How to Choose Advertising for Your Site, Part 6: Don’t Settle For Average

By Charlie on July 19th, 2008 | 0

How to Choose Advertising for Your Site

What’s the last ad you remember seeing on the internet? Was it amazing? Did it stick in your mind or just sort of…vaporize into nothing? I’m almost willing to bet you can’t think of an ad that really set itself apart.

This is ad-blindness and it’s a well known phenomena. That’s why Super Bowl ads and car commercials are getting more and more expensive to produce. The average ads just don’t work because they’re not really being seen. Perhaps the same thing is happening with the ads on your site?

Guidelines for selecting advertising for your site

6. Do something different

I see the same ads for the same products over and over and over, and I’m sure you do too. This creates ad blindness, whereby ads sort of disappear into the background due to their prevalence. And being invisible is the death knell for advertisements, so you don’t want these run-of-the-mill ads on your site.

This is extremely common amongst niche sites. Writers seem to have the same ads as other writers, even running the exact same Amazon book links. Web designers have the same ads as other designers.

While it makes sense to run ads that are working for others in your niche, it doesn’t make sense to run the exact same ad and risk its effectiveness.

What can you do about this? Simple: run a different ad. I know, simple, right? It took me about 8 hours to think that up.

You can create a new yourself (with permission of the advertiser of course) or have the ad-man do it himself. It’s likely he’ll agree since you’re virtually guaranteeing him a fresher and more effective ad. This means more money for him and more advertising dollars for you, not to mention a nice increase of affiliate income.

As I said, you’ll want to get permission and a sign-off on the final ad you create before you run it. Ads and branding are often tied together and people can get mighty pissed if you create an ad for them that they believe isn’t representative of their branding.

Part 6 is done and there’s one more to go! Now’s the best chance to see me fall flat on my face. Don’t miss the horrible debacle and become a reader now!