News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
	Internet Advertising - Some Ideas

By Barry Frankel, bfrankel@ix.netcom.com.

The first thing with advertising on the Internet that the media guys donít seem to understand, is that you don't talk at the potential customer like you do in a print ad, but rather, on the Internet an ad is a conversation.

Next, while print ads only have one main mode of communicating, the short quick glance. On the Internet an ad can have multile pages and and communicate in multiple modes.

An Internet ad can start with a brief page. Grab a viewer 's attention and then link them to an information intensive page. Then the ad can take the reader into a conversational mode recommend a product or service. And ask for the order.

For example say you want to go on vacation. The brief page reminds you that Jamaica or Mexico are both good places for a vacation.

Once you make a choice on the country, you want more information. Where can I go in Mexico? What is there to do at each possible destination? What is the weather? What are my choices in hotels? This is the travel brochure.

The next step, you choose a hotel. Now more information is needed. What do people say about it? What restaurants are near by? What do they cost? What's good?

These choices can be made on a series of pull down menus.

The information is on the Net today, but the user has to search for it.

The smart Internet surfer can find all this. But if advertising did the work, and guided the reader along the path more people would go to the advertisers resort or buy their product.

And that is the goal. Make it easy and the user will buy.

So ad makers need to see that recycling print ads to the Internet is the same thing as doing vaudeville on Sullivan. It is a first step, but it will not last. After the fun of seeing ads on a computer screen wears off the consumer will go back to their travel agent because they need more than just, "Come to Jamaica".

The key issue I believe, is that the Internet is quick, bi-directional. And Internet advertising has to be designed to take advantage of the bidirectional nature of the Net.

Another major difference between the Net and print or TV is that the cost to deliver a large volume of information costs no more than to send than a small amount of info.

In the next installment, I'll show you some interactive ads. And we'll see that interactive ads require quality assurance on branching as well as spell checking and layout review.

What is your take on these thoughts? What companies have it right? Are they making money? How do you count hits? Is the value of a hit on a grabber page, the same value as a hit on a page of pull down choices?

Barry