Marketing Pilgrim

At OMMA Video, Dynamic Logic’s Research Director, Kara Manatt, released the results of a study on consumers’ responses to various online advertising, MediaPost reports.

In a survey of a representative cross-section of 950 Americans, participants were asked about their views of various online advertising media. The break down:

• 55% took a “strongly negative” view of pop-ups and pop-unders.
• 31% were strongly negative on online video ads. (As MediaPost notes, “That’s an easy win against infamously annoying ad formats.”)
• 27% took a strongly negative view of “advergames.” (Which, I think, would have been higher had they known what the heck you’re talking about. C’mon, taze the gnome games are less annoying?)
• 21% were strongly negative on skyscraper ads.
• 18% had a negative view of banner ads.

While online video can still chant, “We’re number two!”, it’s not a good sign: MediaPost says the number of annoyed consumers has been increasing over time. Manatt said, “In the early days of rich media, it was much more effective than non-rich media in getting consumers’ attention. But now there’s essentially no difference.”

MediaPost offers some tips on effective video ads:

While the medium is still evolving, Manatt advised the audience on some tentative rules for online video advertising. She countered widespread criticism of the pre-roll ad model by noting that consumers are much less likely to accept a long ad in the middle of a news clip, with 70% saying they’d rather see it at the beginning. By the same token, consumers are willing to watch a longer pre-roll video ad if they’re trying to watch a longer clip.

Of course, if you ask consumers whether or not they like ads, they’ll tell you no every time. While we’ve reported that “Nearly nine in 10 Americans said they were less likely to buy products that had annoying or offensive ads,” that doesn’t mean that we should stop advertising altogether.

75% of people say they’re overexposed to advertising—but those same people will tell you that having ads sent to them is better than using search engines to find products and businesses. Sometimes I wonder if people really know what they want.