 How Consumers Prefer Their Online Advertising

Banner ads, forget it. Video ads? Now you’re talking.

By Ava Seave
05/11/2009 -04:42 PM

U.S. media consumers have a love/hate relationship with advertising. Some recent surveys would like to help marketers decide when it is love and when it is hate.

According to the information released about the annual survey done by the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School, Internet users expressed stunningly negative views about advertising online. It’s no wonder the click-through rates are generally a fraction of a percentage point. For example:

• 52 percent said they never click on Web advertisements
• Only 6 percent click on Web advertisements sometimes or often
• 61 percent of Internet users said they never buy products that they learned about from a Web advertisement

They hate advertising so much, that only half (51 percent) agreed or strongly agreed it’s worthwhile to put up with advertising in order to have free access to online content rather than having to pay for the content.

Once I read these survey results, I reconsidered the craziness of the venture just started by media bigwigs Leo Hindery, Gordon Crovitz and Steve Brill to provide news publishers with content-based non-advertising revenue-generating solutions. So, maybe not so crazy?

But then again…According to a poll conducted by a research consulting firm, Knowledge Networks and reported on by eMarketer.com 80 percent of online network TV viewers would prefer to view ads in exchange for unpaid video content, up from 67 percent in 2006.

Although this information is about just one small portion of the video available on the Web, this positive feeling is significant because it is so counter to the attitudes uncovered in the Digital Future survey. These online network TV viewers also feel very positively about the company behind the ads, as nearly half (49 percent) of these Web site viewers say that sponsorship of the streaming or download of an episode (i.e. the pre-roll ad) increases their “consideration of the sponsoring brand.” And a surprising 25 percent of these viewers went to the sponsor’s Web site to see an ad.

Ava Seave is a Principal of Quantum Media, a strategy and marketing consulting group.