Dear NBC - Your Ad on My Blog Stinks: Let's Fix It

Dear NBC - Please don't get me wrong: I love you for advertising on my blog. But I want you to get results so you'll keep coming back, and this ad sucks.

I've done several blog ad campaigns for clients including American Greetings, Simon & Schuster, Budget Car Rental and others that got clickthru rates as high as 2.1%.

So I'd like to give you a little free advice about how to make your blog advertising more effective.

- The job of a blogad is not to tell your story.

Blogads need to be intriguing, interesting or entertaining enough to get us to a convincing landing page where you have lots of room to tell us what you've got for us.

Don't take this personally, but we don't care about you. All we care about is what you can do for us.

Tell us about what advertisers got in the last Olympics. All advertisers care about is ROI, either in orders or awareness. Give us stats.

We don't care how many days are left before your Olympic coverage starts. We want you to tell us, in the headline, why we should care.

Blog readers are inured to traditional advertising. They're here, and on other top blogs, looking for something new and interesting.

You want to get brands to advertise on NBC during the Olympics. Tell me in the headline why I should bring my clients to you

When that dreadful flashing stops in the ad, you're left with what is basically a black hole.

You're competing with lots of copy that my readers came here - by choice - to get. What you have is basically a blob of copy, and since it's not easy to read at a glance, it's pretty much invisible. Less is more in blog ads.

You need to be clever.

- Don't be boring.

- If you want your blog advertising to be high-yield, call me.

My related posts about blog advertising:
- Five Myths and Six Facts About Blog Advertising
- The Value of Blog Advertising
- B.L. Ochman & Company: Blog Advertising & Creative

B.L., this is a first. I have never seen anyone say anything like this to an advertiser on their blog. Ever. You go, girl!

You made me laugh out loud. Nicely done.

Haha, too funny. Nice work BL. So true.

B.L- I will add this. NBC-please lose the black background..and fast.

Doesn't matter whether you're addressing NBC or Whatever.com...your comments are excellent. Valuable. And fun.

So glad I made people laugh, and hoping they'll laugh at NBC and then pick up the phone and call me.
:>)

Gutsy girl, you rock! You've done them a big favor. I didn't see the ad with the flash, but it's godawful even without it. Can't imagine what they were thinking.

Way to go B.L., that's a good one! lol :)

Hmmm, interestingly, I was actualy serious. :>)