Banner ads 30 years on: Agencies, adtechs comment

This weekend marks a major milestone in digital advertising with the 30th anniversary of the world’s first banner ad going live.

The first banner ad (main pic) was for telecoms giant AT&T. It appeared on Wired mag’s website Hotwired.com and invited users of the world wide web to ‘click here’.

So we’ve invited ad agency and adtech leaders to share their views of this milestone moment in digital adland, how far we’ve come, and where we may be heading next…

Keoni Granger, Head of Creative, Audience Store

“It’s been 30 years since the first banner ad snagged a huge 40% click-through rate! Nowadays, cutting through the digital noise means we’ve got to get way more creative, tapping into data and personalisation to hold people’s attention for even a second.

“At Audience Store, we make this happen by using dynamic creative and cross-channel strategies that keep audiences engaged across every platform.”

Rob Conibear, Managing Director, JvM London

“Love them or loathe them, everyone has almost certainly been influenced by banner ads, even if they would rather not admit it.

“The ability to click straight through has been a blessing and a curse. Some of the best banners work like outdoor in my opinion, putting the brand front of mind, rather than chasing clicks.

“Media owners need to get better at integrating the formats into their content without so much scrolling disruption. Maybe then banners would be more appreciated.

“Here’s to a new era.”

Fiona Salmon, Managing Director, Mantis

“In many ways as we look back towards the banner ad, it feels like we are coming full circle.

“Building upon the heritage of print advertising, display advertising created a good on-page experience and made the pay-off for users clear – quality advertising for quality publishing.

“The successful launches of Netflix, Disney, and Amazon’s ad-supported tier shows that audiences are once again comfortable with this trade off, seeing ads as a key part of the content experience, not an interruption.

“Similarly, it was with banner ads that the impact of contextual relevance became clear. With the slow depreciation of the cookie, this is once again coming into vogue as an effective way to drive engagement and ensure spend is highly targeted.

“Though the leaps and bounds the digital advertising industry has taken in recent years would have been unimaginable back in 1994, we’re coming back to many of the principles that made banner ads a success in the first place.”

Andrew Mole, CEO and co-Founder, pubX

“Banner ads have been a staple of digital publisher monetization strategies before this term even existed, so intertwined are they with the nascent, pre-consolidated internet.

“Born in those halcyon, post-messenger-board days on hotwired.com, in part as an experiment to capture attention, arguably their capacity to do so has waned whilst their ubiquity has grown.

“Arresting this decline in grabbing attention, CTRs and viewability have now settled, and banner ads remain the staple for publishers to drive revenue online, and the foundation on which the Open Web is built.

“Often dismissed as annoying, or even outright blocked, it is impossible to conceive (for good or bad) of the internet as it exists today without them.

“As a species, we have created an open network of all the world’s information, knowledge and entertainment, powered by those few IAB approved slots.

“This simply wouldn’t have been possible without advertising revenue, which is what has allowed the Open Web to grow.

“It is now the job of Publisher Technology companies to look to the future, and ensure that the Open Web continues to thrive, even if the advertising vehicles that brought it to being shift and change.

“For those entrenched in the internet, it is as inconceivable that banner ads will go away, as it would be to the average person in the mid 20th century that they could read all the news in the world, in real time, for free, but the one constant in this industry is change, so whilst we look to what’s next, it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate what got us here: the humble banner ad.”