CYBERSPACE – In the online context, there has always been tension between crafting an ad that “works” in the sense of getting surfers to click on it, and the goal of creating an ad which works in the larger, more important sense of the word – meaning advertising which not only draws the user’s attention and inspires them to interact with the individual ad/creative, but does so in a way which encourages the user to buy, order, join, or take whatever end-action the advertiser had in mind.

While a lot has changed in online advertising over the last 20+ years and many advertisers have abandoned the approach of drawing in users by way of deception, clearly the practice has not died altogether. One needs only to look at the faux “news” stories and clickbait items which display alongside more overt advertising at the bottom of countless articles and blog posts at any given time to know misleading advertising is alive and well in the current online advertising ecosystem.

The reason some advertisers continue to use deception as a technique, of course, is that doing so ‘works’ – but only within the limited and insufficient context of drawing attention, not in generating business-sustaining sales.

“Deceptive ad elements create more clicks, but they hurt the performance of an advertising campaign,” explains JuicyJay, founder and CEO of JuicyAds. “We believe that truth in advertising and your offer is really important, but a lot of advertisers get caught up in CTR (click through ratio) rather than the actual resulting sales. That’s a mistake. The only thing that really works in developing really effective ads is split testing and continually innovating.”

Tony of ReactAds concurred with JuicyJay, and emphasized that creating a productive ad comes down to understanding the prospective customers, and why your site or product would appeal to them.

“Ad effectiveness is really knowing your audience and targeting what you believe that audience would want to see,” Tony said. “Also, having new creatives or a large circulation of ads so the user is not constantly subject to the same ad over and over.”

While the ads which are most magnetic to a surfer’s cursor might be those which include fake “play” buttons to convince entice users to click, or fake messaging elements, such ads are viewed negatively by users and ad platforms alike, leading some of the biggest traffic brokers in the online ad space to ban their use altogether.

“Those same elements are now ‘banned’ because of Google’s policy changes and how they are sweeping the internet by threatening the livelihoods of Publishers who use them,” JuicyJay said, adding that “deceptive banners also have poor conversion ratios” anyway.

The good news for advertisers is the policy changes and tightening restrictions on deceptive and misleading ads is contributing to an increase in the efficacy and visibility of other, more legitimate ad forms.

“In the face of these changes, Native Advertising is exploding here at JuicyAds, currently doubling every month,” JuicyJay said. “That segment of traffic is expected to become 74% of total traffic by the year 2021. Ad spending on Native Ads is expected to quadruple by the end of 2018. We are also expanding our in-video advertising options right now to keep up with the demands there.”

While Jay and Tony both said it’s difficult to generalize when identifying the most effective ad types, depending on the network and the metric you choose, some trends can be identified.

“It currently seems that Pre-Roll Ads (In-Stream) generate the highest CTR,” Tony said – but he emphasized the need for advertisers to keep their eyes on the market and always be ready to adjust their approach.

Advertisers also need to accept sometimes what seems like a negative development can be a benefit in disguise.

“In any industry, change is always expected. Staying on top of the changes and preparation is what’s most important,” Tony said. “We believe that the Coalition for Better Ads roll-out blocking any advertising that is considered intrusive to user experience is a positive change for our industry. Over the years we have seen more and more users using Ad Block not wanting to see these ‘annoying’ type ads.  Eliminating and moving past these are both positive and beneficial to both advertisers and publishers.”

Ultimately, good online advertising doesn’t rely on chicanery or gaming the system, any more than advertising in an offline context relies on such things. For all parties involved, the more straightforward the advertising approach and the more the ads rely on strong messaging and marketing components, rather than the latest trick designed to get surfers clicking, the better off we’ll all be.

“In the end, higher quality content will always perform better for advertisers and publishers will have higher user engagement and time on site by eliminating the ads that shouldn’t meet this standard,” Tony said.

YNOT’s special reports on advertising and online ad networks will continue through the end of the month. Read more about this month’s theme here.

Mask Image © Travis Walker