WEBVTT - TechStuff Classic: TechStuff Clicks on Web Ads 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.960 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.080 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, and I'm an executive producer 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:19.119 with How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:23.120 love all things tech and it's time for a classic 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:29.080 episode of text Stuff. This episode, originally published on June twenty, 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:34.320 two thousand twelve, awful close to my birthday, is called 0:00:34.479 --> 0:00:38.640 tech Stuff Clicks on Web Ads, And as the name suggests, 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:42.479 Chris Pallette and I sit down to talk about web 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:46.800 advertising and how web advertising works and the whole revenue 0:00:46.840 --> 0:00:50.840 model behind it. So I hope you enjoy this episode. 0:00:51.320 --> 0:00:54.160 You like stuff on the web, right? Yeah? I mean, 0:00:54.200 --> 0:00:57.560 you know, both of our careers depend heavily, uh. In fact, 0:00:57.640 --> 0:01:01.440 I would say entirely upon upon putting stuff up on 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:04.440 the web. And the reason why we're able to do 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.160 that is because we can make money by putting stuff 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:10.200 up on the web. Yes. And the reason why we 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:12.360 were able to make money putting stuff up on the 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:18.039 web stems mainly from advertising, yes, And so we wanted 0:01:18.040 --> 0:01:20.800 to talk today a little bit about web advertising. We've 0:01:20.840 --> 0:01:23.039 covered the subject a little bit in previous episodes, but 0:01:23.080 --> 0:01:25.520 we really wanted to kind of dive into it. And 0:01:25.600 --> 0:01:29.400 advertising has a bad rap, and part of that is 0:01:29.480 --> 0:01:36.240 because advertisers have sometimes used very invasive, intrusive or manipulative 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:39.680 approaches to try and get ads in front of you. Yes, 0:01:39.720 --> 0:01:41.280 and I'd like to point out that this episode is 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:44.759 brought to you by Chocolate Nibbles now with nine essential 0:01:44.880 --> 0:01:47.199 vitamins and minerals. Yes, we got rid of that other 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:50.480 non essential vitamin and mineral. Yes, just it was looking 0:01:50.520 --> 0:01:54.400 at us funny and we didn't like its face. But now, yeah, 0:01:54.880 --> 0:01:58.680 we're talking about web advertising and there's good points to 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:01.040 it and bad points to it. Now, the good points 0:02:01.080 --> 0:02:04.040 are that without web advertising, you'd have to find some 0:02:04.120 --> 0:02:07.080 other way to make money putting content up on the web, 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:09.200 or else people wouldn't do it, or at least not 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.280 as many people would do it, and certainly not you 0:02:12.280 --> 0:02:16.000 wouldn't see the same level of quality across the web. 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:18.600 There there'd be, you know, occasionally, there'd be someone who 0:02:18.600 --> 0:02:22.920 would be amazingly talented, who for altruistic reasons, wants to 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:26.200 share what he or she has come up with on 0:02:26.280 --> 0:02:29.240 the web. And those people will be amazing and their 0:02:29.280 --> 0:02:32.000 content they create would be phenomenal, and it would all 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:35.200 be done, you know, the effort and the time being 0:02:35.200 --> 0:02:40.120 put in would all be that one person's resources, and 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:42.640 that would be fantastic. Chances are it wouldn't be their 0:02:42.680 --> 0:02:45.040 day job though, because they wouldn't be since you weren't 0:02:45.040 --> 0:02:46.920 making money off of it. They've got to eat somehow, 0:02:47.040 --> 0:02:50.720 so they would probably be doing something else for forty 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.239 hours a week. And then you think about all the 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:56.600 sites you regularly go to, a lot of those sites 0:02:56.639 --> 0:02:59.280 are supported through advertising, and so without the ads, those 0:02:59.280 --> 0:03:02.280 sitestone exists, which means that content that we have grown 0:03:02.400 --> 0:03:06.120 so fond of accessing would no longer be there. So 0:03:06.160 --> 0:03:09.360 in that case, advertising plays a very important role. Now, 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.000 of course, you can you can make money with online 0:03:12.000 --> 0:03:15.320 through other ways besides advertising. You could have a subscription 0:03:15.360 --> 0:03:19.040 based service where people have to pay a certain amount 0:03:19.160 --> 0:03:23.120 per unit of time, usually be monthly, but it might 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:25.280 be you know, six months or a year or whatever. 