Ad models for the Internet

If the message is indeed the medium, sometimes it's hard to understand what the Internet is saying, particularly to marketers and advertisers. While traditional media's ad models have proven successful for generations, it's becoming clear that transposing formats developed for a passive TV or radio experience onto the Internet, whose reason d'etre is interactivity, is simply not the best way to reach consumers-particularly kids. For advertisers, the Internet is a paradox of huge untapped potential; although it reaches millions instantly, it's often hard to know if you're really reaching the target audience in the way intended.

"IF you can really define [the reach of a web ad], then you are doing a real targeted buy and chances are it's much less expensive than a print buy in a major magazine or a broadcast buy on television," says Glen Ross, president of Artisan Family Home Entertainment. "But it's very slipshod right now-you don't know who you're going to get or when you're going to get them."

Because of the current soft on-line advertising market, Matt Turner, VP of advertising sales and business development for Fox Kids and Fox Family, says that even though "the web makes sense for everybody on a promotional level, companies are less likely to put aside 5% to 10% of their overall ad budgets for the Internet because it's not totally proven. You can't say it drives sales like TV does. Hopefully that day will come soon, but until it does, we're trying to be as creative as we possibly can."

Meanwhile independent sites are being crushed by the lack of advertising revenue. "If you look at the whole Internet landscape, the independents are going out of business like crazy," says Turner, who points to Zeeks.com as another recent casualty. "The only reason why there are any indies still around is because they are owned by bigger companies with deep pockets. There's no way they can keep it running unless they have something other than ad revenue."

Although the Internet has not become the advertising promised-land independents originally hoped it would be, Jessica Halem, marketing manager of Freezone.com, believes indies can still be profitable via advertising, but only by setting modest goals. "Figure out what you have to offer and do that," she says. And in terms of why indie sites can be of vital importance to marketers, Halem notes: "I might not have 18 million unique visitors, but I guarantee you the 500,000 to one million kids who come here every month are invested in the site because we've taken the time to actually cultivate that audience instead of just throwing a net out."

Although there's no clear consensus on what marketing format works best, most believe the inherently interactive nature of the Internet is best utilized with an integrated approach. Here are some examples of web ad formats currently being used:

Stand-alone product sites

These sites work best for branded products that kids already have an interaction with, such as video games. Says Dan Owsen, on-line manager for Pokémon.com, "The purpose of the site is to extend the brand and get people excited about Pokémon, and also to provide a place for official news about products and games-related announcements."

However, most stand-alone product sites, such as Cheerios.com, end up being little more than cyber billboards. Fox Kids' Matt Turner says the really savvy advertisers readily acknowledge you don't harvest loyal repeat visitors by using on-pack promos to send kids to your own site. "Maybe they'll go there once because they think they're going to win something they see on the back of the box."

Freezone.com's Halem suggests that community sites that already have regular kid traffic are a better bet. She cites the experience the Edy's ice cream site had when it sponsored a chat with soccer star Mia Hamm. "The kids get to meet Mia Hamm, and the flipside for Edy's is thousands of kids who are going to sign up on your mailing list." And from a branding point of view, the connection is really key. "Freezone is cool, Mia Hamm is cool, so Edy's must be cool."

This is why marketers are increasingly developing strategic partnerships for their product sites. "At Poptarts.com, there's an active campaign that includes Foxkids.com, Nick.com, Cartoonnetwork.com and Freezone," Turner says. "It's a treasure hunt sweepstakes that sends kids to each one of these vendor sites; they play a game there and then go back to Poptarts.com to finish the game and win. It's a really creative viral marketing campaign that spreads traffic all over the place and creates excitement for kids. The game itself has already generated more traffic than any of our advertiser-branded games."

Streaming video/audio ads

Although streaming audio usually few download issues, streaming video can be problematic because of the potential for lengthy download times. "We've streamed commercials for a couple of advertisers, and it takes a standard modem 10 minutes to load them," says Fox Kids' Turner.

Nickelodeon Online's VP of ad sales marketing Sharon Cohen says download times are not much of a deterrent to her clients. "We provide advertisers with the specifications we use throughout the site. So if kids are already enjoying the site and they have all the plug-ins, then they should be able to interact with [our streaming ads] as well. They're actually very good at employing streaming media."

Cohen points to the success of Nick.com's "adisodes," located in the Weblab area of the site. "It's not a traditional commercial, but rather it's a web cartoon or some other piece of content that showcases an advertiser's brand to our audience. There is also an ad banner on that page so kids can click through to the advertiser's website. Nintendo has done one, Mattel has done one for Diva Starz, and we hope to do more."

Turner says Fox Kids also creates original cartoon shorts for advertisers. "We did this for PlayStation's Micro Maniacs, and it helped brand the game so kids were more likely to go out and buy it."