Sidebar to: #97 Banners: who benefits?

Spam Issue revisited

Derrick wrote to say:
“I run a Tourism Website for our area. We finance our site with banners and such from local businesses. I wonder if you consider this "SPAM"? Wouldn't this type of community advertising be much more like the shopping mall analogy In your article #65?”

Yes.
Banners are not considered to be "spam" until they
1) cause the reader to click away, out of the site.
2) distract or impeade the reader's ability to get the content
3) insult the reader in any way.

“But it doesn’t cost me anything!”

Doesn’t it? How many banners will you have to run in order to make up for that lost reader? They used to say for every dollar you lose it costs you 2.7 times to make it up. Suddenly banner exchanges sound very expensive. And guess who’s paying?

Thanks for writing.

Fred

PS: This was not intended to insult you or make you mad. Remember that our first consideration and obligation is to YOU... not your advertisers. Please write and let us know what you think!

Fred Showker is director of The Design & Publishing Center on the web at http://www.graphic-design.com/, and is a co-founder of both The User Group Forum on America Online, and The User Group Network at http://www.user-groups.net/. He has been a user group activist and supporter since 1984.

###

---

Would you like to carry the 60-Second Windows column in your newsletter or web site? Ask us about our syndication program... join hundreds of others who now publish 60-Second Windows!

60-Second Windowô is a syndicated column by Fred Showker which appears in various monthly news services and many Macintosh User Group Newsletters around the world, and other computer, graphic arts related publications. 60-Second Window is copyright ©1986 - 1998, All Rights Reserved.

Fred Showker, nationally recognized designer author and speaker, is a 25-year veteran of the graphics industry, with his own firm Showker Graphic Arts & Design. Heís an associate editor for the Mug News Service (MNS) as well as Home & School Mac. You can see Fred in action at any of his Design & Graphics workshops around the country sponsored by Dynamic Graphics Educational Foundation, InHouse Graphics, PrintFest and others. You can chat with him directly on America OnLine, where he is ìAFA Shwkrî, a forum assistant in the User Group Forum (UGF), or in eWorld as co-host of the WORKING SOLO forum.
---------
Product names listed are the trademarks of their respective owners.