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Cape Town - The desire of the internet-connected generation to receive information in bite-sized chunks opens the door to clickbait, says an industry expert.
"Although link baiting is a form of trickery, millennials tend to prefer receiving information in summarised, bite-sized chunks. An example of this could be an online proposition offering '5 ways to clean out your inbox'. A clickbait effort would typically take you to an irrelevant site that has no logical tie back to the theme of cleaning out your mail box," Andre Steenekamp told Fin24.
Steenkamp is CEO of Cape Town based digital agency 25AM and has decades of experience in the marketing industry.
He said that relevance is a key factor in ensuring real engagement with brands, unlike the trickery of clickbait.
"Authentic engagement may even take a user through a path to purchase, but so long as the path to purchase relates back to the initial claim or promise, then it can be considered a form of engagement."
Unscrupulous companies
Clickbait is reaching immense proportions on the web and Google recently updated its AdWords policies to fight ad injectors - one of the major sources of clickbait on the internet.
The search giant revealed that 77% of clickbait is handled by just three networks: dealtime.com, pricegrabber.com, and bizrate.com.
Unscrupulous internet marketing companies make a profit when users click on an ad - even if that click was unintentional.
Typical clickbait is designed to feed the curiosity of internet users. (Duncan Alfreds, Fin24)
"Affiliates are paid a commission whenever a user clicks on an injected ad. We found about 1 000 of these businesses, including Crossrider, Shopper Pro, and Netcrawl, that use at least one of these tactics," said Kurt Thomas, of the Spam & Abuse Research department at Google.
In a Ted Talk, Sally Kohn, CEO of think tank the Movement Vision Lab, said that part of the solution to the problem of clickbait exists with internet users themselves.
"We all say we hate this crap, but the question whether you're willing to make a sacrifice to change it. I don't mean giving up the internet, but changing the way you click because clicking is a public act."
Web marketers "bait" users with links such as "Make money from the web", "How to make women obsess over you" and "Radical weight loss system melts fat away".
Tips
Clicking on these links usually results in a lengthy video that ultimately tries to convince the user to buy the "secret knowledge".
But despite efforts to shut down clickbaiters though, they can easily re-spawn.
"The unfortunate reality of spammers or link baiters is that whist many of them do get caught and shut down, it is not difficult for them to reopen their establishments from a different server," said Steenkamp.
Watch this video where Andre Steenkamp explains why clickbait works:
For brands, Steenkamp offers these tips to ensure that they employ authentic internet marketing strategies:
Relevance is key
Real and meaningful engagement is driven by relevance and continuity i.e. the advertisement will take the user on a logical and relevant journey that may very well lead to a purchase. If however an advert takes you to an irrelevant page then it is blatant trickery.
Is it factually verifiable?
Any advertisements that are backed up by relevant facts and that direct users to a valuable resources page can be considered a form of engagement. If the claims are blatantly sensationalised and are not factually verifiable then it could very well be a form of link bait.
How targeted is the communication?
Effective engagement is about building relationships by adding value through relevant and highly targeted communication. If an online claim or proposition feels relevant to your life then it is likely to be a legitimate and professional form of communication. On the flip side, link baiting is very much synonymous with spray and pray tactics.
Have you opted in?
Link baiting or content trickery is another form of spam, whereas authentic engagement will require a user to opt in, or consciously choose or request to receive the information.
Watch this video where Andre Steenkamp explains how clickbait will evolve:
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