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A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log Word redivivus - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K Stock options: Is the honeymoon over? Discuss worthless options and great expectations in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Network to Tabloid: drop ads By Brooke Shelby Biggs Outrageous tale of "Subway Whale" prompts protests to site's advertisers (10/05/98) I, robot? My robot! By Janelle Brown With Lego's new kit, you, too, can play God with a mechanical creature of your own design (10/02/98) The 21st Challenge No. 14: High-tech designer drugs By Charlie Varon and Jim Rosenau Design your own and win a prize (10/02/98) Play money By Andrew Leonard Is Silicon Valley talent souring on stock options? (09/30/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Story time -- can narrative save us from information overload? (09/29/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST REVIEW ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - And that brings up the underlying question that is Microscope's reason for being -- how do you make banner ads work on the Web? There are plenty of advertisers who will say quite frankly that Web banner ads don't work -- and that since they don't work, Web sites that lust after advertising revenue should be prepared to give advertisers more value for their money. Which usually means more intrusive advertising -- pop-up windows, more on-screen real estate, sound and video elements. Intriguingly, the online advertising execs who review ads for Microscope -- people who actually create Web banner ads -- see things differently: Banner ads, they argue, aren't broken; they're just not quite perfect yet -- and they're still awfully immature. "Given that the Web as an advertising medium is only 4 years old," says Kevin Groome, executive vice president and creative director at Welch Nehlen Groome, "there really aren't any experts yet. We're all novices." The first corollary of Groome's observation is that no one really knows what they're doing yet. That's why Groome says he enjoys participating in Microscope -- it gives him the chance to know what his peers are thinking about in an industry where each new day augurs a possible 180-degree swing in advertising strategy. But there's another, equally significant ramification -- the really creative advertising talent still has yet to focus with full attention on the possibilities of the Web. "It is tough to talk an art director and copywriter off of TV to come write banner ads," says Matt Freeman, executive creative director of Modem Media Poppe Tyson. "But we're seeing more and more a trend towards integration -- teams that are working in all media -- and I think that will eventually up the quality of creativity." Of course, those TV-obsessed art directors and copywriters are lucky -- they don't have to worry about clickthrough rates because clickthrough isn't possible in their chosen medium. This is a point that irritates the creators of online ads no end. If clickthrough rates are low, banner ads are considered a failure by the companies who want to advertise their products, even if those same ads are being witnessed by hundreds of thousands of eyeballs. Groome says that if he ever generated a 1 or 2 percent response rate for a direct mail marketing campaign, he'd consider that a massive success -- and yet online advertisers would still be unhappy at that kind of response to a banner. Furthermore, direct marketing is much more expensive than online banner ads -- postage alone is a killer. "If I have to choose, I'd choose banners over direct mail any day of the week," says Groome. Advertisers, noted several of the agency executives featured at Microscope, need to decide whether their goal is to build brand awareness or to generate direct sales through high clickthrough rates. Too often, they confuse the two. "Is it brand, or is it clickthrough?" asks Daniel Stein, executive producer at Anderson & Lembke. "The real difference with online is that you have this mixture. It's become something of a problem with some of our clients -- we'll put together an online advertising campaign in which clickthrough isn't an objective, but the clients still want the clickthrough numbers and will deem the campaign unsuccessful if they don't get a high clickthrough rate." Then there's always the question of whether significantly raising ads' ante of splashiness will work to an advertiser's advantage. As Stein notes, Web surfers have come to accept banner ads, but they don't show any signs of warming up to pop-up windows. More bells and whistles don't automatically solve the problem. "There is a galling lack of creative quality in online advertising right now," says Freeman, "though I don't think that's the only cause for falling clickthrough rates. I don't think changing the format is the automatic answer. You can be more intrusive and louder and that doesn't mean that you will be building a brand any more effectively. That being said, there is obviously a lot of advantage to having more latitude in using sound and video and things like that -- you can tell a richer story." Perhaps the best lesson to learn is the one that Microscope is offering: Give the eyeballs what they want. "Microscope is targeted at a niche audience," says Bourland. "The real value proposition that we offer -- the eyeballs that we aggregate, the kind of people who are coming here -- are people spending money on online media campaigns, buying the necessary systems and software to support that and monitor that. This audience represents enormous buying power." So does the Web's audience as a whole, if advertisers can manage to figure out how to capture its attention without generating rampant alienation. If you're interested in watching those advertisers think out loud as they work on the problem, Microscope is a good place to start. SALON | Oct. 6, 1998 - - - - - - - - - - - - E-mail Andrew Leonard