Of Online Conversions- Off site or on Site?

I have been resisting myself on writing about Online Advertising- but old habits die hard. And frankly, I just am too much into this. Even though my attention has lately shifted to making sense of other online marketing techniques (temporary phase), I find myself deeply drawn towards conversations regarding this space.

As a matter of fact, if you have a healthy discussion anywhere regarding online advertising market size, search engine marketing and social media- you'll probably find me lurking somewhere close by. No fence sitter and always ready for a good discussion.

One such conversation around this phenomenon of conversions happening on banners caught my attention and I was drawn in to make a comment. Thought would share it with CTS readers for their observations.

Eyeblaster is a leading ad serving company. Though they are quite advanced and have multiple technology solutions to help advertisers reach their objectives better, their claim to fame was in serving Rich Media Ads- and still have that legacy positioning to an extent.

They recently launched a study called "Trends in Conversions" (you can download the report by follwing the link)- basically the long and short of it is

Conversions-in-banner ads offer a conversion rate five times higher than in-site conversions

My reaction:

This is great- however this has been around for ages- a non rich media version of this was called the QRP or Quick Response Panel a few years ago. And we saw increased lead generation via this format. This was limited to lead generation exercises like simple form capture fields for attention-fickle surfers.
The (online) media is so dynamic that one size cannot fit all. This format might be useful- and as time evolves, off-site consumption and conversion will surely be big. But as of now- banners leading to landing pages have their own importance- landing pages can carry more data, more engagement elements, more transactional elements- and well, the feeling of safety with familiarity and set transactional standards in place for websites.

So in effect, I am of the opinion that this is one fantastic learning- but we should keep on following what I call