Those banner ads that run down the sides of many web pages? They’ve lost their magic.
We know — not a shocker.
But change is coming. Now some social media sites — Yelp and LinkedIn among them — are shifting away from them.
Of course, it’s not just that banner ads have lost what impact they once had. Now that people spend much more time on mobile phones, marketers are putting their resources into ads that both work on the small screen and more fully engage consumers.
“Last week, Yelp announced plans to discontinue its display-ad business by the end of this year after reporting that it ‘actually negatively’ impacted growth last quarter, according to Chief Financial Officer Robert Krolik,” reports MarketWatch. “Yelp estimates that 90 percent of its business will eventually be comprised of promoted posts from the businesses that are reviewed on the site, which are more similar to a native ad than a traditional display ad.”
This comes on the heels of an admission by LinkedIn Chief Financial Officer Steven Sordello that the site has experienced a 30 percent year-over-year decline in display-ad revenue in its most recent quarter. It also dovetails with recent eMarketer research that shows a deceleration of annual U.S. display growth over the next few years — to 13.5 percent in 2018 from 25.6 percent in 2014.
For Facebook, with its gigantic audience and high engagement numbers, banner ads are still working.
Facebook has the advantage of large swaths of personal data that can make the display ads smarter — as well as programmatic advertising software programs that make it easier to buy and sell ads. The behemoth social site now holds the largest percentage of display ad revenues at about 24 percent, the same report concludes.
As for Yelp and LinkedIn, they’re changing course. But for some sites, banners are not dead yet.
“I don’t think display is going away, I think it’s reinventing itself,” said Will Margiloff, CEO of cloud-based marketing platform company IgnitionOne.
