Hit and run soapbox blog entry on web advertising

If you're an advertiser who notices that your ad on media company's website isn't performing well, you have a few options. 1) You can pull your ad. 2) You can make your ad more prominent (bigger, blinking, etc.). 3) You can target your ad so it is in front of the right audience.

For a number of years, advertisers have tried all of these approaches with varying degrees of success. Despite their efforts, consumers continue to learn how to avoid advertising to get to the content they want - Tivo, YouTube, blogs...etc.

I want to point out an approach that I think is a best practice and a 4th option to advertising on the web. Take a look at this site: http://petcharts.purina.com/. In this situation Purina has developed a content site that is the advertisement. It is an area pet lovers can read stories, vote, and engage with others around a topic that is central to Purina's attempt to sell pet supplies.

More brands want to do this yet media companies want to avoid being associated with content like this since it is advertorial. The argument goes: How dare the NY Times get paid for allowing Purina to republish a pet story from their website. Use on Purina's website would be an implied endorsement of their products.

It's a longer discussion, and a more complicated debate, but I do simply want to point out: a) this is the direction brands are going (acting like publishers) and b) with the proliferation of better paying rich media ads and other large branded advertising elements on media web sites, there is a tough argument to make that helping a brand create a special website like http://petcharts.purina.com/ is any different than allowing the brand to takeover a section of your website with an expanding ad.