In what what Duncan Riley writing for Techcrunch called "quite simply remarkable," is the new creation of a banner ad system which is marketed as “Worlds First fully transactional web 2.0 banner system.” The product is shown in a demonstration here.
What the new technology called Tailgate does, from a British company, Fhlame Limited, is offer Internet users the opportunity to make an online transaction directly from the banner itself. It keeps the user from having to go to another page to do the deal.
My immediate thought is if the industry will want to go back to using the banner ad as a direct-response mechanism, or keep the banner as the branding tool it has become.
While the new technology will obviously be able to be measured in contrast to today's banners, which the vast majority of users don't click on, it does have the challenge of trying to educate people they can do all their transactions right from the banner if they're interested. At this time, people have been socialized away from clicking on banners for the most part.
Other than staying on the page for the transaction, I'm not sure this is anything different as far as interrupting what a web surfer may want to do.
For those small numbers of people that still click on banners, this may be a better way of doing business for them, if they want to stay on the page. It does more to help the website owner, as far as I can see, in that it keeps people from leaving if they are interested in an offering that includes the new technology.
For consumers, I don't see them flocking to click on a banner ad simply because they can do the transaction on the web rpage their viewing. If they're interested enough, it won't matter for them if they leave the page or not, they were probably leaving anyway.
This will be worth watching, and maybe experimenting with, but there's a lot of questions that will have to be answered before this could possibly take off.
Comment Preview