WEBVTT - TechStuff Clicks on Web Ads 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:02.840 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:08.840 It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:17.680 tech Stuff from how stuff flix dot com. Hello again, everyone, 0:00:17.680 --> 0:00:19.759 and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulett, 0:00:19.760 --> 0:00:21.840 and I'm an editor at how Stuff works dot com. 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.680 Sitting across from me as always a senior writer, Jonathan Stricklin. 0:00:24.760 --> 0:00:30.440 Hey there, so, um, Chris, Yes, you like uh you 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:33.319 you like stuff on the web, right, yeah, I mean, 0:00:33.360 --> 0:00:36.760 you know, both of our careers depend heavily, uh. In fact, 0:00:36.800 --> 0:00:40.600 I would say entirely upon upon putting stuff up on 0:00:40.640 --> 0:00:43.599 the web. And the reason why we're able to do 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:46.320 that is because we can make money by putting stuff 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.320 up on the web. Yes. And the reason why we 0:00:49.360 --> 0:00:51.519 were able to make money putting stuff up on the 0:00:51.520 --> 0:00:57.120 web stems mainly from advertising. Yes. And so we want 0:00:57.160 --> 0:00:59.920 to talk today a little bit about web advertising. We've 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.160 covered the subject a little bit in previous episodes, but 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:04.640 we really wanted to kind of dive into it. And 0:01:04.760 --> 0:01:08.520 advertising has a bad rap, and part of that is 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:15.399 because advertisers have sometimes used very invasive, intrusive or manipulative 0:01:15.640 --> 0:01:18.800 approaches to try and get ads in front of you. Yes, 0:01:18.840 --> 0:01:20.440 and I'd like to point out that this episode is 0:01:20.480 --> 0:01:23.960 brought to you by Chocolate Nibbles now with nine essential 0:01:24.040 --> 0:01:26.320 vitamins and minerals. Yes, we got rid of that other 0:01:26.400 --> 0:01:29.640 non essential vitamin and mineral. Yes, just it was looking 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:33.559 at us funny and we didn't like its face. But now, yeah, 0:01:34.000 --> 0:01:37.800 we're talking about web advertising and there's good points to 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:40.200 it and bad points to it. Now, the good points 0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:43.200 are that without web advertising, you have to find some 0:01:43.280 --> 0:01:46.240 other way to make money putting content up on the web, 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.320 or else people wouldn't do it, or at least not 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.440 as many people would do it, and certainly not you 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:55.160 wouldn't see the same level of quality across the web. 0:01:55.240 --> 0:01:57.760 There there'd be, you know, occasionally there'd be someone who 0:01:57.760 --> 0:02:02.080 would be amazingly talented who for altruistic reasons wants to 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:05.360 share what he or she has come up with on 0:02:05.400 --> 0:02:08.399 the web. And those people will be amazing and their 0:02:08.400 --> 0:02:11.160 content they create would be phenomenal, and it would all 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.320 be done, you know, the effort and the time being 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:19.240 put in would all be that one person's resources, and 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:21.800 that would be fantastic. Chances are it wouldn't be their 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.160 day job, though, because they wouldn't be since you weren't 0:02:24.160 --> 0:02:26.040 making money off of it. They've got to eat somehow, 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:29.880 so they would probably be doing something else for forty 0:02:29.880 --> 0:02:32.400 hours a week. And then you think about all the 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.720 sites you regularly go to. A lot of those sites 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.440 are supported through advertising, and so without the ads, those 0:02:38.440 --> 0:02:40.799 sites don't exist, which means that content that we have 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.519 grown so fond of accessing would no longer be there. 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:48.480 So in that case, advertising plays a very important role. Now, 0:02:48.639 --> 0:02:51.119 of course, you can you can make money with online 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:54.440 through other ways. Besides advertising. You could have a subscription 0:02:54.480 --> 0:02:58.240 based service where people have to pay a certain amount 0:02:58.320 --> 0:03:02.280 per unit of time, usually be monthly, but it might 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:04.440 be you know, six months or a year or whatever. 