Why Advertisers Love Flash and Ajax, and Why it’s Really Stupid
December 2nd, 2006 by Michael Gray in Advertising, ToolsIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Read my top posts or learn more about Michael Gray. Want more frequent updates follow me on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!
Steve Rubel has a smashingly good bit of conversation bait today with The Imminent Demise of the Page View
The page view does not offer a suitable way to measure the next generation of web sites. These sites will be built with Ajax, Flash and other interactive technologies that allow the user to conduct affairs all within a single web page - like Gmail or the Google Reader. This eliminates the need to click from one page to another. The widgetization of the web will only accelerate this.
Sorry Steve I’m gonna call you out on this one.
Advertisers, Public Relations People, and everybody with strong deep roots in old world media love applications like ajax, and flash. Why … it is as close to having complete control of how the message and story is controlled as is possible in a web world. Print based media experts want to control the way you see the message, they’ve invested a lot of time/energy/effort/dollars into producing an amazing and attractive catalog front and back cover. They want it to be your only way into the content.
However in a world of user controlled media people want to Tivo the web. They want to skip the commercials and get right to the content they want (kind of like the skip button in flash). These people who want to control your views are the same ones who come up with bizare linking policies
Links to http://www.purina.com other than a text link containing our domain name or a link containing the graphic banner(s) below are forbidden.
Here’s the thing, people want to get to the content they want, they don’t want to sit and wade through your heavily orchestrated script. Applications like Ajax and flash don’t allow you to link to inner content you are forced to endure through the marketing message, like some time time share salesperson holding you hostage unless you sign. Secondly applications like ajax break web conventions like the back button (see Dax » Why I Pre-emptively Hate Ajax).
Don’t get me wrong things like flash and other widgets have a place in the world, they just aren’t going to replace static URL’s that allow deep linking to relevant content.
On second though I think everyone should put all of their 500 products in a completely non spiderable flash application, it will be much less work for me to rank for your keywords and products, while your all dazzled by eye candy in some wildly self congratulatory circle.
Sphere It
December 3rd, 2006 at 1:11 am
I disagreed with Steve as well, but for different reasons:
http://www.douglaskarr.com/2006/12/02/the-page-view-is-not-dead/
Regards,
Doug
December 3rd, 2006 at 5:52 am
Well, in fact Google can and does spider Flash. It just doesn’t rank.
I think there is a slight chance, that this will change. And you can deep-link into flash movies.
But besides those technical facts I think Michael is right. Flash and “rich internet applications” in general can really hurt your marketing efforts.
And… What a coincidence, but I was at this local Web2.0ish conference yesterday, where a guy said, that there are entries into peoples server logs, that hint to the assumption that G is following Ajax calls.But I kind of doubt it, because I don’t see the bot being intelligent enough to dig through peoples custom javascript code…
December 3rd, 2006 at 4:03 pm
Flash doesn’t rank?
I am looking to build or buy an “gaming computer” and most of the sites in the #1 position in Google are so full of flash, so much that I couldn’t get myself to bother navigating deeper into them.
If you have some time to go figure out why and how these guys are doing it let me know what you find. Also I would be interested in why the #1 guys who sell gaming rigs are using it with the pumping background music, they could be selling more units to gamers who might actually prefer flash?
Many ways to look at things…nobody is ever wrong anymore, just more wrong or more right depending from where you come from.
December 3rd, 2006 at 4:40 pm
> people want to get to the content they want,
> they don’t want to sit and wade through your
> heavily orchestrated script
Yepper, I agree Graywolf. Yet here’s the first sentence from a popular ‘interactive’ marketing book:
“The user experience development process is all about ensuring that no aspect of the user’s experience with your site happens without your conscious, explicit intent.”
Yikes! Yes Ajax, Flash and other Web 2.0 interactive technologies promote ‘interaction’ as a purple cow marketing device (forgetting the content) because, as you say, interaction favors controlled viewing and orchestration. And yes it does seem incredible that business would abandon the benefits of spiderable content but (given the shoddy state of most spiderable content online today anyway) who can blame business for skipping the whole headache of spiderable implementation and migrating instead to the proprietary exclusivity of branded environments? How much spiderable content is in Second Life?
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:17 pm
Hate to be that “Contrarian Guy” but I’m siding with Steve.
First off, I agree that the user will more than ever wish to control presentation so the simple straight-forward Flash site is dead. But AJAX and Flex can be used in innovative ways like with Farecast and others.
Addtionally, I cant believe that 5-10 years from now - the basic website will look the same as it always has: utiltarian HTML-only pages. That would present the Web as a limited medium.
Further more, pageviews are dead because they’re as meaningful as other Dot-Com speak like “Mindshare”. Yes, there’s some value in it, but *What do we want to measure, when we think about pageviews*?
We want to know things like awareness and engagement. Analytics is moving away from thinking about counting pageviews and “What’s my popular pages” to thinking about user-action:
http://www.emergence-media.com/2006/09/the-future-of-analytics-and-the-fate-of-page-centricity/
December 3rd, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Engagement = time on site and page views per user, which you already have
December 4th, 2006 at 12:36 am
You would think with all the Accessible web inititatives going on at schools that this stuff would be looked at differently.
December 4th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
“Addtionally, I cant believe that 5-10 years from now - the basic website will look the same as it always has: utiltarian HTML-only pages. That would present the Web as a limited medium.”
That’s what people said 10 years ago.
HTML is, and will always be until someone invents a new WWW, the lingua franca of the internet. It’s not an accident and it’s not utilitarian; it’s an ingenius, incredibly well thought out and implemented technology. What will change in 10 years is user agent (browser) improvements in complying with standards publisher (W3) WWW requirements, especially as regards CSS.
Additionally, W3/User-Agent imrpovements to JS will allow “Ajax” — talking to server with loading page — to be implemented more elegantly.
But HTML ain’t going anywhere — we hope.
December 6th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
AJAX definitely has it’s place. Not in content sites, but rather in web applications - mail, maps, widget tools.
The smart designer will use AJAX to make the experience faster and more seamless for the user, without breaking web conventions.
December 17th, 2006 at 11:45 am
love