Are Banners Dead?

You may have noticed the affiliate sales pitch on the right side of my blog. If you did, you probably read it because I have enough respect for you, the reader, to explain in sentences why I think Lunarpages is a good deal, to openly admit my affiliate status, and to suggest that they are a reliable seller of hosting that you need anyway. You read it because I am not obnoxiously trying to push your buttons into buying crap you don’t need.

You probably did not notice it this week, when I briefly changed it to a bright, animated banner, largely as an experiment in advertising effectiveness.

The results were as anticipated. The text affiliate pitch, as it stands now, is not getting too many clicks, but a decent number: 4 to 10 a day depending on the popularity of my posts. In banner form, however, it got 1 click per day, tops. No sales.

What does this mean? It means that when I make a sales pitch personally, people who trust me (say, who read my blog where I post my name and somewhat reasonable thoughts) are open to buying something I recommend. If I just post a banner, users have no confidence that I endorse the product. Heck, they don’t even know I posted that ad. It may have been AdSense or some other such nonsense. The ad is impersonal, and as habit would have it, ignored.

This is wishful thinking, but perhaps this also means that the tech-savvy populace is thinking before buying, more than ever. So companies can no longer score our dollars with just bright colors and pervasive marketing. Perhaps obnoxious advertising in general is in decline, and (thanks, in part, to online social networking) people will increasingly market the old-fashioned way: word of mouth.