0:03:04.760 --> 0:03:06.919 You can even do it smaller units if you really 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:10.720 wanted to um and make money that way by saying, 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:13.120 all right, well, you can access the content we create 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:15.440 on this site if you pay this amount of money 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:18.480 per this unit of time or or per article. Some 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:23.080 um some sites do that. You know where you have, Hey, 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:24.880 if you want to read this article, then it will 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:30.320 be to to read this one particular story. And the 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:34.960 thing is that the way the web has developed over time, 0:03:35.440 --> 0:03:39.920 people have grown to expect free access to something if 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:42.200 it's on the web. Yeah, it's a cultural thing. Yeah. 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:44.520 The early days of the Internet, I mean, the people 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:47.320 who are doing this were government institutions in the United 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:51.880 States and higher learning you know, colleges and university. So 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:57.440 the the content online was specifically for those groups and 0:03:57.480 --> 0:04:00.640 the commercial entities really weren't involved in it the early days. 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:03.680 So the people who were doing that or or actually, 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:07.440 you know, some of it is from the online services UM. 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:09.560 So if you had a modem, you could dial up 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.760 to a bulletin board and you may not have to 0:04:11.760 --> 0:04:14.280 pay a fee, and you would join the community there 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:17.520 and swap stories or you know, whatever it is that 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:21.159 they talked about UM. But they didn't they might pay 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:25.200 a fee, a subscription fee to join the BBS or 0:04:25.320 --> 0:04:27.799 for internet access in the early days of the Internet 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:31.240 as a commercial sense, UM, but they wouldn't be paying 0:04:31.240 --> 0:04:36.360 for the content. And so the idea came about that 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:42.039 web advertising could potentially be far more effective than traditional 0:04:42.080 --> 0:04:45.000 forms of advertising. That was the initial thought and the 0:04:45.040 --> 0:04:48.120 reason for that was that if you buy an ad 0:04:48.360 --> 0:04:51.599 in a magazine, or you put on a billboard, or 0:04:51.640 --> 0:04:54.880 you put in a television show, it's ah in the 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.520 ad breaks, you have a reasonable expectation of a certain 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.600 number of people that add is going to uh is 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.160 going to connect with. Now, whether those people are paying 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:08.040 attention to the ad, you don't know whether if whether 0:05:08.160 --> 0:05:09.920 or not they pay attention to the ad and then 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:13.120 go forward and actually act based upon what they saw 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:16.280 in the ad. You don't know that either, but you you, 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:18.599 what you do know is that a certain number of people, 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:21.800 based upon the market research, are going to see that 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:24.440 particular ad. Actually, this seems like a good time to 0:05:24.560 --> 0:05:28.080 bring up a point that there are two major types 0:05:28.120 --> 0:05:31.640 of advertising we're talking about here too. Um. Direct response 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.800 is the type of advertising that does encourage you to 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:39.040 do something like if you were going to uh it, 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.400 listened to the podcast and suddenly now you're craving a 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:43.600 bowl of chocolate nibbles and let me tell you they 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:46.479 are delicious. Um, now that we got rid of the 0:05:46.520 --> 0:05:48.680 non essential vitamin in mintal, yes, you should run out 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:52.720 and buy something. That's the point of an advertisement like that. Um. 0:05:52.800 --> 0:05:56.919 Then you have what they call branding, which is basically, 0:05:57.160 --> 0:05:59.400 you know, hey, you don't have to go run out 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.040 and buy our product. Just think of us the next 0:06:02.040 --> 0:06:04.880 time you're doing something like that, And that's the kind 0:06:04.880 --> 0:06:08.760 of thing that you see like at um uh sporting events. UH. 