New media research firm Jupiter Communications has called for more highly targeted web advertising, but research from ad agency Elliott Dickens has found that targeted banner ads can actually return fewer click-throughs than untargeted ads. How can this be? For a start, both reports agree that the promises of web advertisers have not been kept. In particular, Jupiter points out that the relatively high price of web ads compared with ads in traditional media is supposed to be justified by correspondingly greater targeting and interactivity. Without real targeting, however, the potential of interactivity goes largely unrealized, Jupiter says. For its part, Elliott Dickens measured the relative performance of three banner ads across six online networks: Doubleclick, Flycast, Burst, SmartClicks, LinkExchange and 24/7. Each ad ran once in a targeted space – computers for a PC backup service, for example – and once in an untargeted space. Surprise: the targeted spaces performed no better than untargeted ones. Elliot Dickens concludes that for web ads to be worth the money, affinity group targeting must be more finely tuned. Jupiter concurs. It’s worth remembering, though, that both companies are poised to offer their own services to remedy this.
