We’re at a strange period in the brief history of online advertising. After 5 years of 30% YOY growth for online advertising, the dramatic economic slowdown will put a damper on all forms of advertising, including online. While online will likely grow faster than all other forms of advertising in 2008, the growth rate could be in the single digits for the first time in 5 years, and who knows what to expect for next year.

Despite the continuing growth in online’s share of overall advertising, many in our industry continue to be confounded that the share hasn’t grown even more than it has. One of the most prevalent arguments is that it’s taken too long for online standards to become established, buying campaigns across many sites continues to pose challenges, and it is still much easier to buy advertising on TV, radio and print than it is online.

Another concern is that consumers ignore online ads, or the ads themselves lack any emotional connection…this could be caused by either poor creative, poor copy - or a poorly planned media buy. But we think another culprit is online ad clutter - too many ads competing for the consumer’s attention. My colleague Jon Gibs just conducted a Webinar on this topic and rolled out our new custom clutter metric - you can download the presentation from our download library later today. I’m interested to know what you think - is this issue impacting your advertising effectiveness or ability to position your site?

Tags: ad clutter, clutter metric, online advertising

We’re all familiar with the barrage of advertising consumers face on a daily basis. It makes sense that the more advertising messages that appear within a medium, the less likely consumers are to remember or be persuaded by any particular advertisement - this is the effect of ad clutter. But how do you account for ad clutter in your online campaigns? We’ve developed a new custom “Clutter” metric to measure its impact. Blending online audience data from NetView and advertising data from AdRelevance, the clutter metric pretty simple:

Number of Impressions (from AdRelevance) / Total Minutes = Clutter

This metric can help media planners and advertisers target sites with less clutter for maximum effectiveness, while giving publishers even more quantifiable data to position their sites for increased ad spends. For more information, see my article in our September client newsletter.

On October 10^th, I’ll host a webinar and present details about this metric, its formulation, and the assumptions behind it. I’ll also provide sample data, and take a look at which specific demographic groups are exposed to high levels of clutter and which advertisers tend to be in more or less cluttered environments. Find out more and sign up for the webinar here.

Tags: ad clutter, advertising