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:11.520 For example, the ads on the sides of hockey boards 0:06:11.839 --> 0:06:14.719 or on on the sides of race cars. They don't 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.840 say by you know, such and such product. They're just 0:06:17.839 --> 0:06:21.080 showing you the brand name so that you sort of 0:06:21.120 --> 0:06:23.479 think about them, and you're you're thinking, oh, well, you know, 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.279 I like these guys. They sponsor my favorite driver. Yeah. 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:28.760 The idea might be to get that brand name in 0:06:28.800 --> 0:06:30.599 your mind so that the next time you go out 0:06:30.640 --> 0:06:34.159 to get something, you actually think about that petular brand. 0:06:34.200 --> 0:06:38.040 For example, you might think, hey, I'm thirsty, I would 0:06:38.080 --> 0:06:41.279 like a soda. I just saw that ad for coke, 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:43.880 and maybe I wouldn't normally get a coke, but that 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:45.360 sounds good to me right now, I'll go ahead and 0:06:45.360 --> 0:06:47.920 get a coke. UM. So it's it's one of those 0:06:47.920 --> 0:06:50.760 things where getting the brand out there is really important, 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.680 and marketers will tell you how important that is. That 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:55.320 you know, you don't want to mess with your brand, 0:06:55.839 --> 0:06:58.720 You don't want to change your brand identity to drastically 0:06:58.800 --> 0:07:00.719 unless you do it in the way so that you 0:07:00.800 --> 0:07:04.039 make it a sort of a public event where people 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:07.320 will make that transition with you, because it's you know, 0:07:07.800 --> 0:07:10.600 this is stuff that's sticky in people's minds. Yeah, there 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:12.520 are people who are going to walk into the store 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:14.760 and they're going to see that brand name that they 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.160 know so well, um, and they're going to choose a 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.880 product from that manufacturer simply because they know the name. 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:24.200 They might see it next to something else that they've 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:26.120 never heard of and go, well, at least I know 0:07:26.160 --> 0:07:30.400 who these people are. So that's just basic advertising. Now, 0:07:30.400 --> 0:07:33.400 if you're talking about the web, the the the advantage, 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:35.960 or at least the apparent advantage back in the early days, 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:40.680 was that you could actually monitor what people were doing 0:07:40.720 --> 0:07:42.800 based upon the webs you were the the ads you 0:07:42.840 --> 0:07:45.080 were serving up on the web. Brother, So let's say 0:07:45.160 --> 0:07:47.760 that you go and you put an ad on a 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.280 really heavily traffic site in the early days of the internet, 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:53.920 so Yahoo, say, um, you put an ad up on Yahoo. Well, 0:07:53.920 --> 0:07:57.280 you already know that a certain number of users and 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:01.400 the millions perhaps visits Yahoo each day, so you know 0:08:01.480 --> 0:08:03.800 that that that's how many people are going to see 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:07.200 your ad, and and the websites track their statistics so 0:08:07.200 --> 0:08:09.200 that they can report back to advertisers. Hey, if you 0:08:09.240 --> 0:08:13.560 advertise with us, you will reach at least two million people. Right, 0:08:13.600 --> 0:08:15.920 this is how many This is how many unique visitors 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:18.800 you will see. Yes, this is how many people actually 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:21.600 have page views. Because the two things are different. Yes, 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.040 we can talk about that in a minute. Yeah, so 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:29.040 at any rate, Because the early days of the web advertising, 0:08:29.080 --> 0:08:31.520 they were thinking, why is this any different from say, 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:33.320 a magazine Apart from the fact that we can actually 0:08:33.320 --> 0:08:36.120 give you more data about the people who are taking 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:38.520 a look at this ad, um it should be the 0:08:38.559 --> 0:08:41.600 same price, and in the beginning it was. But here's 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:44.240 the here a couple of problems. One is that it 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:50.040 also let you know when people were not uh reacting 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:53.440 to an ad, at least not actively reacting to an ad. So, 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.280 in other words, if no one's clicking on the ad, 0:08:56.679 --> 0:09:00.080 or if it's a really really really small number of 0:09:00.120 --> 0:09:04.079 people who are clicking on the ad, then you question 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:07.240 was the value of that ad? Right? Because if no 0:09:07.280 --> 0:09:12.760 one's going converting over and clicking through, then the advertisers say, well, 0:09:12.800 --> 0:09:15.040 why are we spending the same amount of money we 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:18.000 would for a magazine ad or a television ad. If this, 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:21.199 if only these few people are clicking through, never mind 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:23.680 the fact that we can't be sure how many people 0:09:23.880 --> 0:09:26.360 see the magazine add or television ad and react to it. 