0:03:25.600 --> 0:03:27.799 You can't even do it smaller units if you really 0:03:27.800 --> 0:03:31.600 wanted to um and make money that way by saying, 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:33.960 all right, well, you can access the content we create 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.280 on this site if you pay this amount of money 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:39.760 per this unit of time or or per article some, Um, 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:43.960 some sites do that, you know where you have Hey, 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:45.720 if you want to read this article, then it will 0:03:45.760 --> 0:03:50.760 be to to read this one particular story, right. And 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:55.280 the thing is that the way the web has developed 0:03:55.280 --> 0:04:00.160 over time, people have grown to expect free access us 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:01.880 to something if it's on the web. Yeah, it's a 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.520 cultural thing. Yeah. The early days of the Internet, I 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:07.040 mean that the people who were doing this were government 0:04:07.080 --> 0:04:11.280 institutions in the United States and higher learning you know, 0:04:11.320 --> 0:04:16.120 colleges and university so the the content online was specifically 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:20.560 for those groups and the commercial entities really weren't involved 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:22.920 in it in the early days. So the people who 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:25.240 were doing that or or actually you know, some of 0:04:25.240 --> 0:04:28.800 it is from the online services UM. So if you 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:31.240 had a modem, you could dial up to a bulletin 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:33.279 board and you may not have to pay a fee, 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:36.360 and you would join the community there and swap stories 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:40.240 or you know whatever it is that they talked about. UM. 0:04:40.279 --> 0:04:43.039 But they didn't they might pay a fee, a subscription 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:47.400 fee to join the BBS or for internet access in 0:04:47.440 --> 0:04:51.159 the early days of the Internet as a commercial sense, UM, 0:04:51.200 --> 0:04:54.400 but they wouldn't be paying for the content. And so 0:04:55.560 --> 0:05:00.240 the idea came about that web advertising could potentially be 0:05:00.520 --> 0:05:04.640 far more effective than traditional forms of advertising. That was 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:07.200 the initial thought, and the reason for that was that 0:05:07.640 --> 0:05:11.160 if you buy an ad in a magazine, or you 0:05:11.160 --> 0:05:14.440 put on a billboard, or you put in a television show, 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.160 it's a in the ad breaks you have a reasonable 0:05:18.200 --> 0:05:21.039 expectation of a certain number of people that ad is 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:25.200 going to, UH is going to connect with. Now, whether 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:27.240 those people are paying attention to the ad, you don't 0:05:27.279 --> 0:05:30.000 know whether if whether or not they pay attention to 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.120 the ad and then go forward and actually act based 0:05:33.200 --> 0:05:35.039 upon what they saw in the ad. You don't know 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:38.080 that either, but you you what you do know is 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.560 that a certain number of people, based upon the market research, 0:05:41.680 --> 0:05:44.479 are going to see that particular ad. Actually, this seems 0:05:44.480 --> 0:05:46.960 like a good time to bring up a point that 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.280 there are two major types of advertising we're talking about 0:05:50.360 --> 0:05:54.080 here too. Um. Direct response is the type of advertising 0:05:54.160 --> 0:05:58.160 debt does encourage you to do something like if you 0:05:58.200 --> 0:06:01.440 were going to UH listen to the podcast and suddenly 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:03.760 now you're craving a bowl of chocolate nibbles and let 0:06:03.839 --> 0:06:06.960 me tell you they are delicious. Um, now we got 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:09.160 rid of the non essential vitamin mineral. Yes, you should 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:11.240 run out and buy something. That's the point of an 0:06:11.279 --> 0:06:15.800 advertisement like that. UM. Then you have what they call branding, 0:06:16.600 --> 0:06:19.080 which is basically, you know, hey, you don't have to 0:06:19.080 --> 0:06:22.279 go run out and buy our product. Just think of 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.279 us the next time you're doing something like that. And 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:26.880 that's the kind of thing that you see like at 0:06:26.960 --> 0:06:30.720 um uh sporting events. UH. For example, the ads on 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:34.120 the sides of hockey boards or on on the sides 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:37.560 of race cars. They don't say by you know, such 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:39.920 and such product. They're just showing you the brand name, 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:42.960 so that you sort of think about them and you're 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.200 you're thinking, oh, well, you know, I like these guys. 