I believe this is the key, just because you could do something (like animation) has never meant that you should.
While I don't doubt it might initially raise your click through rates, it wasn't durable. The thing for me is that using AdBlock and Ghostery easily triples the speed at which pages load. Those advertisers are slow to respond to page requests and it just takes forever to render.
The other interesting thing to me is that price for an advertisement in a magazine that a 4 million people see generates over 10x the revenue that the same ad on web page that 4 million people see. Not sure how we're going to fix that.
As a publisher, I'm excited to be finally at the point where I can remove Adsense as a revenue source (and will May 1). A lot of people find ads that follow you around the internet to be creepy and they often ruin the experience by either being slow or jarring in comparison to our direct-sold advertisements.
One frustrating thing about Ad Blockers though is that even my "non-annoying" advertisements and up getting blocked in many cases because they fit the size profile or are wrapped in a particular class name.
Magazine readers also happily pay for access to the magazine content which also contains advertisements. For some reason the discussion regarding website ads is either 'pay for access' or 'see advertisements', but I see premium online content going the way of magazines and combining 'pay for access' and 'see advertisements'. People willing to pay for content are generally going to be the exact people worth advertising at.
And that pretty much sums up the tragedy right? I'm happy to not block advertisements that are part of the page and "well behaved" but the bad actors compel me to employ an imperfect club which is not selective in its action.
I recall visiting Dr. Dobb's offices back when they were a print magazine and there were a bunch of people who were responsible for ad sales/layout/checking and AdSense out sourced all of that for web site owners. Which was cool, until it was abused. So how many web sites are willing to do ad sales? Interesting opportunity there.
Direct sales is hard and takes a lot longer than slapping some code on your site and waiting for the money to roll in. For instance, I just landed a sale the other day from a company that initially reached out over 6 months ago and I hadn't heard anything back since then.
One of my favorite things about selling ads myself is that I can ensure that advertisements are relevant to my readers. Relevant ads make readers happier. The results of relevant ads makes advertisers happier.
I get a good number of emails from ad networks boasting about their pool of advertisers and how I can make 1000% more money using their network. My first question is always, "What advertisers are relevant to my readers?" Crickets.
If I were making a service around direct selling ads, I would tackle a specific content vertical and play the middle man between relevant advertisers in that field and websites looking for advertisers.
I was a little jarred when I first noticed ads following me around the internet, but quickly accepted some of them as they were innocuous, unobtrusive, and for a company I like. So I think there is potential there (but unfortunately a ton of potential for abuse too)
While I don't doubt it might initially raise your click through rates, it wasn't durable. The thing for me is that using AdBlock and Ghostery easily triples the speed at which pages load. Those advertisers are slow to respond to page requests and it just takes forever to render.
The other interesting thing to me is that price for an advertisement in a magazine that a 4 million people see generates over 10x the revenue that the same ad on web page that 4 million people see. Not sure how we're going to fix that.