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:30.040 That doesn't matter. They're saying, well, we have a proof 0:09:30.120 --> 0:09:32.320 here that not that many people are clicking through, so 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:35.400 therefore this is overvalued. That was one problem. The other 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:39.920 problem was that lots of websites were popping up. That 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:44.000 meant there was a lot of landscape for advertising. So 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:48.040 with lots and lots of websites of various degrees of 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:54.000 popularity popping up on the web, that devalued web advertising. 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:56.800 It's like a supply and demand thing. So for example, 0:09:56.840 --> 0:10:00.520 imagine that you have a stretch of highway and there 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:04.440 are three billboard signs up and they're only three, and 0:10:04.480 --> 0:10:07.640 those three are would be a certain value to be 0:10:07.760 --> 0:10:10.040 able to advertise on them because that that's the only 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:12.440 three that any drivers are going to see. Well, then 0:10:12.520 --> 0:10:16.040 let's say fifteen new billboards pop up along that same 0:10:16.040 --> 0:10:20.480 stretch of highway. Well, that's just devalued the the value 0:10:20.480 --> 0:10:22.959 of the three that already existed there. And that can 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.320 actually happen on a site too, it's not just across 0:10:26.400 --> 0:10:30.320 the the web. If you put up so many ads 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:34.319 that uh, it sort of drowns out the content. People 0:10:34.320 --> 0:10:36.920 begin to tune them out, and your your message loses 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.520 its power. So it's a very delicate balancing act is 0:10:39.600 --> 0:10:42.640 figuring out where the place ads, what sort of ads 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.760 you use, how many do you have per page? And 0:10:45.880 --> 0:10:49.120 it's not just a balancing act of turning off readers 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:52.440 or turning off visitors from going to your site. It's 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.120 also a question of how much money does it cost 0:10:55.200 --> 0:10:58.640 to run your business and how can you offset that 0:10:58.679 --> 0:11:02.200 through advertising if that's your way of generating revenue. You 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:05.760 have to find that balance, and it's tricky because you know, 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:08.800 you if you're telling about the ads themselves are being 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:12.120 devalued the more they're out there. Then you have to 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:15.400 balance that out, like how do you take advantage of 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:17.760 advertising in such a way that you're actually making enough 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:22.480 money to sustain whatever your business you're in, right? And uh, 0:11:22.600 --> 0:11:25.280 And it's not easy to do well, and it's it's 0:11:25.280 --> 0:11:28.800 worth pointing out I think too that um, to some degree, 0:11:29.000 --> 0:11:32.600 the web is a fairly inexpensive place to do business. 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:37.400 Buying a domain name, arranging hosting for a year. Um, 0:11:37.440 --> 0:11:40.839 you know that's that's not terribly expensive. You start getting 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:45.960 into uh, some cost problems when you generate a lot 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.920 of traffic to the site because in a lot of cases, say, 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:51.040 if you you're just a person who wants to start 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:53.559 a blog just for the sake of starting a blog, 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:55.600 and you promote it to your friends on Facebook and 0:11:55.600 --> 0:11:59.120 you get a couple of gigabytes worth of bandwidth per month, 0:11:59.440 --> 0:12:02.360 that's probably not going to and that's a lot of 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:05.280 traffic just you know, for for a person with a 0:12:05.320 --> 0:12:08.240 blog who's just having fun with it. Um, you know, 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:10.199 you might decide to stick some ads up there, but 0:12:10.400 --> 0:12:13.160 and that may very well offset the cost because you're 0:12:13.440 --> 0:12:15.880 web