we dislike just
keep popping up.

Yahoo is now running Active Adsand they’re charging
for listings.

Coincidence?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

That’s that. Thanks for reading. I really appreciate it.

Joe Burns, Ph.D.

And Remember: How about some M&M trivia? Did
you know that M&Ms are the only candy served on Air
Force One? Green M&Ms are thought to be
aphrodisiacs. Orange M&Ms are thought to increase bust
size. The rock group Van Halen wrote into their concert
riders that there be no brown M&Ms in the backstage
area. If the band found some, they would have to destroy
the room before going on. Red M&Ms never contained
any of the Red dye #2 that caused a scare in 1976.
Finally, how many colors of M&Ms are there? Six?
Seven? How about 21? They are: black, blue, light blue,
dark blue, brown, cream, gold, gray, green, aqua green,
teal green, dark green, maroon, orange, pink, dark pink,
purple, light purple, red, white, and yellow. No, they
don’t all come in the common M&M bag. Many you’ll
just see around certain parts of the year. I love the pastel
M&Ms at Easter.