Our writing lab for last week was actually a take-home assignment that involved developing an ad for the Kindle DX. The issue that we had to tackle was how to get college/university students to see the benefit of purchasing the nearly $500.00 Kindle DX as opposed to continuing to buy all of their textbooks and novels separately.
It was up to us to decide on a theme as well as the type of advertisement that we wanted to do, such as for television, print, radio or Internet. Although I ended up deciding on a television ad, I did consider developing one for the Internet and spent some time looking at ads that I ran across online.
It’s no secret that the Internet has changed things pretty dramatically in our society. People expect to be able to get information quickly and see what they want without much delay or interruption. This attitude has been a dilemma for advertising and I was interested to see how companies have adjusted to deal with this.
Something I noticed right away is that advertising companies have become more adept at making sure that you are still seeing their ads. For example, you can get access to all kinds of movies and television shows at hulu.com, but you will have to sit through a couple ads throughout the program as well. Some things are obviously different, such as the fact that you are only asked to sit through one ad at a time. There is also a little bar at the bottom of the ad that lets you know how quickly it will be over. These are effective tools online because you are unlikely to get up and walk away from the computer during the ad.
A couple more things that I found interesting about online advertising actually had to do with an ad that I noticed for the Kindle on the msn.com homepage, as well as some details about ads on the homepage itself. Overall, the homepage does not have many product ads pasted all over it. They have one large box in the upper right hand corner that you notice right away when you click onto the homepage. However, in order to get to the other ads, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page to the “ads” box and actually click on the link for a particular product.
The thing that caught my eye about the Kindle ad was a little link at the bottom of the ad that said “ad feedback”. I clicked on this and was immediately taken to a short OpinionLab survey for msn.com regarding the ad. It gave you the opportunity to comment on a particular area such as the ad’s content, credibility, design and relevance to you. It then asked you rate the ad on certain things ranging from its clarity of message and format to how it impacted your opinion about the product’s advertiser as well as the msn.com homepage. When I completed my survey for that particular ad, I was taken back to the msn homepage where a second ad for the Kindle was now showing in the same spot where I’d just seen the first one.
Apparently, even the websites that run the ads have adjusted to the fast pace of information that the Internet allows. Gone are the days of just talking about ads that you see with the other people in your living room. Now you can comment on them just as quickly to the advertiser and marketing mediums! In other words, Geico--with your disturbing money critter and annoying talking potholes--better watch out!
No comments:
Post a Comment