In the early days of the internet, it was thought that a revolution had taken place in the advertising world, and banner ads and click through campaigns were all the hype of the day. There is no question that a revolution had taken place however, with the popping of the internet bubble in the mid 2000’s, all things internet related took a major hit, and investors became rigorously analytical with every penny invested in digital business ventures. In hindsight, the microscopic scrutiny of the post bubble era may have been taken too far given that anyone using the internet at the time could have told you digital display ads, like banners and pop-ups, were uninteresting, often intrusive and rarely relevant to consumer habits. Reacting to the negative feedback of the first banner wave, media buyers gave display ads a back seat while they fell back on traditional advertising models and searched for new methods of exploiting the potential that online held for the next generation of advertising campaigns. Their search efforts eventually paid off in the form of… well, Search. Today, search based advertising comprises the majority of dollars earmarked for ad budgets with an estimated 11 billion dollars having been invested in 2009 alone.
Although we are singling out banner ads as an online industry whose initial primitive business structure caused it to absorb punishment from the backlash of the bubble burst, the truth is, every element of the internet was experiencing growing pains at the time as they learned that a web address was simply no replacement for sound business strategy. Remember how for months after the bubble burst, internet pundits claimed that online businesses were not viable entities on their own, and had to be paired with brick & mortar elements if they wished to have a chance at making their business model work. Well, when was the last time you heard the term “Brick & Mortar”, and today, everyone agrees that strictly online businesses have found their market and worked out the kinks of online business strategy.
The same can be said for banner ads. Lately, digital advertisers have been turning to technology to find solutions for turning display advertising into a targeted and statistically based science, increasing returns at a decreased cost, i.e. the original vision of the display ad industry. It seems that technology has finally caught up with vision, and advertisers are beginning to relinquish their outdated hesitation toward display ads as the efficiency and cost effectiveness of their results become increasingly more difficult to ignore. According to recent research estimates, display advertising can now be expected to grow by 17% per year!
Does this mean that display advertising will replace search? Probably not, as search has proven to be an effective advertising tool as well. What is does mean is that digital advertising campaigns will begin to become more multi pronged, in a similar fashion to their old media predecessors. Where old media would use television, radio and print to disseminate a consistent message across multiple channels, digital media will begin to follow a similar path, using search, display ads and things like digital email brochures, each vertical offering a separate advantage over the other.
Search will always have the advantage that a prospective customer is currently searching for a solution, be it product, service or information oriented, and if an ad can be positioned to meet that solution, in part or in whole- that is a strong attractive advantage to offer advertisers. Display advertising has a separate advantage by way of creativity. First impressions given off by search ads are textual based and highly limited in their word count. Display ads are rich in the copy and in the visual department, allowing them far more creative freedom with which to capture the attention of a prospective client, while providing the potential means with which to take a campaign viral.
Given the creative advantage that display ads offer, and combining it with the latest technology which allows for as targeted a campaign as search can offer, if not more so; display advertising is not only making a comeback as a viable ad venue choice next to search, we soon might be seeing display advertising overtaking search as the core element of multifaceted digital campaigns.
