10 biggest cocks in advertising

Melancholy trainee speed walker (I know this because he lives around the corner from me) Charlie Brooker presents a now outdated but no less relevant run down of the 10 biggest cocks in advertising, or types-of-men-advertisers-think-we-are-like.

There are two reasons for this post, the first to add ‘cocks’ to our Google juice and attract more overweight pornographers to the blog as the most popular search term leading people to this humble daily essay on all things interactive is ‘Fat Man Porno’ and by writing that I have only added to it.

The second is to talk about the importance and relevance of banner ads. We the self-appointed digerati dismiss them, to admit that we occasionally click on a good one would be like saying we think Internet Explorer really rocks.

But financially banner ads and interstitials command the lion’s share of the online ad spend. Given that, why are the majority so painfully bad? Given the whole cocks and porn thing, I’ll use Adult Friend Finder, the default banner on bittorrent sites, as an example. (see Pirate Bay) As the pictures will bring down the wholesome pictorial standard of this weblog I’ll describe the banner:

Picture: a semi-naked girl

Text: 21, London, United Kingdom

I’m no pop porn marketeer, in fact I don’t think anyone is, they just guess stupid kids clever enough to file share will fall for the promise of a meeting with a girl who probably has no idea her picture is being used on such a site. Given the silicon count on the competitors banners vying for the same eyeballs, you can either go up a cup size or three or get creative and get to know your target demo.

For the other 99% of banner ads it doesn’t get much better. Where is the innovation in this space? Given the money invested in the purchase of ad space on disparate portals, why is there little creativity being invested in the image, the visual signifier that will seek to convert the portal user into a potential customer?

Where are the Play-Doh bunnies and Phil Collins loving Gorillas of the online banner ad? As a marketing channel banners are too quickly dismissed as yesterday’s medium, but creating something visually compelling in such a limited space, on such a content heavy page, is an artform and one that deserves better than the base design and lack of interactivity it is currently overrun with.

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