Despite the internet being around for decades, 2017 was the first year that online advertising surpassed non-digital ads. While this might seem surprising, given the absolute dominance of online content, marketing, and shopping, it’s more a reflection of just how cheap digital ads are, compared to physical advertisements.
After all, once you have the design and copy, you can copy-paste images until your hard drive gives out. A physical ad, for example, a billboard, has to be printed, installed, and then you generally pay a monthly rent on it. A lot more costly and not guaranteed to get as many eyes on it as a banner on the side of a well-trafficked site.
Since the targets of a digital ad tend to be at their computers or on other, interactive devices, clever marketers can do a lot more than just showing an image and some text. While the worst examples include flashing lights, scammy texts, or, God forbid, playing sounds, good marketing teams use the versatility of the internet to sell and raise awareness.
For example, Volkswagen’s “The New Golf” ad was basically a puzzle game that could be played directly from your browser. In it, the “player” would be given a random assortment of tiles with roads on them, which they needed to rearrange. Not only would it draw someone's attention, it represented the car’s ability to navigate through anything.
Unfortunately, many banner ads are cheap, annoying, and often quite useless. As any functional site doesn't want to scare away users, these ads will be positioned at the margins of the screen so the main content is more visible. Think about it this way, an ad on the side might be a bit irritating, but it doesn’t stop you from reading this article, a cookie recipe, or a watch-review. Compare that to how an unskippable ad on YouTube makes you feel.
Researchers have found that regular internet users have developed what they called “banner blindness.” Because digital ads are often in the same places, people’s brains start to shut out these images and just ignore them automatically. While this phenomenon was first observed in 1998, we’ve gotten even better at limiting “unnecessary” information, a vital skill when nearly all the knowledge in the universe is available at the tip of our fingers.
A 2015 study even found that perhaps 93% of all internet ads go unviewed. People skip banners, do something else while unskippable video ads play, and just do their best to not notice a marketing team's work. However, advertisers have gotten better at targeting, as the click ratio has been on the rise since the early 2000s, although 1998 was one of the “best” years, with a 2% click-through rate (CTR).
Of course, bigger brands understand that their image is enough to sell a product, not a description of the product itself. There are many, many energy drinks on the market, but only one is closely associated with extreme actions and literal wings. Without even saying the name, there is a solid chance you already thought about Red Bull, even if you don’t ever drink their products.