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.080 They sponsor my favorite driver. Yeah. The idea might be 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:50.359 to get that brand name in your mind so that 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:52.960 the next time you go out to get something, you 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:57.440 actually think about that particular brand. For example, you might think, hey, 0:06:57.680 --> 0:07:01.160 I'm thirsty, I would like a soda. I just saw 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:03.640 that ad for coke, and maybe I wouldn't normally get 0:07:03.680 --> 0:07:05.720 a coke, but that sounds good to me right now, 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.000 I'll go ahead and get a coke. UM. So it's 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:10.600 it's one of those things where getting the brand out 0:07:10.640 --> 0:07:13.600 there is really important, and marketers will tell you how 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:15.280 important that is that you know, you don't want to 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:17.720 mess with your brand, You don't want to change your 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:20.680 brand identity to drastically unless you do it in the 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.080 right way so that you make it a sort of 0:07:23.120 --> 0:07:26.920 a public event where people will make that transition with you, 0:07:27.000 --> 0:07:30.080 because it's you know, this is stuff that's sticky in 0:07:30.160 --> 0:07:32.520 people's minds. Yeah, there are people who are going to 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:34.640 walk into the store and they're going to see that 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:38.040 brand name that they know so well, um, and they're 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.760 going to choose a product from that manufacturer simply because 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:44.120 they know the name. They might see it next to 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:46.400 something else that they've never heard of and go, well, 0:07:46.440 --> 0:07:49.920 at least I know who these people are. So that's 0:07:50.000 --> 0:07:52.240 just basic advertising. Now, if you're talking about the web, 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:55.840 the the the advantage, or at least the apparent advantage 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.320 back in the early days, was that you could actually 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:02.680 monitor what people were doing based upon the webs you were, 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:04.960 the the ads you were serving up on the web. Brother, 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:07.680 So let's say that you go and you put an 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:10.440 ad on a really heavily traffic site in the early 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.240 days of the Internet, so Yahoo. Let's say, um, you 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:15.400 put an ad up on Yahoo. Well, you already know 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:19.640 that a certain number of users and the millions perhaps 0:08:19.840 --> 0:08:23.440 visits Yahoo each day, so you know that that that's 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.119 how many people are going to see your ad, and 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:28.440 and the websites track their statistics so that they can 0:08:28.480 --> 0:08:31.120 report back to advertisers. Hey, if you advertise with us, 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:34.560 you will reach at least two million people. Right, this 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:36.880 is how many This is how many unique visitors you 0:08:36.880 --> 0:08:39.760 will see. Yes, this is how many people actually have 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:42.800 page views. Because the two things are different. Yes, we 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:46.120 talk about that in a minute. Yeah, so at any rate, 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:50.520 because the early days of the web advertising, they were thinking, 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:53.160 why is this any different from say a magazine Apart 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:54.880 from the fact that we can actually give you more 0:08:55.000 --> 0:08:57.400 data about the people who are taking a look at 0:08:57.400 --> 0:09:00.360 this ad, um, it should be the same price, and 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:03.000 in the beginning it was. But here's the Here