Forgotten orphans of the Internet

In a new blog post, marketing guru Seth Godin breathed new life into a neglected form of marketing: banner ads.

As you probably know, banner ads sell for real cheap these days. Nobody clicks on them. In these days of measurable social media (online search, pay-per-click ads, web metrics), etc., they're the forgotten orphans of the Internet.

But wait a minute. Godin reminds us that banner ads are good for one thing: branding.

If you want to drill your product name into people’s heads, what could be better than a cheap medium like banner ads that let you dominate online sites where your customers congregate?

Here’s Godin’s money paragraph:
“Banner ads are fairly worthless in terms of generating clickthroughs... you have to trick too much and manipulate too much to get clicks worth much of anything. But, if you build ads with no intent of clicks, no hope for clicks... then you can focus on ads that drill your name or picture or phrase into my head. 100 impressions and you're almost famous.
A household name. Not for everyone, but for people who matter.”

You can click here to read Seth’s blog. It’s always rewarding reading.