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advertising
This
page looks at some of the literature about advertising online,
including industry and academic studies.
One of the best sites for analysis of advertising on the
Web is that developed by Barker
& Groenne. It offers academic research and a select
list of pointers to industry studies.
Jakob Neilsen's Alertbox
column is essential reading; his September 1997 article
on Why Advertising Doesn't Work On The Internet now
has classic status.
There are, perhaps surprisingly, relatively few readily
accessible and authoritative studies of online advertising
- although there's lots of hype in the general and specialist
media.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB),
a non-profit US-based industry body, has a disappointing
site: many of the links to academic or industry studies
are dead. However it does offer the useful 88 page Online
Advertising Effectiveness study
that considers 16,000 viewers of advertising on 12 major
sites and is touted as the largest, most rigorous test of
advertising effectiveness so far.
That report was devised by Millward Brown Interactive, which
also produced the January 1999 Advertising Effectiveness
Research: Wired Digital Rich Media Study (AER),
a somewhat self-serving but interesting document.
Electronic Billboards on The Digital Superhighway, the
1994 report
by the Coalition for Networked Information, was run over
by a succession of trucks marked 'commercial reality' and
is only of historical interest.
Admedia Org, an offshoot of Michigan State University, has
produced a short Internet Advertising Research Guide.
Among other sources CommerceNet,
Ad
Resource (an Internet.Com subsidiary) and eMarketer
provide coverage of developments in the US - largely feeding
off media releases. The invaluable Cyberatlas,
albeit with the same feeding habits, should be on your list.
Debate continues about the viability of online advertising
as the basis for journals and other publications. The 1998
article
in the Journal of Electronic Publishing by David
Wilson encapsulates differing views. Don Middleberg's Winning
PR in the Wired World: Powerful Communications Strategies
for the Noisy Digital Space (New York: McGraw-Hill 00)
is overhyped but does highlight key issues.
We recommend the online version of Advertising
Week and Advertising
Age.
We've highlighted particular measurement issues in our Metrics
& Statistics guide. Two
documents of particular importance are the USC paper (PDF)
mapping competing US industry measures and the outstanding
paper
by Thomas Novak & Donna Hoffman on New Metrics for
New Media Toward the Development of Web Measurement Standards.
Net Results.2: Best Practices for Web Marketing (Indianapolis:
New Riders 01) by Rick Bruner, Bob Heyman & Leland Harden
is one of the better commercial primers.
credibility
Questions of trust and credibility are
highlighted in the Consumers
and Design guides elsewhere
on this site.
One study of particular interest is that from Stanford University's
Persuasive Technology Laboratory. The 2001 report
(PDF)
considered factors that affect online
credibility, including "real-world feel", "ease of use,"
"expertise," "trustworthiness," and "tailoring", "commercial
implications" and "amateurism."
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