a 0:09:03.000 --> 0:09:06.000 couple of problems. One is that it also let you 0:09:06.040 --> 0:09:11.400 know when people were not uh reacting to an ad, 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:14.400 at least not actively reacting to an ad. So, in 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:17.559 other words, if no one's clicking on the ad, or 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:21.160 if it's a really really really small number of people 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:25.360 who are clicking on the ad, then you question was 0:09:25.400 --> 0:09:28.439 the value of that ad right, Because if no one's 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:33.640 going converting over and clicking through, then the advertisers say, well, 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:35.920 why are we spending the same amount of money we 0:09:35.960 --> 0:09:38.680 would for a magazine ad or a television ad if 0:09:38.720 --> 0:09:41.800 this if only these few people are clicking through. Never 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:44.320 mind the fact that we can't be sure how many 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:47.000 people see the magazine add or television ad and react 0:09:47.000 --> 0:09:50.000 to it, that doesn't matter. They're saying, well, we have 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.000 a proof here that not that many people are clicking through, 0:09:53.080 --> 0:09:56.080 so therefore this is overvalued. That was one problem. The 0:09:56.080 --> 0:09:59.679 other problem was that lots of websites were popping up. 0:10:00.640 --> 0:10:03.960 That meant there was a lot of landscape for advertising. 0:10:04.600 --> 0:10:08.560 So with lots and lots of websites of various degrees 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:14.840 of popularity popping up on the web, that devalued web advertising. 0:10:14.880 --> 0:10:17.640 It's like a supply and demand thing. So, for example, 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:21.360 imagine that you have a stretch of highway and there 0:10:21.400 --> 0:10:25.320 are three billboard signs up, and they're only three, and 0:10:25.320 --> 0:10:28.520 those three are would be a certain value to be 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:30.920 able to advertise on them, because that that's the only 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.319 three that any drivers are going to see. Well, then 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.880 let's say fifteen new billboards pop up along that same 0:10:36.920 --> 0:10:41.319 stretch of highway. Well, that's just devalued the the value 0:10:41.320 --> 0:10:43.640 of the three that already existed there. Yea. And that 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:46.560 can actually happen on a site too. It's not just 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.640 across the the web. If you put up so many 0:10:50.720 --> 0:10:54.160 ads that uh, it sort of drowns out the content. 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:57.480 People begin to tune them out, and your your message 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.240 loses its power. So it's a very delicate balancing act 0:11:00.400 --> 0:11:03.200 is figuring out where the place ads, what sort of 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:06.079 ads you use, how many do you have per page? 0:11:06.440 --> 0:11:09.199 And it's not just a balancing act of turning off 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:12.680 readers or turning off visitors from going to your site. 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:15.679 It's also a question of how much money does it 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:19.360 cost to run your business and how can you offset 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:22.520 that through advertising? If that's your chief way of generating revenue. 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:26.080 You have to find that balance. And it's tricky because 0:11:26.400 --> 0:11:29.280 you know, you, if you're talking about the ads themselves 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.560 are being devalued the more they're out there. Then you 0:11:32.679 --> 0:11:35.120 have to balance that out, like how do you take 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.160 advantage of advertising in such a way that you're actually 0:11:38.160 --> 0:11:42.679 making enough money to sustain whatever your business you're in, right, 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.720 and uh, and it's not easy to do well. And 0:11:45.760 --> 0:11:48.840 it it's worth pointing out I think too that um, 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.640 to some degree, the web is a fairly inexpensive place 0:11:52.679 --> 0:11:56.720 to do business. Buying a domain name, arranging hosting for 0:11:56.800 --> 0:12:00.840 a year, um, you know, that's that's not terribly expensive. 