Fifteen Years and Counting

October 28, 2009 No comments

Ever heard of Hotwired.com? Do you recall navigating a Time Inc. site called Pathfinder? Remember a company called MCI?

If any of those things ring a bell, then you might look back fondly on October 27, 1994. That’s when the first banner ad was created. Adman Frank D’Angelo was in on that historic moment, and he shares his perspective in a fascinating piece in Ad Age.

As with many advances in marketing, the birth of the banner ad really started because of an industry leader’s vision – in this case, Ed Atzt, then chairman of mega-brander Procter & Gamble. At a May 1994 industry speech, Atzt implored his colleagues to jump on the new media bandwagon. Frank D’Angelo’s boss, an ad agency head, was in the audience. He brought Ed Atzt’s challenge back to his agency, which happened to have MCI, then a rising telecommunications company, as a client. (MCI would later become WorldCom – but we won’t go there.)

MCI, says D’Angelo, was a perfect fit for this “new” online advertising. After all, one of the company’s employees was Vinton Cerf, the acknowledged “father of the Internet.” But D’Angelo makes it clear what a bold move it was for an advertiser to agree to a banner ad on Hotwired.com, a spin-off of WIRED and the first commercial digital magazine.

“Keep in mind,” says D’Angelo, “this was 1994; the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, was less than a year old (soon to be replaced by Netscape Explorer), and Web access? Purely dial-up, 24.4kps if you were lucky, meaning these ads took a while to load. The online U.S. population? Two million, if that.”

Still, MCI and five other advertisers took a crack at admittedly clunky banner ads. Read the rest of D’Angelo’s story to discover what happened.

Fifteen years later, banner ads may be under siege, but they are still very much a part of the web advertising landscape. D’Angelo says “no other development since has advanced advertising measurement, effectiveness and accountability than the display banner.”

The larger issue today, however, is the continuing quest for optimal measurement. In that context, D’Angelo references a recent report from eMarketer, “Online Brand Management: Connecting the Dots,” that is worthy of consideration.

The report discusses a huge challenge: Are advertisers getting their money’s worth from display ads and other branding-oriented ads? The report asks: “Do [advertisers] have the right metrics, and are they able to connect the dots, both within online platforms and between online and offline media?”

Needless to say, there are no easy answers, but the report offers valuable insight into where we are and where we need to go in terms of measuring advertising effectiveness. One of the quotes from Carrie Frolich, managing director, digital, for Mediaedge:cia, sets the tone for the report’s findings:

Remember why you’re advertising. You are not advertising for clicks or [gross rating points]. What you’re advertising for is to sell me stuff or change perception, and that’s what we need to be measuring against.

As we look back on the past fifteen years, and look forward to the next fifteen, we should always keep that in mind. No matter what technological advances come along, no matter how wonderful the creative might be, no matter where the ads are placed – the objective of advertising, both online and offline, should always be to have a measurable impact. Let’s not forget it.