Entries from August 2007 ↓

A recent article by Andrew Schrock in the MIT Technology Review discusses how banner ads are effective even if online consumers never click on them. The article cites published research that suggests that even if people are explicitly ignoring your banner ads, they’re actually being implicitly exposed anyway. The research shows that even though most consumers don’t pay attention to banner ads or bother to click on them, something about the message still gets through and can be measured using “implicit memory” measures.

This was like deja vu all over again because more than a decade ago, media effectiveness guru Rex Briggs argued the very same thing, based on a widely cited industry study he did with Millward Brown.

It’s pretty easy to argue theoretically - and empirical research shows - that passive ads (TV, banner, you name it) may have some sort of persuasive impact even if people go out of their way to avoid paying attention to them. As Dan Mitchell observed in the New York Times, “Internet banner ads can work about as well as ads in traditional media.” (Uh, not exactly high praise.)

Yet, the idea that banner ads might work even if people don’t click on them completely misses the point of the power of the Internet as a communication medium!

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Mitch Wagner has an excellent new article in Information Week outlining five rules business should follow, with plenty of examples, in order to get the most out of Second Life.  I’d like to comment on an issue he raised in his fourth rule, “be smart about keeping out trouble-makers.”  In that context, he discusses strategies businesses can take to manage griefers who vandalize commercial interests, and noted that like the hyped-up claims that “the only activity in Second Life is cybersex,” griefing incidents are much less common than many pundits would have you believe.

Wired recently claimed that “kinky sex” was the “big draw” for enticing return traffic to Second Life, and there is certainly a lot written about sex in Second Life.  However, what is troubling is the assumption that Second Life is pretty much only about sex.  For example, in Wagner’s article, Lenovo V.P. David Churbuck is quoted as saying, “there is nothing to do in Second Life except, pardon my bluntness, try to get laid.”  (As an aside, I note that my one-year-old Lenovo T60 Thinkpad is woefully underpowered for running Second Life, so perhaps reliance on Lenovo hardware may be contributing to Mr. Churbuck’s perception that there is nothing to do in Second Life.  My Dell desktops work great, BTW.)

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There’s a two day Virtual Worlds Conference in San Jose, CA, October 10-11, that I’ll be checking out.  There will be five tracks related to various business aspects of virtual worlds.  Looking forward to meeting some interesting people there and hearing the latest ideas!  

ACR Special Pre-Conference on Online Consumer Behavior

Thursday, October 25, 2007
Peabody Hotel
Memphis, TN

Conference Co-Chairs:

Donna Hoffman, University of California, Riverside
Eric Johnson, Columbia University

Conference Program

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When I read Frank Rose’s recent article in Wired, “How Madison Avenue is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life,” I felt a distinct sense of déjà vu. I’ve been wandering around in Second Life for the past three months, and what I read in Wired took me back a dozen years ago.

There are many parallels with virtual worlds and the early days of the commercial Web. Back in 1994, when the Web was still embarrassingly known as the “Information Superhighway,” Donna Hoffman and I wrote a short article about future commercial prospects for the Web. We noted that the Web was very different from what marketers had seen before, and that mindless application of traditional business models and current best practice was just not going to work. The conclusion of our 1994 article applies to virtual worlds in 2007, just as much as it did to the nascent Web in 1994: Continue reading →