And the Rise of Targeted Internet Advertising
Traditional marketing both in the West and in Qatar focuses on interrupting the consumer.
Consumers are watching television when an advert rudely interrupts their pleasure. There is no guarantee the advert will be watched; the viewer may leave for a coffee, take a toilet break or switch channels. The same is true of radio - and of magazines.
Seth Godin, author of permission marketing, once conducted a small experiment in to the effectiveness of magazine adverts. He watched several people flicking through a newspaper – then approached the readers and asked them to name the adverts they had seen. Not one single consumer could name one single ad.
Banner Blindness
There is a name for it in advertising – Banner Blindness.
When consumers first started using the internet, websites were funded by banners. Consumers initially noticed and clicked on the banners. However, they soon learned to ignore the banners and concentrate on what they were interested in – what was on the web page, which was, of course, what they were searching for.
The difference between banners on the net and tv/radio/magazine ads is that action taken from banner ads is far easier to measure. Webmasters can easily measure how many times someone clicks on a banner ad and takes action as a result; it is far more difficult to measure how many people take action as a result of a magazine ad.
Interruption Advertising in Qatar
Interruption advertising may well be far less effective in Qatar. In the West interruption marketing relies upon its ability to reach huge numbers of people in the hope that at least some of them will be interested in the product. Many adverts in Qatar may only reach a very small segment of people – some magazines have circulations of little more than 20,000 people.
If we associated the same level of banner blindness with magazines, the results are truly dire. Facebook has a click through rate of just 0.4% - i.e. only 4000 in every million people are interested enough to click on an ad.
If the same rate carried through for a magazine with a circulation of 20,000, only 80 people would be interested in the ad. When you consider that it takes a lot more effort to get into a car, drive to a shop or business and buy something, you may start to wonder whether the thousands of riyals you spend on magazine and newspaper advertising is worthwhile.
Brand Awareness versus Action
Of course, many ad sellers will argue that the true value lies not in the immediate action a consumer will take when they see an advert but in the increased awareness consumers have of their brand.
But how much better would it be if you combined increased brand awareness with immediate action by the consumer?
The Rise of Targeted Internet Advertising
The answer to the conundrum of interruption marketing is to advertise to the consumer at the time he is actively searching for your product.
The consumer has been changed from a passive, reluctant and maybe even annoyed participant to one who is actively engaged in looking for you. Instead of rudely interrupting his browsing you are helping him to acquire what he needs right now.
Google understood and exploited this with Adsense ads. Consumers see these small ads – which bear a strong resemblance to Google search results – and click on them because they are relevant to what they are searching.
Qatcom, the Qatar Business Directory, is similar in that users only see company’s listings when they are actively searching for the companies. However, there is a further difference.
Every time somebody clicks on one of your Google ads you pay. On Qatcom, starting from just two riyals a day, advertisers can click on your ads over and over again – and you will pay no extra.
And on Qatcom every one of our thousands of users is searching for businesses and nothing else. Which is why 73% of searches made on our website result in the searcher contacting a business.
And that is something interruption marketing will never be able to achieve.
2 comments: