Have Search Engines Revolutionized Advertising Creative?

Posted by Peter McEllhenney on 20 October 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: Web Marketing & Advertising

Whenever I read the internet (or social media or YouTube or Twitter) have revolutionized advertising, I always think, “Yes and No”.

The “No” comes from the fact that people haven’t changed. They buy goods and services now for the same reasons they always bought them. And advertising is about going to the places where people are paying attention, which more and more are the new electronic media.

The “Yes” comes from realizing these new media have new rules, and seeing they have revolutionized our relationship with advertising.

One new media is the internet, accessed through search engines, which has required a fundamental shift in a large portion of advertising creative online.

Search engines and internet advertising 

Much of pre-internet advertising was based on the need to win people’s attention away from something else – like a magazine article or television show.

This advertising required eye-catching images, clever headlines, and exciting claims to win that attention. It also had to convince you that you needed what it was selling.

For an example, an ad for kitchen knives might feature (1) an attractive man or woman juggling six beautiful knives, (2) the headline “You’re cooking sharp, baby!” and (3) a sales pitch you weren’t expected to completely believe, such as “Our knives transform your look and your life.”

Advertisers don’t need to win people’s attention when they search the internet for “kitchen knives” however. They already have it, assuming their pages rank high in the search results.

Advertisers also don’t need to work as hard to convince people they need kitchen knives. You can assume a reasonable level of interest based on the action of searching itself.

In this context, traditional advertising on a landing page can get in the way of a sale, because the creative is performing functions that the internet search has already performed.

It also explains the rise of information-heavy sales copy on the internet. The copywriter’s task is now to give people the information they need to choose her client’s knives rather than the competition’s. The designer’s task is to present attractive, uncluttered views of the product.

The revolution is partial (and should be)

There are multiple exceptions to these thoughts, of course.

The home pages of many sites look like traditional advertising, and should, because home pages need to win the attention of browsers more than individual product pages found through a web search.

The internet creative of businesses focused on brand awareness looks traditional too – except in social media, which I think is more important to mass-market brands than search engines.

(The search engine’s impact on a company’s ability to control messages about its brands is another matter.)

Finally, advertising creative on the content pages of sites like Yahoo should follow traditional techniques, and do, because they need to compete for your attention just like advertising in the old media.

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