When it comes to advertising, healthcare marketers have numerous options for spending their ad dollars, from print venues and banner ads to moving billboards and pay-per-click promotions. Ever wonder where the future is headed? Despite numerous predictions that print media is dying and will be replaced by the Web, the future is hardly that clear cut.
A recent New York Times article describes the rise and fall of one of print media’s latest experiments, The Printed Blog, which took free content and images from blogs, published them and handed out the newspapers at train stations and other venues complete with ads from local businesses. The venture ultimately failed, namely because it faced the same challenges that the rest of the industry is grappling with: as more readers migrate online and get their news for free, advertisers fail to follow suit.
Why? Regardless of a Web site’s quality or the traffic it generates, advertisers just don’t hand over as much cash for an online ad as a print one. One obstacle to the growth of online advertising may be the way the ads are measured. While click through rates were once praised for finally delivering quantifiable metrics to advertisers, many are left wondering if these measures are really the best gauge of an ad’s success. Just consider how many online ads you notice in a day and then think about how many you actually clicked on (or meant to click on).
In fact, the latest DoubleClick research report, 2008 Year-in-Review Benchmarks, indicates that the average click through rate for image, Flash and rich media campaigns across all verticals is 0.10% − hardly a strong return on investment. Ads specific to technology and wellness fared only slightly better at 0.11% and 0.13% respectively.
The bottom line is that a click is not necessarily an indication of a buyer’s interest in a product − it may just reflect an interest in the ad itself. It’s kind of like that funny television ad that gets everyone talking about the punch line but does little to actually promote the product. And, what if anything, do click through rates tell you about the value that an online ad might contribute to your overall brand?
Of course, there is always the possibility that our continuous access to news and all things Internet does not signal an end to print media, but rather a rebirth that allows these outlets to reinvent themselves as something much more relevant. Look at the recent revamp of Newsweek. By acknowledging that it will never win at being the timeliest source of news, the magazine is now focusing more on news analysis and insight rather than just delivering the facts you already read days ago. Only time will tell whether this strategy will pay off, but in the meantime, it is making strides at keeping print media − and print advertising − pertinent to the way we live our everyday lives.
