Menu

• Dictionary
• Hot Shots

Directory

• Sponsors
• Billing Options
• Content Providers
• Web Hosting
• Traffic Counters
• Website Designers
• Resource Sites

One of the things I like to do every morning when I come into the office is sit down with a cup of coffee from our espresso machine and read a couple of the Australian morning papers online. Sometimes I can become so engrossed in what I'm reading that I'm oblivious to what's going on around me.

I'm concentrating on what I'm reading, I'm analyzing what's being said as I read, I'm thinking about what is coming next ... and then out of the corner of my eye I see something blinking on the screen. It's just there on the edge of my vision as I read on ... blink ... blink ... blink ... oh DAMN IT!

I've just got to stop what I'm reading and see what it is that's blinking and distracting me ... and it's a bloody ad! AAAGGGHHH - I HATE THEM ... but I see them ... I read them ... and whoever designed that blinking scrolling piece of crap has done what he or she set out to do.

They've got me to read the ad ... they've got their message across ... they've interrupted what I wanted to do and made me do what they wanted me to do.

Today banner blindness ... that ability for web surfers to hit a web page and never even see the advertising banners ... and perhaps now not even see the text ads if they're too mild ... has become a major problem in mainstream online marketing. It's been a problem here in adult for years but they're just beginning to see it as a problem in mainstream so now they're pushing back against banner blindness with ads that you simply can't miss.

Even if you do miss them on the first pass they stay there just on the edge of the screen blinking, scrolling and screaming: 'LOOK AT ME!!' ... and people are looking at them once more.

Of course many of the most effective ads that blink and flash and annoy the crap out of us have gone beyond the animated gifs that we knew of years ago. Now they're flash ads that talk and engage you, they offer you webcams to control and maps to follow and they could well be the future of advertising on the Net because no matter how hard you try to ignore them it's just about mission impossible.

Maybe now is the time to investigate how we can use those types of ads on our adult sites. Maybe we should also be looking at how we can develop the skills to design our own annoying ads because if an annoying ad is hard to ignore then an annoying ad that a surfer has never seen before is even more likely to get clicked.

Who understands your advertising?
Roy H Williams, a well-known marketing consultant and best selling author, has said that when we're trying to sell a product to a potential buyer we should:

'Talk to the dog in the language of the dog about what matters to the dog.'

Think about it for a while and you'll begin to see the logic in what Williams suggests that we do. And when you begin to see the logic in what he says then it's time to ask yourself which dog are you talking to when you write the advertising copy for your adult sites.

Are you really writing your copy for the people who visit your sites or are you writing them for yourself? Is the language that you're using the same language that the people who visit your site use and understand?

Of course, you're probably writing in English and the vast majority of people who visit your site will understand English ... but are you using words, terms and concepts that are relevant to the people who are hitting your sites or are you using words, terms and concepts that are relevant to you and the very small part of the world that you live in?

For example you may be a young twenty-something year old from Brooklyn and you may be building mature sites and naturally you will be using words, terms and concepts to market your sponsors that are relevant to you. The visitors to your sites may be fifty-something year olds from many other parts of the world ... including other parts of America ... and the words, terms and concepts that they use to think about and describe hot mature babes may be totally different.

In a situation like that the people visiting your site are going to love your free images but they may not be engaged by your marketing ... hell they may not even understand what you're saying ... and so they're not going to be interested to click through to your sponsor.

It's so easy to think that what happens in your little part of the world is exactly the same as what happens in every other part of the world ... but the reality is that life and the words and concepts we use and understand are not the same. And that's something that we need to be aware of when we write our advertising copy.