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What Makes People Click? Advertising on the Web
by Jim Sterne
Published by Que
1997
Reviewed by Leigh Kimmel
What makes people click? Why do some advertising strategies work on the World Wide Web, while others fail disastrously? This is the central question of this thick book, and Jim Sterne does a thorough job of answering it.
He starts right out by condemning spam, the practice of sending unsolicited commercial e-mails to lists of e-mail addresses collected from newsgroups, webpages, or other methods that did not involve a prior inquiry by the intended recipient. To show just how serious he is about the evils of spam, he also includes information on obtaining software that enables the recipiented of unwanted spams to trace their senders in spite of all attempts to obscure their true identities.
To drive that point home, Stearns also includes an excerpt of Robert Ralsch's white paper on the problem of spam, entitled, "Postage-Due Marketing." Spam is fundamentally different from the bulk postal mail to which its advocates compare it in one critical way. While the sender of bulk postal mail bears all the expense associated with sending it, only part of the expense of sending bulk e-mail falls upon its sender. Instead, the receiver of an unsolicited commercial e-mail bears a significant portion of the cost, whether directly in connection charges or indirectly in other fees.
After dealing with the problem of spam, Stearns explores legitimate means of advertising via e-mail, including opt-in mailing lists and e-zines. He also explores the use of newsgroups.
Stearns then moves to the use of banner ads, which originated on HotBot and have become universal. HotBot standardized the 468x60 pixel format for banner ads, which made them occupy only a small portion of the screen, rather like an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine. However, that small size makes it essential to create attention-grabbing banners that will "derail the train" of the customer's thought and get the click-through.
Stearns then goes beyond banners to explore other possiblities, including the sponsorship of web pages and sites, background branding and product placement. He also studies problems of measuring the effectiveness of advertising strategies and where to look for potential advertising space.
There is a wealth of information in this book. Although much of it seems aimed at large corporations (many of the examples in the book are drawn from corporate ads), small businesses can profit from studying the information in it as well.
Click here to buy Advertising on the Web in paperback.
Review posted April 11, 2001
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