Tips for Internet Advertising

I do a lot of surfing every day and I see a lot of ads for all types of things as most people do. In the ads I see some are very ‘splashy’ while others are rather simple. What is the best way to advertise on the Internet? Is it splash pages (small ads to get people to click to take them to your main offer site)? Squeeze pages (pages that get an email address for more information)? Banner ads? Text ads?

The purpose of any ad is get a response. Either a name for a list or a click to your offer page. They are all designed (or should be) to get the desired response. The desired response will be determined from what you are trying to sell.

Is it a short term, buy now type thing or something longer term? What I mean by this is a short term item will be something like buying ring-tones, acne medication, and similar things. Longer term items will be like weight loss, relationship counseling, membership deals, and similar. Short term things you want a desired response now rather than later so building a list may not be the best thing to try to do with this type of offer.

So the first thing you need to do is to figure out what type of item you are selling and the best type of ad to use. If you use the wrong type of ad you will not have very much success getting the results you want. You will also need to determine your market or who will buy your item. Putting ads for steak dinners on a vegetarian site will not work well.

Now we get into an area that is where I see a lot of ads fail. There are a lot of people who are using video, flash, and audio as their main thrust in ads. The problem comes in that the ads use these media as the only thing in the ad. So why is this a problem? Let’s be honest; if you are using Firefox you are probably using adblock, flash block, or NoScript and have your volume turned off. Most people who use traffic exchanges use these things and then there are the other ways to surf.

If you haven’t read any news about the new mobile movement you really need to get out more. The iPhone, iPad, and Android products are the big rage now. Does your advertising efforts take these devices into consideration? Does it take the browsers and supported file formats into consideration?

Granted that most people surf the Internet with a desktop (these numbers are dwindling) and laptop. The number of people who use these ‘smart devices’ is growing at a very steep rate. If your market is people in their late teens and early twenties – they use these devices almost exclusively. They view videos, listen to music, text, twitter, and Facebook with them. None of them at the point of this writing support flash and some other taken for granted abilities.

Apple has no plans of supporting any flash technology. Android is being worked on now for supporting flash and this may be the major defining difference in the ‘smart device‘ war brewing.

I was in some discussion of what these devices may mean to Internet marketing. If your target audience is in the age range and the product fits the demographic, you need to realize that people are using these devices. Being aware that most people who surf the web extensively will use some for a blocking technology, you will be able to make a more intelligent decision on the type of advertising you do.

Think of it this way, you spend a lot of time and money to make a great looking ad with a flash video or an audio selling your product. If let’s say 10% of the people who see it have a blocker of some kind or there is no flash support – they see nothing but a big blank whole and have no real idea of what the ad is supposed to be and quickly move on. If you are someone who uses a flash or ad blocker you know what they see.

You say, “but not everyone uses these I still have 90% and they will buy my products.” What if the percentage is higher? What if you are only getting 60% or less?

There are no hard and fast statistics on how many people use a flash or ad blocker, but if you look at how many downloads there are on these plugins – it is a substantial number. The number of people surfing with these smart devices is also substantial and will only increase as time goes on.

So am I saying not to use flash and audio and whatever in your ads? No, I am just saying that if you are using these mediums exclusively with no text to tell about your offer also, you may be leaving lots of money on the table from people who might buy your stuff but can’t see your offer. If there is a text portion that explains the offer and use the video to go into more detail would be the best solution.

You need to also realize that the new smart devices may or may not support a .pdf file. If all your ebooks, course, etc. you have for download are all .pdf files – these devices may not be able to read them. The iPad and iPhone do not support .pdf files. There are many places to convert .pdf files to a format these devices can read.

The Internet and how it is accessed is changing and we need to adapt our strategies to keep pace. You need to make your products, sites, and ads work with as many devices as humanly possible. Besides the smart devices, there are also televisions, games systems, and video boxes that will be surfing the Internet and looking at your offers.

Just as with any great change in status quo – the ones who adapt will prosper and the ones that don’t will be out of business.

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Tagged As: Ads, Android, Internet marketing, iPad, iPhone, smart devices