CBS Sporstline Fantasy Football has been featuring a neat little ad banner that is constant throughout all aspects of the site. This banner to the right is obviously not meant to be clicked on, but the brand marketers also realize that they don’t need to blast fantasy football players over the head with a loud advertisment on every page. Its subtlety is alomst subliminal, in the way it is omnipresent, but not obtrusive.
Online advertising has made some dramatic swings to CPA and CPC models over the years. But this ad shows how a successful campaign can – and probably needs to – incorporate a mix of Social Media branding, banner branding, and then CPC and CPA conversion ads.
I’d be curious what the equivalent CPM is for this sponsorship. But it’s the kind of that can run on a site like MyElectionChoices.com, or other web sites that provide a nice free service to customers, but aren’t really suited for acquisition based ads.
Of course, this doesn’t even take video and podcasting into consideration, which is something that deserves its own post. But according to a study from emarkleter published in February –
"The fastest-growing Internet ad format is video, which will see spending surge by 89% in 2007. When it comes to total spending, however, search advertising rules. In 2007, US advertisers will spend nearly $8.3 billion on paid search ads, $1.3 billion more than they did in 2006."
The net of the message is that when Internet marketers can exercise some subtlety and common sense into their online campaigns, rather than working off a spreadsheet that says "Louder is better," the whole online environment gets a little stronger. We need more creative types that can see and appreciate subtlety, even though there isn’t an absolute ROI attached.
