Designing For, With, and Around Advertising
by Karen McGrane on Apr 01, 2009
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What do user experience designers need to know about how the advertising model works, so they can create products that meet the needs of both users and advertisers?
What do user experience designers need to know about how the advertising model works, so they can create products that meet the needs of both users and advertisers?
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will be hosting a lunch table today to discuss these topics
True confessions time
How many people have DVR or Tivo?
How many people have an ad blocker on their browser
How many people really hate the ads?
Thesis of this talk:
Because IAs are focused on providing the best experience for users, they often don’t know how to handle meeting the needs of advertisers
1. Open your mind about advertising, explain why you should care
2. Share some of the things I’ve learned over the years about ad placements
3. For those of you who are still uncomfortable with advertising
I want to talk a little bit about where we go from here and other potential business models
Not going to talk about search ads (like Google Adwords) because choosing keywords is a whole different ball of wax
Not going to get into the specific details of targeting, measurement, and optimization
Not a shill for the advertising industry
Consider myself a longtime advocate for information architecture
I’m a really unlikely advocate for online advertising
Hired by Razorfish as the first person with a background in IA or usability, first title was information designer/writer
Spoke at the first IA summit 10 yrs ago when it was a single day and everyone sat in the same room the whole time
Got started at a time when you’d start your job and they’d ask you to design a bank (I don’t mean a piece of a bank, I mean an entire online bank)
This was before online advertising really took off, but when there started to be more activity there
Did two projects that were really IA focused that got me started thinking about advertising
One was for Encyclopedia Britannica, where I learned everything I know about taxonomy and a fair amount about advertising vs. subscription revenue models, and the subject of user generated content never came up
The other was a project for Disney to redesign their ill-fated portal, Go.com, where I explored a number of interesting advertising scenarios including ways to tie ads to search results, which was a really GOOD idea
Advertising is highly cyclical, so when the market tanks advertising does as well, so I retreated to the relative safety of financial services
Right at the very bottom of the market Razorfish got sold to SBI for about $8 million
We all kind of huddled together for warmth for a while
Got sold to aQuantive for $160 million and turned into Avenue A | Razorfish just a few years later
Woke up one day and found myself working for an advertising agency
Have a client conference each year, remember a long-time UX colleague saying “so, they’re really serious about this whole advertising thing.”
Got a chance to work on some really great projects because of those relationships
Conde Nast is the world’s largest magazine publisher
Led the redesign of NYTimes in 2005
Worked on a project for CNN but left just as it was getting going
Left Razorfish for many, many reasons but probably the most important was that I felt like the values of the company and my values were not aligned, I felt really uncomfortable as a UX practitioner in that kind of advertising environment
Started Bond Art + Science with some other former RF people
Wouldn’t be here today talking about what IAs need to know about online advertising if it weren’t for the experiences I’ve had in the past few years
If I had my old job I would feel like I was toeing the company line, but now I feel like I’ve got some perspective
Have worked with tons of publishers, big ones, small ones, online only, print focused, all with different approaches to social media, revenue generation, and user experience
We also have our own online publication, a blog called Cool Hunting, so I have perspective as a publisher and as
how to lay out pages and create experiences for, with, and around advertising
But this is also about how I opened my heart to this revenue model
You are an advocate for the user, actively trying to make sure that user needs are taken into account by the business and technology
I have heard UX people say all these things about the ads. I have said them myself.
I have heard them from fellow employees when we worked for a company that made all its money placing advertisements on websites. I have heard them when working on redesigns for major publishers, and have gotten my ass handed to me because of it.
I have even heard them when talking about a blog that my company runs!
You are concerned that users HATE ads!
When you’re a UX professional your job is to advocate for the user.
So therefore ads are bad and wrong.
I hope to explain that ads might be a necessary evil but they’re better than the alternative
They’re what pays for the content
And to show how you can provide the best possible experience even if there are ads
To suggest that this entire business model is a failure, the emperor has no clothes
To this all I can say, everyone already knows he’s naked
They have WAY more data than this about what ad “effectiveness” means
To this I say, the money that comes from advertising pays our salaries
Pays for editors and content strategists and user research
Pays for servers and new features and upgrades
With all the talk about user interest shifting away from traditional media and onto the internet
There really hasn’t been a corresponding shift in revenue
One way to think about this is that the entire industry has grown larger over the past 5 years
It’s not that the internet has taken money away from other media, traditional media is GROWING
The U.S. Census Bureau's Service Annual Surveys include data on advertising expenditure from 1998 to 2007.
