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Earth to Online Ad Industry: Prepare for a Planetary Crash
By dave_pasternack | May 27, 2008
Sometimes reality just creeps up on you and slams you with a 2 by 4, and this is exactly what seems to be happening with the online ad industry. Slowly, it’s dawning on people that you can’t run an industry on nothing more than hot air, whatever fancy names (”brand engagement, view-through conversions) you come up with to sugar-coat the fact that the vast majority of online advertising does not work. Users ruthlessly screen out irrelevant junk as they scour the info-ways for a few rare nuggets of useful information. Roadblock delays and pre-rolls deliver resentment, not engagement. The whole $300 billion advertising business is really only worth $50 billion, after you remove all the inefficiencies and tradition-bound price inflation.
I’ve been slamming at this issue for years, but now that, miracle of miracles, Jacob Nielsen has lent his considerable intellectual girth to the struggle, we might actually see some reality-based decisions made by the deep-walleted folks who pay the bills once they read the following articles all pointing out the scandalous truth about this industry: it’s broken and poised to take a classic Humpty Dumpty Fall:
(BBC News)
Why Do Traditional Advertising Formats Fail on the Web? (Seeking Alpha)
Why is so much money still being spent on banner, rich-media, pre-roll junk? Part of the reason is because it appears that many C-level executives with budgetary authority are stuck in a time warp where TV and newspapers are the “leading edge.” No wonder they can’t distinguish functional and dysfunctional digital advertising media!
See: Top Executives Exploring Digital Space (Center for Media Research - note: this article has a very poorly chosen title. It should have been “Top Executives FAIL to Explore Digital Space”)
Topics: I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Clicking on It Anymore, Old vs. New Media, Online Ad Industry Foolishness |
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