Often a quiet little text link will do better for you than a big blaring rich media ad.



This concept first came to the forefront when researchers found text-information gets noticed by the eye of the average surfer, while they tend to skip over color and graphics. Folks are surfing online for information, after all. It makes sense informative marketing versus interruptive marketing would work better online.



Then last year when search engine optimization and paid listings began to be the hot thing in online marketing, again it pointed out that effective creative is using words (text), not images. Very few marketers tell me anymore about the banners they bought against key search terms. Nearly everybody tells me about their PPC campaign.



Last night while surfing for house blueprints (dream a big dream), I noticed an unusual little text-ad "hidden" at the bottom of a site's copyright fine print at the end of the page. I don't remember a single ad from that site, or any other ad from the approximate two hours I was surfing. But that little text ad sure leapt out at me, even though it's not for anything I'm interested in.



My theory: The (near) future of Internet marketing is text.