The Balance Between Clicking and Ticking
Clicks, Ticks, and the Destiny of Pop-Ups
I just hopped out of the Clicks, Ticks, and the Destiny of Pop-Ups session. The room was pretty full on the last day of the event. I was a little bummed out to hear the audience still beating a dead horse when asking panelists if rich ads online were dubbed intrusive.
To no surprise, Rich LeFurgy, president of Archer Advisors addressed this head-on by saying, “There needs to be a balance between best practices and advertiser demand. I don’t think we are in danger of being regulated (as spam he begun to be) but I could be wrong. However, we must implement session capping on both a site and user basis. No one would watch television if they were forced to view an ad every minute. Content and advertising need to be balanced.”
Barbara Bacci Mirque, a senior vice president at the Association of National Advertisers, chest-beat about the viability of rich media in the online advertising space. She said, “Two years ago people were ready to write off online advertising completely.” Being an agency buyer two years ago, I tend to disagree. But I did agree with her sentiment when she echoed Rich’s comments, saying, “We must understand what resonates with our target audience.”
Avi Nader, CEO of WhenU strongly stated that he thinks all rich media units should be labeled: “We should let the user choose.”
The bottom line is that conversations on this topic are still behind the times. As responsible advertisers and publishers, we need to kick this up a notch. Let’s standardize units, push the envelope on creativity within such units, and think about what clicks with our target audiences - and more importantly, what’s ticking them off.
