Internet advertising, along with the rest of the dotcom world, has fallen upon hard times. The tougher the advertising market, the flashier and more annoying - sorry, innovative - the ads become. Pop-up banner advertisements are everywhere. One ad, which appears at the top of the computer screen, has row upon row of talking faces. And, if you have sound, you can hear all these faces babble incoherently.
It's billboard advertising crossed with MTV. The trouble is, many disgruntled Web surfers don't even bother to look at pop-up banner ads. They shut the windows as fast as they pop open. Even if they look, it can take a few moments to actually figure out what the ad is for. (One2One mobile phones in the UK, in this case.) Plus, the more garish pop-up ads usually distract the surfers from their tasks, which is bad for Web business.
What advertisers know for sure is that an irritated or unhappy consumer is not a spendthrift customer. (Check out the commercials the next time you visit the cinema. They aim to make you laugh.) This malaise can be seen in the click-through rate - the number of customers who click on banner ads to be whisked away to the advertisers' websites. It has fallen dramatically.
Today, considerably less than 0.5 per cent of users click on banner ads, which is down from around 3 per cent in the mid-1990s. Hence, the increasingly aggressive ads.
Still, a high click-through rate doesn't always mean the Web surfer will buy the product or service, or even remember what was clicked upon. Small business card ads in the corner of the screen, known as "Big Impressions" and used by Disney sites such as ESPN.com and ABC.com, receive higher click-through rates, but some researchers maintain that many are clicked in error by confused consumers.
Gaudy ads with poor-quality animation may also attract viewers just momentarily. The "Punch The Monkey" banner, for instance, tempts surfers to click on a monkey that hops across the ad. But some Internet consultants argue that just because surfers play the game doesn't mean they'll stick around to find out what the monkey's jumping is all about (TreeLoot.com, an online game that markets Web services and products).
Above all, the ads that do no favours for any interested parties, be they websites, consumers or advertisers, are those that aim deliberately to deceive. There is, for example, a genre of ads that masquerade as computer messages. When you click on the "OK" button, you are unwittingly transported to the advertiser's website. This doesn't endear the consumer to the advertiser, however, and immediately damages the host site's credibility.
One such ad, familiar to many Web users, states: "Warning: Your Internet connection is not optimised. Download Internet Boost 2001 now!"
It looks like a warning message, but is actually from a company, Bonzi Software. The ad - for a programme that aims to make web browsing faster - is designed to look like a Windows error message. (Tip: real alert messages tend to appear in the middle of the screen, over your document.)
The good news for surfers and bad news for advertisers is that software does exist to stop intrusive ads from appearing on screens. With programmes that can be downloaded such as Junkbusters, AdSubtract, WebWasher and Guidescope, users can escape the advertising blitz. Most of these programmes work by browsing the website before it opens and deleting the ads.
Although a reluctance remains among users to download programmes for fear of destructive viruses, they are, nevertheless, becoming more popular.
For instance, WebWasher, founded in Germany in 1999 as part of Siemens and subsequently spun off, says it has about four million users worldwide and is now seeking out paying corporate customers eager to free up their company's bandwidth.
While dismissing intrusive ads as detrimental to industry, Jim Curry of Initiative Media in Dublin doesn't rule out pop-up banner ads altogether: "Some people think pop-up ads are intrusive, but it's a sensible format to use as long as you consider the context. If you make it appear just once and adjust the size, you can minimise the irritation. Having ads that pop up consistently doesn't support the industry."
Pop-up banners may be inappropriate in certain parts of websites, but kosher in others: most newspaper websites will not want to annoy readers with pop-up ads, but may use them when the user decides to check his/her e-mail. Curry has worked on newspaper websites. "We use what we can, but try to be as sensible as we can. We use common sense by not interrupting the user's path along the Internet." This is where so-called "transitional" ads come in. These appear before the page fully downloads and vanish when the download is complete.
"We're doing transitional ads for Guinness on Esat Fusion," Curry says, "which is the first time they've been done in Ireland. It only appears for about three seconds and then disappears after the page downloads. It's a good example of the way things are going."
An alternative way to direct people to advertisers' websites is through instant/text-messaging. Esat Fusion offers surfers the chance to send instant messages to a friend's mobile phone for free. The advertiser then puts its website address at the end of the text message on the receiver's mobile phone. As a result, the site is stored on the phone so its user can check it out the next time they use a computer.
But Curry says "streaming" (or video) ads are also a growing trend. "Peugeot adapted its TV ad into the banner format in the UK. It had one of the highest click-through rates we've seen - 13 per cent. When broadband comes in, it will make it easier for people to view a five-second TV ad while pages are downloading and allow them to investigate new formats. With advances in technology, they may even emulate TV ads."
Still, banner ads have yet to grab the surfer's imagination, according to Bettina MacCarvill, senior consultant at Amβrach Consulting in Dublin. Amβrach recently carried out a survey which concluded that 65 per cent of respondents never clicked on a banner ad. "This is pretty phenomenal," she says. "Most of those who did, couldn't remember what banner ad they'd clicked on.
"This is one of the few mediums that allow for interactive activity," she continues. "Advertisers need to rethink ads that are online and target more ads to what the user is interested in."
Here's how targeted online ads work: users type in a Web address and click on the link. The user's browser connects via the website to the advertiser's server, where pop-up banner ads are stored. Then, in order to select a suitable pop-up banner, the advertiser's server scours the user's details from "cookies" on his/her hard drive. (Cookies are tracking devices that are attached to a user's browser by a website.)
There are, however, less sinister ways of acquiring information about users. In return for information, some websites have started offering surfers incentives, such as coupons, for various products that can be bought online. MacCarvill adds: "It becomes more of a two-way relationship - it's not just about advertisers targeting Internet users willy-nilly and not knowing who's seen the ads."
Advertisers will always be interested in the Web, says Jim Curry. "In the first quarter of last year, mostly dotcom companies advertised online. During the same period this year, they were replaced by fast-moving consumer goods companies selling products like food and drinks. Traditional companies will continue supporting the Internet."
Love them or loathe them, pop-up banner ads are here to stay.