Online Advertisers Tinker to Find Gimmicks That Sell
By Leslie Walker
Thursday, June 21, 2001; Page E01
Internet advertising can't make up its mind whether to be clever or obnoxious these days. Online advertisers are experimenting wildly as they try to reinvent the medium after the death of so many dot-coms and a slowdown in technology spending.
Tilting toward the obnoxious is a new format dubbed the "pop-under" that hides behind your Web browser's main window and surprises you when you try to close the browser. Pop-under ads hawking a "Tiny Wireless Video Camera" were shown so many times last month that X10.com, the camera maker, was the fifth most heavily trafficked site on the Web, according to Jupiter Media Metrix.
Once confined to pornographic sites, pop-unders now lurk behind the pages of scores of niche sites, major portals and other sites, including the New York Times on the Web. Pop-unders contain not only cheesy ads with sexual overtones such as X10's, but also ads touting mainstream Web markets such as eBay's Half.com.
Another ad format gaining ground is more clever -- bold animations that hop, skip and fly across Web pages. Still, those too can annoy, depending on how they are delivered.
Three black crows flew across Yahoo's home page last month and pecked at seeds that dissolved to reveal a Ford Explorer. The Web commercial could have been fun but it took too long -- a full 10 seconds -- and froze the home page the entire time so you couldn't go about your business online. Thank goodness Yahoo let the crows feast for only one day.
The New York Times on the Web, in addition to pop-unders, is doing fly-bys. A black jet is buzzing its business section this week, appearing on the left and flying across the page, casting a shadow on the text below. It disappears and reappears as a speck in the distance, then zooms in for a landing, nose pointed straight at the viewer. When it stops the ad proclaims: "The fastest database has landed. Introducing Oracle9i."
Consumer hackles may be up -- along with interest in ad-blocking programs such as WebWasher and Junkbuster -- but industry veterans say this is a necessary trial-and-error period as Internet advertising tries to find the right balance between pleasing marketers and irking consumers.
"I do applaud the experimentation," said Robin Webster, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. "This is a new medium. We have not begun to find all the right answers yet."
Christine Mohan, a spokeswoman for the New York Times Co., said readers had complained about the pop-unders but also sent praise when the company experimented with animation on its Boston.com site. "We like to stay on the creative cutting edge and offer our marketers a diverse portfolio of ad formats," she said.
The Times is limiting each visitor's exposure to one pop-under ad per day, but many sites running the X10 ads have no such cap. Active Web users can find themselves clicking a dozen or more times in a single browsing session just to close X10 ads.
X10 Technology Inc. declined to respond to repeated telephone and e-mail requests for an interview. It has posted a Web page telling users how to block the ad for 30 days at www.x10.com/x10ads.htm.
The IAB, a trade group representing Web publishers and marketers, released a set of bigger, bolder Web ad formats in February that were designed to move the industry past the banner, which consumers increasingly ignore. Since then, the industry has been researching how consumers are responding. The IAB plans to release findings next month that will show that the new formats are more effective than the old ones, Webster said. The IAB also will announce new standards this summer for "rich media" ads, which include animation.
A third new promotional format also is on the rise: unique codes in off-line store products inviting shoppers to Web sites to redeem electronic goodies. Frito-Lay ran a five-week promotion ending June 6 that drove millions of people to redeem mystery codes from slips of paper that had been stuffed (along with a few real $100 bills) into more than 100 million bags of Doritos and other snacks. People typed the codes into a Web page at www.fritolaycash.com to earn credits redeemable with Web merchants. At its peak, 70,000 people a day visited the site for redemptions, said Juan Carlos Velten, co-founder of SoftCoin, the technology vendor that handled the campaign.
SoftCoin has run dozens of off-line/online campaigns since last year, including several for Procter & Gamble. Dole Foods just launched an 18-month campaign to put e-cash codes inside tens of millions of Dole Fruit Bowl packs. Web merchants such as SunglassHut.com are providing $10 worth of merchandise to each consumer in return for promotion on Dole's packages.
"This is our first Internet marketing effort," said Dole's marketing vice president, Marty Ordman. "What attracted us to this technology was the immediacy of it. The people who buy our Fruit Bowls product are working women who don't want to clip coupons or send things in the mail."
Dole hopes that e-cash will give people a reason to stick with its brand in a category known for consumer fickleness, Ordman said. The company also wants e-mail addresses, he added, so it can communicate with folks who show interest in Internet offers.
Packaged-goods makers are big advertisers in TV, radio and print, but have been slow to move to the Web. Coca-Cola started a promotion last year in which Sprite drinkers have been redeeming codes from their bottle caps online; Pepsi-Cola did something similar. Kellogg Co. has put millions of encrypted codes on cereal boxes redeemable at www.eetandern.com. But, at least so far, few packaged-goods makers have chosen to buy banner ads or experiment with Web commercials.
Web publishers keep trying to change that by wooing advertisers with interruptive ad windows and television-style imagery. And signs are popping up that at least a few experimental formats are catching on.
One called the Superstitial loads in the background and appears when you click from one page to another. Its maker, Unicast, drew nearly 10 million Web surfers last month, according to Jupiter Media Metrix, showing animations for Coca-Cola, McDonald's, the U.S. Army and other marketers. Another style, called Shoshkeles, is gaining attention for its humor. Job super-site Monster.com used Shoshkeles to unleash a gnarly green creature that appeared in the middle of a page at Lycos.com and growled out loud, "You're the monster."
You may think Internet advertising is turning into the real monster as it morphs into a more interruptive presence. But remember: TV commercials didn't compress into 30-second nuisances overnight. Marketers first bombarded consumers with two-minute mini-movies and other big bores before recognizing that there was a bigger payoff in short clips.
You can bet that Web ads have plenty more obnoxiousness left to show off before they worm their way into the mainstream of marketing muck.
Leslie Walker's e-mail address is walkerl@washpost.com.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company |