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:05.320 You start getting into, uh, some cost problems when you 0:12:05.840 --> 0:12:08.400 generate a lot of traffic to the site, because in 0:12:08.440 --> 0:12:10.880 a lot of cases, say, if you you're just a 0:12:10.920 --> 0:12:13.360 person who wants to start a blog just for the 0:12:13.360 --> 0:12:15.240 sake of starting a blog, and you promote it to 0:12:15.280 --> 0:12:18.280 your friends on Facebook, and you get a couple of 0:12:18.280 --> 0:12:21.480 gigabytes worth of bandwidth per month, that's probably not going 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.760 to and that's a lot of traffic just you know, 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:27.080 for for a person with a blog who's just having 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.839 fun with it. Um, you know, you might decide to 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:31.959 stick some ads up there. But and and that may 0:12:32.080 --> 0:12:35.240 very well offset the cost because you're web hosting provider. 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:38.120 A lot of them these days don't charge uh for 0:12:38.200 --> 0:12:41.400 a certain amount of traffic. Now, if you're somebody like 0:12:42.200 --> 0:12:47.040 a magazine or streaming media side or something like that, 0:12:47.040 --> 0:12:49.400 that's going to generate tons and tons of traffic, and 0:12:49.440 --> 0:12:52.080 the web hosting provider is gonna say, hey, look, pal, 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:55.240 you know, if you're taking up room on our servers, 0:12:55.280 --> 0:12:58.320 you want yeah, if you want the band with, you 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:01.160 gotta pay. Yeah, So know, you have to pay people 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.280 to run the side and maintain the side. If you're 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:08.160 a magazine, you want to pay writers, maybe freelancers, editors. 0:13:08.559 --> 0:13:10.320 You know, you're gonna have a lot of people working there, 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:12.160 so you have to pay for them too, and then 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:14.520 you have to generate more revenue to offset that. So 0:13:14.559 --> 0:13:17.880 it's it's relatively inexpensive to get in, but depending on 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:21.079 the scale of the operation, you might need serious money 0:13:21.080 --> 0:13:24.360 to keep it going right. And you know, we when 0:13:24.360 --> 0:13:27.559 we talked with Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth, Yeah, you 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:29.400 know he talked about back in the early days of 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:32.679 Rooster Teeth, that was before streaming video was a thing 0:13:32.720 --> 0:13:34.280 on the web. So what people would do is they 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.560 would actually download an episode of Red Versus Blue, Right, 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:40.160 So they're downloading video files. And because it became so 0:13:40.280 --> 0:13:44.080 popular so quickly, that meant that they were having some 0:13:44.120 --> 0:13:48.360 pretty massive bandwidth issues and so that that sort of 0:13:48.400 --> 0:13:51.000 thing can come into play. And yeah, like I said, 0:13:51.040 --> 0:13:52.520 it's it's one of those things where you've got to 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.600 figure out, well, we have to make a certain amount 0:13:55.600 --> 0:13:57.920 of money just to sustain our businesses. And then in 0:13:58.000 --> 0:13:59.840 order to be a successful business, you have to actually 0:14:00.000 --> 0:14:02.560 a money. So you have to determine what kind of 0:14:02.559 --> 0:14:06.640 ads you use and how much how many of them 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.360 you use. So now, back back in those early days 0:14:09.400 --> 0:14:13.240 when I was talking about UM, the the days like 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.560 when Yahoo was selling ads at around the same rate 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:19.880 as what you would get for a magazine ad. That 0:14:20.000 --> 0:14:25.040 was about around sometimes thirty dollars per one thousand clicks 0:14:25.880 --> 0:14:29.480 or one thousand um impressions actually, and impressions and clicks 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.560 are two different things. Impressions essentially means that if a 0:14:32.640 --> 0:14:36.520 thousand people visit that that particular website and that one 0:14:36.600 --> 0:14:40.680 ad is on that website, then the average advertiser would 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:44.920 pay the website thirty bucks for every thousand. Well, yeah, 0:14:45.000 --> 0:14:47.480 he's just that that is not a standard necessarily a 0:14:47.480 --> 0:14:50.680 standard rate he's just using. Yes, that that was back 0:14:50.720 --> 0:14:54.040 in the early days, just web thirty, sometimes more than 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.320 thirty dollars per one thousand. But as time has gone 0:14:57.360 --> 0:15:01.320 on that that price has been seriously cut down. And 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:03.640 it all depends on what kind of website you run too. 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:06.080 If you're running a website that's incredibly popular, then you 0:15:06.080 --> 0:15:09.120 can command higher prices than you can than a smaller 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:12.640 website can. But in general you're now talking about a 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:18.240 few cents per one thousand visitors if it's a uh 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.480 CPM model, And we'll talk about that in a second. 