Intrusive advertising

What is efficient online marketing?
Most people agree nowadays that online marketing is a great opportunity not only to advertise, but to start building a relationship with customers and potential customers. Many websites like Google understood the opportunity and provide targeted marketing spots depending on search results that help marketers reach their intended audience.

With that statement clearly out in the market, it is very surprising to see how some online marketing campaigns are implemented. To some, it seems that “efficient online marketing” equals “intrusive online marketing”. True enough, if your ad moves fast enough on the screen and takes enough space, you have a lot of chances that users will click on it by mistake, thus leading to a better click rate. But will it achieve its intended use of building a brand and leading to more purchases.

Pre-website advertisement
Imagine sitting at your table in your kitchen eating your breakfast, the newspaper delivery guy comes over and knocks at your door. You open and before he hands you the newspaper he recites an ad for 10 seconds. On his jacket, you see a small sign saying, “press here to skip the ad and get your newspaper”.



Well, this is not less strange on the web. Retrieve the URL of your usual online newspaper from your favorites and instead of the homepage you may first get a full page advertisement. You then have the choice to wait for the ad to finish or to click on the small link at the bottom of the screen to skip it. What a great advertising method to affect negatively both brands of the advertising company and the company that hosts that advertisement…

Flying ads
Nothing can beat the good old flying ad. You access a website and something starts flying around your screen. Impossible to read the content of the website until that thing is gone. So you try to catch that close button that moves around your screen to make the waiting time shorter. If you are not accurate enough, instead of closing the ad, it will send you to the website of the advertiser.

This one is an all-time favorite on Chinese websites. It is overused on all portals and makes it very annoying to browse through information. As mentioned above, if a campaign can reach a targeted audience, a flying ad may be a good way to catch people’s attention and their perception will be good as the ad will directly address their needs. But on a portal a flying ad that is aimed at only a very small percentage of users can only hinder a brand and will not build relationship.



Is intrusive wrong?
On the web, users want efficiency and relevance. Two characteristics harder and harder to achieve as data is plentiful. As some Asian users put it during tests or interviews, they may accept a flying ad and may even click on it if it is relevant to them. But as its relevance is so rare, all agree that flying ads are a nuisance. So the answer to the above question is “YES, intrusive is wrong”, because these ads cannot fit the needs of all users and the negative perception they create far outreaches the positive one, especially when placed in the wrong location.

There is no question that online marketing is a revolutionary tool, but in the wrong hands it can badly affect users’ online experience.

Your opinion counts!

One of the basics of customer experience management is to establish a dialog between the company offering services or products and its customers or potential customers. One way to build that relationship is to use large scale surveys where the target audience is asked for its opinion… Customers in return will appreciate the company for opening a channel to voice their concerns, advices or compliments. The web has enabled companies to set up very easily online surveys that can be answered in a minimum amount of time by a very significant number of people. Thus the kind of pop-ups that appears on your browser sometimes.

Your opinion counts…

Companies caring so much about their customers and wanting to know more in order (it is my best guess) to improve their services is very encouraging. So while I am browsing the web, I usually go through these little questionnaires thinking that maybe I can make a difference in this “customer uncentered” world.

When I click on these links, I always feel good about the company that put that questionnaire online because it shows that my opinion is valued, right?. Then, what happens when the questionnaire is actually not caring at all about customer opinions?

Let’s take a look at what happens when clicking on the “Your opinion counts” on Yahoo website… Below is a screenshot of the first page of the questionnaire:

My best guess for people’s first reaction is: “Damn! Again those demographics questions!”. Actually, in customer research, without demographics, results cannot be controlled and they may mislead companies in taking decision they ought not to take. As a result “some” demographics questions are a must. However, the result when clicking on the “Continue” button is a "Thank you" page...

“Huh! …I thought my opinion counted!?!

I did not know that my birth date or whether I live in the US was an opinion.”

Let’s take some time now to step back and imagine…

You enter your favorite coffee shop, happy or unhappy, you take one of those “Your opinion counts” questionnaire. You look at the questions and all the coffee shop asks for is: “What is your age?”, “Are you married?” and “How many hours do you spend in coffee shops every week?”. What could be your reaction?

Now one may wonder what is so different about the Web that can allow companies to use “tricks” like this to get people’s personal information. And one may also wonder whether the company putting this survey on its website wondered about the impact on its brand perception.

There is still a long way to go, but customers... do not despair! Because remember “YOUR OPINION COUNTS!”

Nicolas Lassus
Customer input Ltd.
http://www.customerinput.com