Display Ads, Dead or Alive?

There is an interesting article I just read in media week asking the question "Is the end near for Display Ads?" I came across the article via Darren Herman's Blog and totally agree with his assessments. I think if done properly display ads can effectively deliver branding messages and direct response messages and when done concurrently the branding messages can lift the DR campaigns significantly. While I was at Verizon we saw this over and over and we were executing 3 levels of campaigns DR*, Product Awareness**, and Overall Corporate Awareness*** so we could look at cookies**** which had been exposed to any combination and see how they preformed vs. the traditional DR campaigns. I do think as budgets get tighter clients will have to look very carefully at their objectives and how they spend their budgets and unfortunately the easy answer is going to be cut the online awareness because it doesn't deliver immediate and actionable results.

*Buy now low price

**Our product rocks and is better than competitors

***We are a broadband company not a telecom

****I really need some wholefoods cookies the ones I have a 2 days old but they will have to do for now