Good Idea! Now find a better one.

Can the ads on a website be as valuable as the content?

We’ve all run across sites with Adsense, MSN or Yahoo advertising plastered all over the place that seem to say, “Welcome to my website. Now leave.”

Using advertising to “monetize” a website, web application or blog makes perfect business sense. We’re not knocking it. If you can generate revenue while providing a free product or service, more power to you.

But there is a very real difference between the ads on a page and the content: the content delivers something valuable right now, the ad promises value some time in the future.

Sites with great content have visitors that come back again and again to read, use and share that content.

The visitors don’t come to see the ads on those pages. The visitors place so much value on the content that the relative value of the ads is pathetic.

Yes, the ads are valuable to the site owner and to the advertiser and even to the ad provider middlemen like Google and Yahoo!. But how valuable are they to the readers?

Does anyone go to any website just for the ads? Why can’t the ads supplement the content to the readers benefit? And if an ad accomplished this, would it be more valuable to the site owner, advertiser and middlemen?

Well, pull your skirt up Alice, we’re on the lookout for good ideas.

First, for an ad to be as valuable as the content, it must serve the same Value as the content. Why the reader reads the page or uses the webapp must be the same as why they interact with the ads.

Second, the ads can’t focus on something different than the content because then they wouldn’t be “relevant ads”.

Third, the ads can’t blink or flash to get attention because, as with the content, they must be valuable enough that people will look for them.

Fourth, like the content, the ads must deliver something valuable right now, with the added promise of more value when you click through, sign up, purchase, etc.

Suppose you have a blog that discusses marketing. You have a specific group of readers who are interested in new marketing tactics, lessons from other’s marketing campaigns, pointers to interesting articles, etc. You have a very narrow audience that some advertisers might want to specifically reach out to.

Instead of letting Google crawl your posts to display statistically relevant text or banner ads, suppose a consulting firm that specialized in marketing paid for placement on your site. Not to put up a fancy banner or brilliantly worded text-ad, but to respond to your posts with relevant statistics, experiences, client stories and the like.

Through their placement on your blog, the consultants get the “awareness” of advertising. But because of the value you place on providing your readers with great content, their “ad” must also provide content establishes competence, experience and demonstrates their philosophy and approach.

Would someone then visit that blog specifically to see the “responses” of that “advertiser”?

Or suppose an advertiser wanted to promote a tool, be it software or another website, that will help marketers do what they do. Instead of flashing on the screen how valuable it is, prove it. Right now.

Using the space you have on screen, present an interactive widget that allows a reader to do some basic, but valuable task. Present something that furthers the discussion on the blog, by providing a relevant tool.

We talked before about the difference between humans and algorithms in selecting “relevant ads” for online content. Now we’re asking if advertisers can create relevant content to be selected by humans to supplement the core content of a webpage, blog or webapp.

By looking at what the content producer values, we can find ideas that further that value. But it all starts with one good question.

Tags: adsense, advertising, content, good question, interesting idea