Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

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Banner ads compared to plane crash survival

Rock argues that banner adverts are now a very ineffective way to drive traffic or boost online PR for any brand. In fact, the humble banner ad has become so unappealing to most internet users that it become "a symbol of all that's wrong with online advertising", according to Brian Morrissey in a post for Digiday.com.

Typically the banner ad is said to be lacking in creativity, and is highly intrusive, and is also ignored by an overwhelming majority of web users. However, despite all of these drawbacks, it mysteriously remains a mainstay of the internet - although many publishers are keen for the online marketing world to move away from the banner ad toward more fruitful and engaging options.

Those calling for its demise are citing a raft of data to back up their case. Statistics from ComScore suggest that 5.3 trillion display ads were served to US web users last year, which is a rise of 1 trillion from 2009. However, research from DoubleClick indicates that click-through rates for banner ads average only 0.1%. ComScore even estimated that around one in three (31%) ad impressions cannot be viewed by users.

And these click-through rates don't become any more impressive when viewed in the context of ComScore data which suggests that a die-hard 8% of users are responsible for 85% of those banner ad clicks. It was Solve Media that first went as far as to suggest that an individual is more likely to survive a plane crash than to intentionally click on a banner ad.

Research has been carried out by eMarketer into people's perceptions of banner ads, with the finding that 15% of people trust banner ads completely or somewhat, whereas the equivalent figure for TV ads is 29%. The same research suggests that around one in three people (34%) don't trust banner ads at all or much, compared to one in four (26%) for magazine ads.

But banner ads continue to be popular with a number of brands, as ComScore says that 445 different advertisers delivered more than a billion banner ads in 2012. Last year, Gawker, the media news and gossip blog, made a significant move away from traditional display ads and said it would work with its advertisers directly to create new content avenues. In an email to staff, the company's chief executive Nick Denton said: "We all know the conventional wisdom: the days of the banner advertisement are numbered. In two years, our primary offering to marketers will be our discussion platform."

So what is the answer? Deeper engagement in the form of content-based marketing and social media outreach is most likely to be the key to attracting online consumers in the future, concluded Rock.

Have you seen The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook?

This comprehensive and practical guide to the latest ideas in customer-focused marketing hands you over 200 packed pages of strategy, best practices, do's and don'ts, practical know-how, facts and figures, and ideas to optimise your marketing strategy, boost sales, market share, increase ROI and profit.

Learn the insider's tricks and techniques to turn every customers into a 'super spreader' for your brand. It's better than free advertising. Once you start this ball rolling, your brand can grow rapidly through word-of-mouth, advocacy, influencers, and customer loyalty. Super-charge your company's marketing strategy, build up your market share, and make more sales through repeat business and customer loyalty.

Find out what works - and what doesn't - and who's succeeded, and how they did it. See how the world's top brands keep their competitive edge against all odds.

The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook walks you step-by-step through the techniques, metrics, reporting, analysis, marketing models, technologies, tools and innovations for successful marketing strategies - both traditional and emerging - with expert guidance from thought leaders in every major market. Find out the best ways to gather, analyse, and act on customer data to increase profitability, build your brand, empower your customers, beat the competition, reduce churn, and increase customer profitability. This is a marketing book you simply can't afford to be without.

This book aims to hand you all the facts, figures and research data you need for the best decisions for a more profitable, more engaging marketing strategy. It also highlights all the facts, forecasts and trends identified by our experts from the global Marketing Factbook's vast database of market data, news, studies, research and articles, and presents you with an invaluable library of ideas and practical support you can call upon at will.

With The Customer-Focused Marketing Playbook at your side, you'll have instant access to a true goldmine of easily adaptable and up-to-date strategies, walk-throughs, trends, research and market data, plus all the supporting arguments you need to build a solid, profitable marketing strategy.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)