hosting provider. A lot of them these days don't 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:19.600 charge uh for a certain amount of traffic. Now, if 0:12:19.600 --> 0:12:25.439 you're somebody like a magazine or streaming media side or 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:27.920 something like that, that's going to generate tons and tons 0:12:27.960 --> 0:12:31.200 of traffic, and the web hosting providers gonna say, hey, look, pal, 0:12:31.880 --> 0:12:36.560 you know, if you're taking up room on our servers, Yeah, 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:38.840 if you want, then you got to pay. Yeah, so 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:40.920 and then you have to pay people to run the 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:44.000 side and maintain the side. If you're a magazine, you 0:12:44.040 --> 0:12:48.040 want to pay writers, maybe freelancers, editors. You know, you're 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:49.880 gonna have a lot of people working there, so you 0:12:49.920 --> 0:12:51.560 have to pay for them too, and then you have 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:54.120 to generate more revenue to offset that. So it's it's 0:12:54.120 --> 0:12:57.560 relatively inexpensive to get in, but depending on the scale 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:00.559 of the operation, you might need serious money to keep 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.000 it going right. And you know, we when we talked 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:07.240 with Bernie Burns of Rooster Teeth, you know, he talked 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:09.680 about back in the early days of Rooster Teeth, that 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:12.280 was before streaming video was a thing on the web. 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:14.559 So what people would do is they would actually download 0:13:14.600 --> 0:13:18.079 an episode of Red Versus Blue, So they're downloading video 0:13:18.080 --> 0:13:21.439 files and because it became so popular so quickly, that 0:13:21.480 --> 0:13:25.160 meant that they were having some pretty massive bandwidth issues 0:13:25.760 --> 0:13:28.880 and so that that sort of thing can come into play. 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:30.959 And yeah, like I said, it's it's one of those 0:13:30.960 --> 0:13:32.760 things where you've got to figure out, well, we have 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:35.720 to make a certain amount of money just to sustain 0:13:35.760 --> 0:13:38.400 our business. And then in order to be a successful business, 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:40.720 you have to actually make money. So you have to 0:13:40.760 --> 0:13:44.040 determine what kind of ads you use and how much 0:13:45.080 --> 0:13:47.800 how many of them you use. So now, back back 0:13:47.840 --> 0:13:51.120 in those early days when I was talking about um, 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.640 the the days, like when Yahoo was selling ads at 0:13:54.720 --> 0:13:57.000 around the same rate as what you would get for 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:02.120 a magazine ad. That was about around sometimes thirty dollars 0:14:02.160 --> 0:14:07.600 per one thousand clicks or one thousand um impressions actually, 0:14:07.600 --> 0:14:10.360 and impressions and clicks are two different things. Impressions essentially 0:14:10.400 --> 0:14:15.000 means that if a thousand people visit that that particular website, 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:18.320 and that one ad is on that website, then the 0:14:18.400 --> 0:14:24.120 average advertiser would pay the website thirty bucks for every thousand. Yeah, 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:26.600 he's just that that is not a standard, necessarily a 0:14:26.640 --> 0:14:29.840 standard rate. He's just us yes, that that was back 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:32.960 in the early days, just web thirty dollars, sometimes more 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:36.280 than thirty dollars per one thousand, But as time has 0:14:36.280 --> 0:14:39.760 gone on that that price has been seriously cut down. 0:14:40.200 --> 0:14:42.360 And it all depends on what kind of website you 0:14:42.440 --> 0:14:44.960 run too. If you're running a website that's incredibly popular, 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:47.320 then you can command higher prices than you can't than 0:14:47.800 --> 0:14:50.800 a smaller website can. But in general, you're now talking 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:56.440 about a few cents per one thousand visitors if it's 0:14:56.520 --> 0:15:00.600 a um CPM model. And we'll talk about then a second, 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:02.680 but before we before we get into the various models. 0:15:02.680 --> 0:15:05.240 I wanted to talk about the different formats that you 0:15:05.360 --> 0:15:09.280 find in web advertising. Yeah, probably the most popular in 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:11.440 those early days was the banner at the banner ad. Yeah, 0:15:11.440 --> 0:15:13.520 These were the ones that ran along the top of 0:15:13.560 --> 0:15:16.120 the a of the site, sometimes along the bottom, and 0:15:16.120 --> 0:15:18.520 if it was along the side, we called them sidebars 0:15:18.560 --> 0:15:20.560 as opposed to banner ads, but the same sort of thing. 