Today, I suddenly thought of checking my old Yahoo email account which I started ten years ago. I did not maintain it since two years ago. Amazingly, it has accumulated over 20,000 of spam mails! It took me nearly an hour to get them all deleted.
I found out that the outlook of digital advertising has changed a lot over the recent years. In the age of Web1.0, “reading” was the main focus of advertising. The brochure-ware advertisements involve only one-way communication. Links, listings, banners, pop-ups, buttons and spams were the most commonly seen online advertisements. Most people who experienced this stage might find the digital ads quite annoying. Not only they invaded our inbox, but also brought computer virus to our hardware. These created a sense of “ad nausea” among the audience and was not an effective way to advertise.
By the way, I remembered that everyone was so contented when the "King of Spam" got arrested last year.
The scenario is completely different in Web2.0. We start to do both reading and writing in new advertisements. We will respond and leave feedback on the advertising campaign and thus shape the communication channel as a two-way, interactive one. New digital ads intentionally get viewers to "participate" in the ad experience. Advertisers try to appeal to target customers by writing according to the context and behaviour of these people. For example, advertisers are more likely to add funny elements and make use of multimodality to attract online attention as teenagers take up a majority of online population. The audience are more willing to take a look at the ads that sound relevant to them.
Moreover, online ads rely much on network sharing. Instead of using pop-ups or spams in the old model, advertising in new media counts on the voluntary sharing to spread the messages. Netizens may make use of networking tools like Facebook,Twitter or other forums to share interesting ads. This indirectly gives rise to a new style of new media writing for online advertising.
Wii launched a very interesting digital ad jointly with Youtube.
The game character, Wario, have shaken everything off from the webpage!
This is an example to show how Web 2.0 ads try to attract attention in a funny way.
Viewers are dragged into Wario's world!
Viewers are dragged into Wario's world!
(Very interesting, must see!) Click the following picture to view:
Blogs sharing - Reviews on digital ad campaigns
DigitalBuzz: Features the latest digital ad campaigns
As we all know, the online population is growing bigger and bigger. Launching digital ads is an inevitable trend because they are speedy, informative, flexible, affordable, and are boundless across borders. Meanwhile, Web 2.0 provides them with better quality, access and openness so that customers have more control over the ads. The writing styles of digital ads have shifted largely as well. Direct promotion ad banners having “BUY ONE GET ONE FREE!” with offending flash lights are already outdated - customers expect to see interesting, playful or somewhat meaningful digital ads in the current age.
Doesn't it look ANNOYING!?
Hi Edith, I also think the Web 2.0 gave us the different ways in promotions. Few years ago, I always use email advertising for the customer awareness idea of many IT projects. Recently, we changed to use the Facebook advertising to perform the similar idea because it has more attractiveness in customer awareness with more interactions with customers.
ReplyDeleteHi Edith and Ivan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for raising such a great topic for us. Since I minor in Marketing, I am quite attentive to promotion and advertising things.
New media really provides an efficient alternative medium for advertisers. It enables geographic selectivity, demographic selectivity, multimodalities, short lead time, high pass-along rate (if interesting), low production cost and blah blah blah blah.
Um, I wonder how both of you think about the efficiency of this type of advertising.
To Noc,
ReplyDeleteI think it should depend on which media the advertisers used and which web 2.0 medium they selected. Animation and short video are more attractive and they should mute the sound at first until the people who use mouse to focus on them. I think the advertisers must choose the related website to promote their products or services. For example, restaurants or foods should promote on OpenRice or Facebook. IT products should promote on HKEPC forum, etc. If the advertisement published to the irrelevant medium, it will become annoying.
Thanks for sharing the evolution of online ads with us.
ReplyDeleteI love the Wii ad on youtube which I will consider very effective. It is very likely that game players and Wii owners will visit Youtube. The fabulous effect matches the "Interactivity" character of Wii. I'm sure it is a benchmark example of web 2.0 ad.
Btw, I quite miss the old ads. They are annoying but fun in a sense. I always think who would be stupid enough to click on the "You are the 1000th visitor, click here to get a grand prize!" ad.
I agree with Ivan. Discount ads should be placed in Groupon and brand imaging ads should be in movie trailers, Youtube, or television instead of the web. it really depends on the goal of the ad of whether to promote, persuade, or remind interactively or not.
ReplyDelete