How Internet can combat flagging ads

I would like to take issue with a few points made in your Special Report, “Bad Banners” (MW September 17).

As far as determining the impact of the advertising, I would challenge that it is no more difficult to ascertain the effect on the brand on the Internet than it is on television.

The same methodology (interviews, questionnaires) can be applied to either medium. In fact, on the Internet you can follow up a campaign with an online effectiveness study even easier than in the “real world”.

CIA/MQI’s German interactive agency IQ has recently created its own advertising server to run its clients campaigns. This can be used to independently track site owner’s traffic (including cutting out non-human generated impressions from spiders), as well as to continually evolve and fine-tune an online campaign in real-time.

The ad server has been used to run many campaigns, and has been proven to not only monitor effectiveness, but to actually improve campaign performance in real-time element.

Going on the basis that a banner “wears out” in four to five days, yet it takes a site owner nearly two days lead time to change the creative execution, think of the advantage to be had if the banner can be changed as soon as its effectiveness begins to flag.

The World Wide Web is a medium that can be continuously fine-tuned to optimise performance; compare this with being stuck with a page in a magazine that doesn’t really work, for the full shelf life of one month. I’d argue that an advertiser would be quite happy with that kind of effectiveness study. Don’t just monitor, do something about it.

Dan Hagen

Internet/Account Executive

CIA Medianetwork International

London SE1