I addressed the potential for poor match problem earlier in comments a couple of times. Certainly possible but I can’t control that. We rarely use broad match except for on teenie tiny search volume concepts.

What kind of site was yours, was it related to social networking or similar (ringtones, etc.)? What was the success metric for visitors?

I’m curious because we have gotten really good results from Myspace (in terms of visit quality) but the site in question was geared to the 12-25 group.

Jacques, I’m not sure we’ll ever see “permission” in the display ad world (online or offline) though you could argue the nature of PPC creates an implicit “invitation” to advertise if not permission.

I’m with Chris on the notion these two ideas are disctinct yet overlapping. Intrusive is different from Relevant, the first being an “invasion of personal space” concept that has more emotional baggage with it, as opposed to simply “tolerated but useless to me”.

I’d guess both ideas contribute to lack of effectivness in display advertising; Intrusive gets an outwardly hostile reaction (Negative Awareness?) whereas Relevance says the ad is simply ignored based on experience (Blindness). This is the difficult environment display operates in.

On top of that, if you are actively Engaged, then Intrusive just enrages you even more, even interrupting your work flow, while Relevance says if the ad is in context, it might break through the Blindness.

PPC does not generally face any of these challenges as long as it is a relatively intelligent effort from a marketing perspective.

What is interesting to me, and kind of shoves this Engagement layer out to the light, is BOTH our AdWords (PPC) and AdSense (Display) campaigns on MySpace suck horribly. That is unexpected and suggests to me there is a new factor in play with social networking.

By the way, the creative was always the same across all usage. In other words, the exact same ad that generates great results in Google Search and pretty good results in Google Syndication generates horrible results in MySpace, both in the AdWords and AdSense formats.

And then this same ad, running on topical chat boards and other high-context locations through AdSense, generates really great results.

That leads me to ask, what’s different about MySpace?

I meant “interruption marketing” in the general definition Seth Godin gives it in Permission Marketing, which is basically advertising that wants to get your attention while you’re doing something else (watching, reading, etc.). So, I don’t know if there’s is “out-of-context” and “in-context” advertising really. My point is that it’s all interruption marketing, whereas people coming in search mode might be more receptive.

However, I like Jim’s categorisation of purpose, which definitely would have an impact on ad responsiveness. Anyway, I don’t know; just thinking out loud.

But I’m just conjecturing, although I’m basing it on my psych background (such as it was). I’d love to see behavioral studies or, better yet, some biological tracking such as GSR or brain imaging!

Hmm, I’m wondering whether all that advertising you described, be it OOC or not, is just not interruption marketing, in the S. Godin’s sense. As soon as you are on a site, the “what’s-in-it-for-me” / “how-the-heck-is-this-relevant-to-what-I-want” mechanisms start to fire. If you came through a PPC on a search engine, you happened to be better qualified, at least in principle, so you respond better.

I would suggest that it is particularly, if not only, while on a search engine, that people are the most responsive to ads. Once they’re on a site, they’ll start ignoring ads on that site, while trying to figure out if they can pursue the goal that first brought them there.

If I am correct, well then, advertising based sites should get back to promoting impressions as a metric; at least we can’t “prove” people were not paying attention at the time.

I am a big believer in banner blindness and thus tend to not be helpful to teams that are trying to work with OOC types of online marketing. A web page is such a short quick experience, after all. Print ads are different, especially magazines. TV might even be different. Online rich media ads happening at points during a streaming experience like a TV show are different too. But banners — well, they’re both out of context and part of a chaotic context.