Online Advertising: A Yesterday Business? What?

April 12, 2022

Heresy, sour grapes, truth? It is often difficult to tell even with experts explaining disinformation without stumbling over baloney in college textbooks, news in esteemed entities’ publications, and outputs from Facebook’s chief truth stater.

I read “I Stopped Advertising Everywhere and Nothing Happened.” I thought some of the information was pretty close to dead center; for example, the title of the article. The key phrase was “nothing happened.”

Now things did happen; these events were not visible to the author of the write up. The sales professional handling the account had to report a downturn in spend. That person had to explain the downturn. Maybe the sales professional found him- her- them-self invited to find his her them future elsewhere? (I do struggle with New Speak.)

The write up points out:

Some multi-national organizations have turned off hundreds of millions of pounds of advertising, and seen, no discernible change in sales or conversion.

I underlined this passage:

be aware that in the direct to consumer market, instant conversions are hard.

Do the vendors of online advertising opportunities explain that online advertising may not work as the advertisers’ believe? Nope. The reason in my opinion is that online advertising like full page print ads in a Wall Street Journal type of publication is an artifact from the ruins of Madison Avenue. The chatter about data and hard numbers disguises a simple shift: TikTok-type influencers, athletes wearing stuff after the game, and nudges from YouTube-type outputs are carrying the water. Online advertising has to look as if it is objective and influencer approved to work. Your mileage may vary, particularly if you are the 20 something charged with buying online advertising run by old managers who are living in a world described in a brain filled with accounting tricks and MBA baloney.

Here’s a test: Name the SUV model advertised on YouTube when you searched for “suv.” Give up?

Stephen E Arnold, April12, 2022

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Advertising, Business strategy, News

Comments

Comments are closed.

Search the site
Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive

Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.