Following my earlier mail and some of your responses, the focus this week is all on how to educate yourself about advertising. My usual advice is to generally look around, so we’ve gleaned a couple of sites to help you do this.

Enjoy

A

Banner Blog (http://www.bannerblog.com.au/)
Banner Blog started back in 2005 to showcase online advertising. Unlike the adserving sites I have mentioned in previous mails, there is no underlying corporate objective. This site simply provides examples of a huge range of different online advertising formats: good, bad and mediocre. A search tool on the left hand side allows you to search by Agency, Category or Brand. It’s worth haveing a peek from time to time, because occasionally you come across gems like this: a job interview in a banner. Andy, Jim – imagine if we proposed this to the BBC… http://www.bannerblog.com.au/2007/09/fantasy_interactive_job_interview.php

Adverlicious (http://adverlicio.us/)
Adverlicious, if you excuse the pun, claims to be the world’s largest collection of online advertising. If you can cope with the pants navigation (‘pants navigation’ is a highly technical term, thank you!) and clunky performance, then the right hand side is the most useful, with features like Popular Ads, Last Viewed, a ‘navigation by’ function (I tend to use navigation by industry). There is even a tag cloud, so you can see what topics are interesting. Useful stuff.

Visit4Info (http://www.visit4info.com/)
Ever seen an advert on the TV and want to use it in a client presentation? Just to prove that life isn’t all about digital advertising, I thought you might enjoy this. I met these guys a while ago and they have put together an impressive, free to use repository of ATL advertising. You can view ads, download the MPEGS, download to your ipod, share and embed the adverts. The site is growing and they offer some bespoke services to Agencies at a low cost (e.g. you can track the success and popularity of a campaign). We could even submit our agency and our advertising to the site, as we would be the first in the Recruitment Advertising category. (Luisa?) Anyhow, if you can cope with the navigation, the site is REALLY useful stuff.

How Stuff Works (http://www.howstuffworks.com/)
The Ronseal of sites, HowStuffWorks does what it says on the tin. If you’re bored of listening to my rants, then simply type your question in the Search section and hey presto, instant education. I tried ‘Recruitment Marketing’ and ‘Recruitment Advertising’ and got back a range of answers, including ‘How Banner Ads Work: Selling Advertising Space’ ; ‘How Advergaming Works: Types of Advergaming‘ and ‘How Con Artists Work: Business and Internet Cons’.