0:15:21.000 --> 0:15:26.080 It's a a long, narrow band that would have an 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.680 add on it for for some product or service. Usually 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:32.240 it was a link, so that if you clicked on 0:15:32.280 --> 0:15:35.240 the banner, you would go to the website of said 0:15:35.440 --> 0:15:40.280 product or service. And uh, it was the way to 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.560 advertise on the web for a really long time. Um. 0:15:43.600 --> 0:15:46.200 But again, because it's a link, it's one of those 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:48.720 things that can be monitored. And in fact, if it's 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:53.040 a link that's coming into a company's website, they may 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.480 not even need the advertising, um. The they may not 0:15:56.520 --> 0:15:59.040 need another agency to tell them anything about the traffic. 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:01.120 They might be able to see it their own. But 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:05.160 if they see that the traffic just hasn't increased significantly, 0:16:05.440 --> 0:16:09.600 or that, uh, that traffic from that ad hasn't really 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:11.960 picked up, and that they're not really seeing a conversion 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:16.240 into sales. Then that's going to really cut down on like, 0:16:16.280 --> 0:16:19.240 why would anyone bother buying an ad if it's not working. 0:16:20.000 --> 0:16:23.360 So those were some of the earliest ones, and they're 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:25.920 also some of the ones that are easiest for users 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.080 to ignore. In fact, there's you know we talk about 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:32.120 in the business, it's called ad blindness, where you just 0:16:32.640 --> 0:16:34.840 you just don't even register it anymore. You're used to 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:39.800 ignoring anything that falls in certain quadrants on a website 0:16:39.800 --> 0:16:42.160 because that's where everyone puts their ads, and you just 0:16:42.200 --> 0:16:44.760 don't even notice it anymore because you're just looking for 0:16:44.800 --> 0:16:49.520 the content. Well, advertisers hate that because it negates the 0:16:49.560 --> 0:16:52.680 whole ad and you know, people are spending time and 0:16:52.720 --> 0:16:55.840 money to develop these ads, and and again they're not 0:16:55.880 --> 0:16:59.480 necessarily being evil. They're trying to reach an audience so 0:16:59.520 --> 0:17:01.440 that they can sell their products or services. Some of 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:05.600 those products and services maybe amazing, but it doesn't change 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:07.760 the fact that people have gotten really good at ignoring 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.400 those ads. So there's other kinds as well. Uh, there's 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:13.879 the floating ads which float across your screen and you 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:16.399 have to Yeah, I'm not a big fan of them either, 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:20.119 but again, they are hard, they're they're they're impossible to 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:23.080 ignore because they float right in front of your screen 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.600 and until you close them or click on them, there 0:17:25.640 --> 0:17:29.399 they stay there and the cousin up a right. Pop 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:31.840 up and pop under ads are similar. Now, pop up 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:34.480 ads become their own it's their own window that pops 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:37.960 on top of the browser, and those were popular for 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:40.840 a while. In fact, I remember back when you would 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:45.000 hit certain sites like uh like like like. There were 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:47.240 a few sites that went to There were like a 0:17:47.320 --> 0:17:50.159 movie rumor sites, right, because I was just interested in 0:17:50.160 --> 0:17:52.199 what was coming up in movies, and some of them 0:17:52.240 --> 0:17:56.000 would work with advertising agencies that did pop up ads, 0:17:56.640 --> 0:17:58.560 and you would get one pop up ad and as 0:17:58.560 --> 0:18:00.280 soon as you go to close that two or pop 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:02.800 up beds would pop up, and then you suddenly you've 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:05.719 got you know, five or six papa beds covering up 0:18:05.760 --> 0:18:08.880 your the content you're trying to read. And then eventually 0:18:08.880 --> 0:18:10.520 you just say, why am I even bothering going to 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:12.240 the site. I'm going to find some other place to 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:15.920 go rather than deal with this frustration. Pop under ads 0:18:15.920 --> 0:18:19.119 are similar, except that