Search and Display

In my previous post on the rapidly increasing revenues derived from internet advertising, I posted a table. (I will not post it again so you are going to have to scroll down if you want to see it.) On it was a rough and mostly believable breakdown of the most sought after forms of advertising. At the top of that list was search ads. With 40% of the revenues it proves to be a profitable, and hopefully effective medium.

In case you do not know what this is referring. When a buys ads via Google, or Yahoo, or whatever company they may choose, they want to narrow down their results. To do this they choose a list of key words. For instance if you were a company specializing in say velociraptor raptor attack prevention you would choose they pick at words like Attack, Dinosaur, and Raptor. Then whenever someone searched using that engine with your key words, a custom made ad would appear. This is exactly how they do those wonderful sponsored links in you search results.

Second on the list was Display Ads. These cover your more generic moving flash banners, images links, etc. They don't react to search terms, but they are more catchy. However, alone neither are as profitable as the research makes them seem, it is in fact the combination that is their strongest selling point.By making videos that reach to search results you can get the best of both worlds, and dramatically increase click through.

Now, personally, I would have thought this was an obvious connection to make, combining two effective and compatible mediums for greater profit. But apparently I was mistaken, because it seems to be some kind of critical breakthrough. It has received quite a bit of critical acclaim, which is great and shines light on the reason why these two mediums dominate 70% of the profits.