Which is better? Banner ads or text ads? The new eternal question.
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"Adult webmasters have an advantage over the non-adult realm in that we provide a product that is best served by the Internet." |
No matter how inane, irritating or intrusive we find it to be, advertising works. There are ways to advertise that are just plain wrong but that doesn't make advertising evil. I would much rather live in capitalism-driven society than I would one where a government, despot or church decided what I should buy. After all, aren't we all in the sales business? Ads are the stuff of our livelihoods.
If adult webmasters can't understand the necessity/benefit of advertising and promotion, who can?
Adult webmasters have an advantage over the non-adult realm in that we provide a product that is best served by the Internet. There are so many social roadblocks in front of the person who wishes to buy pornography in the real world. Ordering smut online is private and delivery is almost immediate. No brown paper wrappers. No embarrassing run-ins with those who know you at the sex shop. Our profession is highly competitive because of our unique position so the better the marketing, the better the money.
While we have many proven ways to advertise a site or a sponsor on the net, the two most standard and used methods are the text ad and the banner ad. I have nothing against pop-ups, pop-unders, full-page ads (FPAs) or any other form of web advertising used in moderation. I would just like to concentrate this article on banner ads and text ads.
It's easy to understand why graphical banner ads were first used in net advertising. On television and across the land in billboards and on buses we see image after image engulfing tiny text. The phrase "small print" means much more than terms of service in the aforementioned mediums.
Sales text is bigger than technical details in these more standard advertising environments. The pictures are even bigger than the text. The image is the ad when the setting it's displayed from moves. You'll even find in a magazine or newspaper that the graphical ad catches your eye more than the textual ones. Naturally when folks started to sell through the web, they first implemented static then animated graphic banners because that was the closest to the other real world ad formulas.
Adult webmasters used banner ads also. Many of them noticed a drop in click-through ratios for their banner ads after a while. Most especially after the TGP market took off and the net was flooded with future porn moguls.
At this same time, respected studies were released on Internet viewing habits and tastes in regards to online advertising. A noted one by Magnus Pagendarm and Heike Schaumburg of the Center for Media Research in 2001 coined the phrase "banner blindness". The study basically showed that surfers who are searching instead of viewing a page ignore banner ads. The study divided surfers into two groups by they way they read a page. The ones who used a page as a means to find something else were performing "directed browsing". The ones who were on the page without a real purpose were performing "undirected" or "associative browsing".
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Users didn't necessarily click less on banner ads because they were ineffective. They clicked less because of the way they were employing the page where the banner appeared.
A great many adult webmasters now perceive text ads to be more effective than banner ads hands down. They will prove it to you with click-thru ratios on banner vs. text ads. They will present you with sign up statistics that show how they made more money with a text ad. They'll tell you, text ads download faster than banners. Text ads can be adapted to a site or promotional campaign easier than a banner. Nevertheless, banner ads are still out there on adult webmaster pages. Sponsors still provide banner ads for affiliates. Banner ads are apparently being used
effectively in the adult Internet or they would be gone.
Why is this if text ads are so much better?
My theory is that neither is better. I think text and banner ads both have a function for online porn salesmen. Like the above-mentioned study, I think the type of ad one uses depends entirely on what type of page your are building. A gallery builder might find text links more effective because their viewers already have pictures to look at in the gallery. A person with a more portal-based adult free site might see more return on those banner ads their bookmarkers repeatedly see.
My advice is play with both. Don't download sponsor banners you find uninteresting. Don't apply text links you wouldn't feel like clicking on yourself. Use both and see for yourself what works best. Your text ads may do better because they download faster or your surfers are click happy, or they may do better because you write killer sales copy. Your banner ads may do well because your sponsor has a cool touchy-feely new flash button. They may also do well because of the way you placed them on your page.
I don't think text is better than graphic when it comes to marketing porn. I do believe that a banner or text ad is only as good as the salesman behind it.