Clue: it’s not about the banners, stupid!
The wisest words we’ve heard for a while on the subject come from MIT’s Advertsing Lab:
My take: throw in a recommendation engine. If people are to endure ads on their MySpace pages, at least let them and their friends pick the ads to see. If I know that my buddy is on the market for a new car, I’ll think there’s a better chance he’d appreciate a Toyota ad more than a random punch-the-monkey banner. And if a banner is funny or otherwise amusing (yes, there are amusing banners), people would recommend those too (just watch all these commecials uploaded on YouTube), eventually driving the overall quality of advertising up.
Well yes. Content is media. Respect its creators, learn the vernacular, and maybe the community will welcome your advertising content into its world. We’re particularly excited to see that great ads are accepted as simply being great clip media. And no we didn’t plant this on YouTube. It’s there because some punter loved it enough to do that themselves. And that’s worth thinking about.
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