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:23.520 But before we before we get into the various models, 0:15:23.560 --> 0:15:26.160 I wanted to talk about the different formats that you 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:30.160 find in web advertising. Yeah, probably the most popular in 0:15:30.160 --> 0:15:32.240 those early days was the banner at the banner adea. 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:34.360 These were the ones that ran along the top of 0:15:34.400 --> 0:15:36.960 the ad of the site, sometimes along the bottom, and 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:39.359 if it was along the side, we called them sidebars 0:15:39.440 --> 0:15:41.440 as opposed to banner ads, but the same sort of thing. 0:15:41.880 --> 0:15:46.960 It's a a long, narrow band that would have an 0:15:46.960 --> 0:15:50.520 add on it for for some product or service. Usually 0:15:50.600 --> 0:15:53.120 it was a link, so that if you clicked on 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:56.120 the banner, you would go to the website of said 0:15:56.280 --> 0:16:01.120 product or service. And uh, it was the way to 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:04.440 advertise on the web for a really long time. UM. 0:16:04.440 --> 0:16:07.080 But again, because it's a link, it's one of those 0:16:07.080 --> 0:16:09.600 things that can be monitored and in fact, if it's 0:16:09.600 --> 0:16:13.880 a link that's coming into a company's website, they may 0:16:13.920 --> 0:16:17.320 not even need the advertising. UM. The They may not 0:16:17.400 --> 0:16:19.920 need another agency to tell them anything about the traffic, 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:21.280 they might be able to see it on their own. 0:16:21.880 --> 0:16:26.040 But if they see that the traffic just hasn't increased significantly, 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:30.440 or that, uh, that traffic from that ad hasn't really 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:32.800 picked up, and that they're not really seeing a conversion 0:16:32.800 --> 0:16:37.080 into sales, then that's going to really cut down on like, 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:40.080 why would anyone bother buying an AD if it's not working. 0:16:40.840 --> 0:16:44.200 So those were some of the earliest ones, and they're 0:16:44.200 --> 0:16:46.800 also some of the ones that are easiest for users 0:16:46.840 --> 0:16:49.920 to ignore. In fact, there's you know we talked about 0:16:50.000 --> 0:16:53.000 in the business, it's called ad blindness, where you just 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:55.720 you just don't even register it anymore. You're used to 0:16:55.880 --> 0:17:00.680 ignoring anything that falls in certain quadrants on a website 0:17:00.680 --> 0:17:03.000 because that's where everyone puts their ads, and you just 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:05.639 don't even notice it anymore because you're just looking for 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:10.359 the content. Well, advertisers hate that because it negates the 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:13.560 whole ad and you know, people are spending time and 0:17:13.600 --> 0:17:16.719 money to develop these ads, and and again they're not 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:20.359 necessarily being evil. They're trying to reach an audience so 0:17:20.400 --> 0:17:22.320 that they can sell their products or services. Some of 0:17:22.320 --> 0:17:26.200 those products and services may be amazing, but it doesn't 0:17:26.240 --> 0:17:28.199 change the fact that people have gotten really good at 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:30.960 ignoring those ads. So there's other kinds as well. Uh, 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:34.600 there's the floating ads which float across your screen and 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:36.800 you have to Yeah, I'm not a big fan of 0:17:36.800 --> 0:17:40.400 them either, but again they are hard. They they're they're 0:17:40.400 --> 0:17:43.520 impossible to ignore because they float right in front of 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:46.160 your screen and until you close them or click on them, 0:17:46.240 --> 0:17:48.920 there they stay there. And the cousins of the pop 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.119 up ad, right, pop up and pop under ads are similar. 0:17:52.160 --> 0:17:54.560 Now pop up ads become their own it's their own 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:58.000 window that pops on top of the browser. And those 0:17:58.000 --> 0:18:01.160 were popular for a while. In fact, I remember back 0:18:01.200 --> 0:18:05.159 when you would hit certain sites like uh like like 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:07.639 there were a few sites that I went to there 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.359 were like a movie rumor sites, right because I was 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:12.560 just interested in what was coming up in movies. And 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:16.080 some of them would work with advertising agencies that did 0:18:16.119 --> 0:18:18.960 pop up ads, and you would get