the new window pops up under 0:18:19.160 --> 0:18:21.680 your browser, so that until you close your browser you 0:18:21.720 --> 0:18:24.439 may not even be aware that it's there. Yeah, and 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:27.399 some some sites used to track the length of time 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:30.000 that the ad appeared on the screen. So let's say 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:32.639 there's a pop under ad and it's been up and 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:35.320 you don't even know it. So they're the site is 0:18:35.359 --> 0:18:37.840 getting to say, hey, you know so and so we 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.119 we actually have a great rate of people having this 0:18:41.240 --> 0:18:43.760 up on their screen because there are some people here 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:45.960 who have it up for hours and hours. Of course 0:18:46.000 --> 0:18:48.280 if they're course they can't see it. And of course 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:50.840 if if not that many people are clicking on the ad, 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:54.120 then that that's not as powerful story, right, Like, yeah, 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:55.879 they have it up for hours, but no one actually 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:59.000 ever bothers to click on the ad, then that falls apart. Now, 0:18:59.040 --> 0:19:01.800 see that's just in the details. And and one of 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:06.239 the things that has made these ads less common, uh 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:10.560 is the functionality. And virtually every browser that I've seen 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:13.720 in the last three or four years that has the 0:19:13.760 --> 0:19:17.359 pop up blocker enabled in the preferences so that you 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:19.679 can go in turn it off before you you know, 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:21.320 the first thing you do is you you go into 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.639 the preferences and start setting it to the way you 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:25.720 want it to work. And one of the first things 0:19:25.760 --> 0:19:28.160 I do is turn off the pop up ad plocker, 0:19:28.960 --> 0:19:31.280 you know, and then and they just completely prevent it 0:19:31.320 --> 0:19:33.439 from opening, right. And then there's some sites that use 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:37.200 pop ups for legitimate well advertising is legitimate, but there's 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:41.760 some sites that use it for purposes that like so 0:19:41.960 --> 0:19:44.359 like filling out a form. So in those cases you 0:19:44.400 --> 0:19:47.119 have to just you have to disable the pop up blocker, 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:49.800 maybe just for that one site. But yeah, I mean 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:52.280 that that's the thing is that these pop up ads 0:19:52.280 --> 0:19:57.240 and pop under ads are intrusive enough so that users 0:19:57.280 --> 0:19:59.480 really don't like them. The floating floating adds, in a 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:01.879 way can be two. They're not quite as bad in 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:07.679 my opinion, um, but they also can be irritating if 0:20:07.720 --> 0:20:10.879 you're just trying to get to certain content the uh 0:20:11.920 --> 0:20:14.879 the floating ends though, don't irritate me the way peel 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:18.560 or expanding ads do. These are the ones where if 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:21.080 your cursor floats over the ad, it suddenly takes up 0:20:21.160 --> 0:20:25.119 half their screen space or more. It will unroll. And 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:29.720 we've we're just gonna be completely blunt here, all right. So, 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:32.680 so the company we work for, how stuff works dot com, 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:37.000 it has part of Discovery Communications. Part Discovery Communications makes 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:41.639 revenue through advertising among other things, And so we have 0:20:41.760 --> 0:20:45.040 had these these peel ads, these expanding ads on our site. 0:20:45.760 --> 0:20:49.760 Uh and I think, um, I think I'm safe to 0:20:49.760 --> 0:20:52.160 say I'm not the only one who found it frustrating 0:20:52.160 --> 0:20:54.840 when I would visit my own site and try to 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.680 find a particular article only to have an uh an 0:20:57.720 --> 0:21:00.760 ad cover up half the page. Well, a lot of 0:21:00.760 --> 0:21:05.320 these things, too, were trials to see, uh, how well 0:21:05.440 --> 0:21:08.080 the public would get into it. So not only do 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:10.440 you want to find out, hey, are people looking at these? 0:21:10.440 --> 0:21:12.480 Are people clicking through to see what's on the other 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:16.600 side of these? And how many people uh stop coming 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:19.240