63% of respondents to a new survey say internet ads are the ads they are most likely to ignore. Among those who ignore Internet ads, 43% said they ignored banner ads.   20% ignore search engine ads.

These figures are much higher than those who claim to ignore other adverts such as TV, radio and newspapers (the latter for example getting an “ignore” rating of just 6%.

These results from an Adweek Media/Harris Poll probably won’t surprise most of us who have watched or sold banner advertising.

So is it all over?   Probably.  Disbelief is now so strong, and a fear of going to a botnet site is so great, that even give-aways don’t work too well.

But there is an alternative.  It is an experiment that we’ve been running for a year now, ever since I first read about it in an online research journal.   It costs nothing in advertising rates, but it costs about five minutes a day in time.  As the original research found, and we have now confirmed however, it costs far less in person time than you would ever pay in banner ad or Google ad rates.  And delivers about ten or twenty times as much response.

When I have mentioned this in the past, I have referred you back to the original research.  This time I’ll tell you how we’ve replicated that research.

For this experiment, I wrote a novel “Making the Arsenal”.  It is about a newspaper journalist covering the decline and fall of Arsenal FC in 1910.   I set up a Google Alert for “Woolwich Arsenal” (the name of the club at that time), and each day Google Alerts sends me half a dozen links to new sites with the phrase “Woolwich Arsenal” in them.

Of these many are irrelevant (a new laundry just opened in Woolwich Arsenal for example), but normally I end up with one or two links a day about the history of Arsenal FC.  Most of these are on sites that have interactivity, so I can go on and type in my commentary after the article, a commentary which runs roughly like this:

“Interesting article about Woolwich Arsenal.  One extra point that you missed is that in 1910…” and then I fill in any detail that seems relevant.   I give a link to the site from where the book can be purchased (www.woolwicharsenal.co.uk since you asked) and leave it at that.  No big sale – just a mention in a friendly spirit of co-operation.  An example is http://www.footballbettingclub.com/nicknames-of-british-football-clubs-part-1/ – look at the first comment.

I also wander around relevant sites on Wikipedia, and where I find information that is wrong or incomplete, I put up that info, and cite the book and that web site as the source.

As a result there are about 37,000 mentions of the phrase “Making the Arsenal” on the internet, and the large majority point to my book.  I didn’t do 37,000 of course – but many are picked up and rerun on other sites.  This has taken references to the book up the Google rankings, and given us decent sales.  Next week, the third edition of the book comes out.

The only other promotion has been through my own daily Arsenal blog, and through the fact that the book is available on Amazon.

It is a system that works – all you have to do is think it through and set it up.  It can be used to sell anything that has an identifiable audience.  The cost is zero.  The time taken is five minutes a day.  If you’d like to talk about it, give me a call on 01536 399 013.

Tony Attwood

Hamilton House Mailings Ltd reg number 2444392 VAT 354907535GB.  Phone 01536 399 000.