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Having just read an article in Advertising Age entitled ‘How Google Has Helped Build Brand Advertising Online‘ I think it’s worth pointing out that Google has also helped to do the exact opposite. I’m not disputing Tim Armstrong’s description of how ‘Saturn’ used Google Earth and Google Video to let people find dealerships and view product videos… but lets be realistic - how many cutting edge campaigns have we really seen like that recently? Instead what we have is a mass market of long tail niche advertisers, who have often been introduced to web advertising for the first time via Google Adwords… and now obsess over click rates and measurable RoI. It’s hitting everything from the Yellow Pages to standard banner advertising.

This ‘click’ obsession has been fuelled by Google Adwords’ requirement for adverts to perform well on that basis (CTR). Google’s free ‘conversion code’ enables advertisers to see how many paid clicks generate leads and sales, and of course the theory that ‘if it’s not converting then stop spending’. The demand for click rates has escalated so much that now many big brand advertisers are losing sight of branding, and comparing interactive brand advertising on portals, with paid search campaigns using the click metric alone.

One comment from a BIG advertiser which I’ve seen recently was “The number of impressions doesn’t really tell me much – it’s the click through rates that are key”. This marketer wanted to compare content associated rich media advertising, with click rates from paid search advertising, but was missing a key point. Brand building is NOT all about clicks, if it was Cadbury’s wouldn’t be sponsoring Coronation Street, tube carriages would be free of cheap international call service ads, and Gordon Ramsay wouldn’t be smiling at me on the back of a London bus.

I’ve seen it written before that text base adverts in search don’t actually do much for brand awareness, especially when each advert is hidden amongst the clutter of eight other pay per click adverts and ten organic search results. Indeed the single largest reason people go to a search engine like Google is to click on relevant links. Increasingly they use search much more as a comparison tool, making multiple clicks on various adverts on a results page to make a decision – so of course click rates are high (and conversion rates dropping by my experience).

Just think about it for a second, how many search adverts can you recall seeing (excluding the auto-generated and irrelevant ‘Buy KEYWORD at ebay’ ads)? Not many I bet. Now think of all the adverts you’ve seen elsewhere on the web – visual stimuli within an interactive advert are much more memorable than hundreds of logo-less text adverts which serve a purpose in the moment but are easily forgotten.

It’s certainly harder to get people to click when they’re not in a clicking mood, but you can’t beat an interactive banner campaign for tempting people away from their reading material to expand a banner and watch a video. The resulting metric of total interaction time is surely a measure of branding success for any marketer? The proof of this is that when you take Google Adwords campaigns and put them onto a publisher website (using Google Adsense) the click rates are, in my experience, far worse than normal branded banners. Same adverts, different vehicle – one’s for content association and brand building, the other for clicks.

So advertisers, please don’t lose sight of what banner advertising on portal sites is all about – you’re increasing brand recall by aligning yourself with a publisher’s demographic / community… switch it all off and you may find that you’re levelling the playing field with the shop on the corner.

Technorati Tags: google adwords, branding, pay per click, advertising age, tim armstrong, RoI

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