one pop up 0:18:19.000 --> 0:18:20.439 ad and as soon as you go to close that, 0:18:20.520 --> 0:18:22.600 two more pop up ads would pop up, and then 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:25.640 you suddenly you've got you know, five or six pop 0:18:25.720 --> 0:18:28.760 up beds covering up your the content you were trying 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:30.479 to read and then eventually you just say, why am 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:32.040 I even bothering going to the site? I'm going to 0:18:32.119 --> 0:18:34.719 find some other place to go rather than deal with 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:38.080 this frustration. Pop under ads are similar, except that the 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:41.359 new window pops up under your browser, so that until 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:43.560 you close your browser, you may not even be aware 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.679 that it's there. Yeah, and some some sites used to 0:18:46.720 --> 0:18:49.240 track the length of time that the ad appeared on 0:18:49.280 --> 0:18:52.359 the screen. So let's say there's a pop under ad 0:18:52.480 --> 0:18:54.480 and it's been up and you don't even know it. 0:18:54.760 --> 0:18:57.280 So they're the site is getting to say, hey, you 0:18:57.280 --> 0:19:00.240 know so, and so we we actually have a a 0:19:00.320 --> 0:19:02.800 great rate of people having this up on their screen 0:19:02.840 --> 0:19:05.159 because there are some people here who have it up 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:07.560 for hours and hours. Of course, if they're of course 0:19:07.560 --> 0:19:09.719 they can't see it. And of course if if not 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:12.400 that many people are clicking on the ad, then that 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:15.240 that's not as powerful story, right, Like, yeah, they have 0:19:15.280 --> 0:19:17.320 it up for hours, but no one actually ever bothers 0:19:17.320 --> 0:19:19.840 to click on the ad, then that falls apart. Now, 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.679 see that's just in the details. And and one of 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:27.120 the things that has made these ads less common, uh 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:31.400 is the functionality and virtually every browser that I've seen 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.560 in the last three or four years that has the 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:38.199 pop up blocker enabled in the preferences so that you 0:19:38.240 --> 0:19:40.520 can go in turn it off before you you know, 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:42.200 the first thing you do is you you go into 0:19:42.200 --> 0:19:44.560 the preferences and start setting it to the way you 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:46.560 want it to work. And one of the first things 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:50.040 I do is turn off the pop up ad, you know, 0:19:50.520 --> 0:19:53.000 and and they just completely prevent it from opening, right. 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:54.919 And then there's some sites that use pop ups for 0:19:55.040 --> 0:19:58.760 legitimate well advertising is legitimate, but there's some sites that 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:02.879 use it for purposes that like interact exactly, so like 0:20:03.000 --> 0:20:05.359 filling out a form. So in those cases you have 0:20:05.400 --> 0:20:07.960 to just you have to disable the pop up blocker, 0:20:08.040 --> 0:20:10.640 maybe just for that one site, but yeah, I mean 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.199 that that's the things that these pop up ads and 0:20:13.240 --> 0:20:18.400 pop under ads are intrusive enough so that users really 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:20.600 don't like them. The floating floating adds in a way 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:24.160 can be too. They're not quite as bad in my opinion, um, 0:20:25.160 --> 0:20:29.160 but they also can be irritating if you're just trying 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:34.399 to get to certain content. The floating adds, though, don't 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:38.400 irritate me the way peel or expanding ads do. These 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:40.960 are the ones where if your cursor floats over the ad, 0:20:41.000 --> 0:20:43.760 it suddenly takes up half your screen space or more, 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:49.320 it will unroll. And we've we're just gonna be completely 0:20:49.359 --> 0:20:52.320 blunt here, all right. So, so the company we work for, 0:20:52.400 --> 0:20:55.920 how stuff Works dot com and as part of Discovery Communication, 0:20:55.960 --> 0:21:01.120 part Discovery Communications makes revenue through advertising m other things. Yes, 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:04.560 and so we have had these these peel ads, these 0:21:04.560 --> 0:21:09.480 expanding ads on our site. Uh and I think, um, 0:21:09.280 --> 0:21:11.760 I think I'm safe to say I'm not the only 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:13.959 one who found it frustrating when I would visit my 0:21:14.000 --> 0:21:17.200