The Service Annual Surveys use statistically representative surveys of firms.
These data are based on a consistent, well-documented methodology administered by an independent, highly professional organization (the U.S. Census Bureau). Because the surveys are firm-based, they allow some separation of advertising media expenditure, e.g. payments to television stations for advertising air time, from advertising service expenditure, e.g. fees paid to advertising agencies for preparing and placing ads.
Based on data reported in the Service Annual Surveys for 2004-2007, expenditure on advertising agencies, media buying agencies, and media representatives amounts to about 18% of expenditure on advertising media.
Advertising time and space often are sold with a variety of price discounts. Advertising time and space also are commodities commonly included in barter deals. Discounts and barter make advertising expenditure difficult to estimate even thought a set of well-known firms dominate the supply of radio, television, and cable advertising opportunities.
People are spending less time watching TV, reading newspapers, etc
And more time online
That’s our money!
This means that even though people are spending more time online, that time is worth less
Another way to look at it is that people’s time spent watching TV or reading newspapers is worth proportionally more
This is based on different data than the previous slides, so the numbers might not match up exactly
Hearst CEO Cathy Black says she spends 20% of her time on digital, but it accounts for less than 4-5% of consumer revenue
For people who talk a lot about the value of the user experience online
You should be aware that it is worth a FRACTION of the money it would be worth offline
Maybe you’re thinking, well, who cares about old media not being able to make money online?
And whatever business model they figure out, I guarantee it will involve advertising
Advertising is not going away
Even if advertising declines during this current period of economic uncertainty
It will come back, and it will be a major -- if not the most important -- way that businesses make money online
As a UX professional you have a responsibility to make things not suck, and that includes advertising.
What advertisers call consumers
What you call users
In the middle are the the agencies who are responsible for
Creating advertising yes,
But most importantly they buy and sell the ad space
This is an incredibly high touch business
UX is still a relatively small field, and I bet if you gathered up everyone responsible for buying and selling ads online
They would number like 10x more than us
Brooke is in her mid-20s. She was in a sorority. She was hired for this job because she’s smart and personable
But her job is not to reinvent the internet.
Brooke has a spreadsheet, and her job is to fill in that spreadsheet.
Things like the ad positons and demographics are gating factors
They are interested in buying big categories: technology, travel, health, business
Categories that map to what they are trying to sell
They are interested in buying big categories: technology, travel, health, business
Categories that map to what they are trying to sell
They are interested in buying big categories: technology, travel, health, business
Categories that map to what they are trying to sell
They are interested in buying big categories: technology, travel, health, business
Categories that map to what they are trying to sell
They are interested in buying big categories: technology, travel, health, business
Categories that map to what they are trying to sell
They are interested in buying big categories: technology, travel, health, business
Categories that map to what they are trying to sell
They are interested in buying big categories: technology, travel, health, business
Categories that map to what they are trying to sell
What does “market making guidelines and standards mean?”
I will translate it into a language you will understand
All ads must be this size
You cannot make ads that are not one of these sizes
Really, the only ad that matters is the rectangle or IMU
You must put the rectangle ad above the fold (that is a gating factor, they won’t buy without it)
And while you’re at it, stick a leaderboard in there too (they strongly prefer it to be in the content well)
Never bump ads
Buyers want to know how many placements they have to buy to get full coverage, so 4 is too many for that
Cutting custom creative is a near-impossibility most of the time
Problem is they’ve been arguing that for more than 10 years now
Everyone thinks it’s a bad idea, but getting ourselves out of it is way more complicated than it seems
Remember, there is enormous infrastructure built up around these things
Display advertising -- in print, outdoor -- is the cornerstone of the advertising industry
Rather than expecting banners to go away, you should expect bigger ads
What we all should be pushing for is more money to be spent online, which will mean better creative for the ads (fewer punch the monkey, more well-designed ads like you see in print)
That is changing on the web
When I interviewed him for this I asked if he had any parting words, any conclusions and he said YES
Said that people always say, oh, the ads are so distracting, it would be better for the UX if we moved them
Just providing a good UX does not make money
We all need to understand what advertisers want
provide value for advertisers, and still deliver a quality experience,
it’s you guys.
But please, let’s take the money away from traditional media and put it on the internet.
Don’t forget the lunch table today if you want to talk more about these issues.