WHAT'S THE POINT?

What a silly question! Advertising communicates and compels. Like the internet itself, it reduces transaction costs by making it far easier for buyers to find the sellers. Advertising works, and can generate far more business activity than it costs. I get to watch free broadcast TV because the ads pay for it. Bring 'em on.

I have friends that borrow my daily newspaper to read the ads. They couldn't care less about the news, which is arguably just a different form of advertising.

Advertising is truly annoying when it is unwanted (no billboards in church), badly targeted (tampon ads during a football game) or so poorly conceived that it fails to communicate and compel (local used car lot ads come to mind, or the screaming idiot at the local pawn shop). A lot of very smart people make their livings by trying to direct appropriate advertising to the right audience. They often fail and their failures are painfully obvious.

 

The internet is a marketeers dream. You search for what you seek, you follow the link, it counts as a conversion for the marketeer. Its now up to the sales script to sell you the product or service.

Why did you choose item a vice item b?
Price? Reputation of company? Word of mouth recommendation? Youtube recommendation?

All are out to get your purchasing dollar.

 

The internet is slowly crushing the "Telephone Book Business" with a company that can brand his service or product and with a good search engine. Your customer can find you within a few clicks; I think for business and economic growth it's a two fold winner.

Heck I can ruin a saturday morning watching DIY stuff on Youtube and all the while I will endure the pain of the stupid Avert plugs at the beginning of the videos.

Some plugs hit me and some don't. Meanwhile those hits are just another cap in the Marketing business.

kv

 

Advertisements rarely have any affect on me but the last computer(upgrade) I bought was something I saw as an ad in the newspaper. It was the cheapest I could find without ordering something online and I was in need of a new one. It costed about 300 bucks with a motherboard, CPU, RAM, tower and a power supply. Nothing fancy but still works after 4 years of use and abuse.

The funny thing is though that I accidentally bought a slightly different upgrade than had been advertised because I went to a different store and they had similar deals on those upgrades. Didn't notice until I saw the same ad again and thought to myself. Wait this is not the store I went to

About spam. Not a fan and can honestly say that I've never bought anything advertised through spam. So their efforts are lost on me and most people that have surfed the web for more than a week...

Yet apparently spam does work otherwise they wouldn't do it. Right?..

 

I still think that's the best hat I have ever seen on a cat!

 

I still think that's the best hat I have ever seen on a cat!

Yeah when I saw that picture I felt a sudden urge to save it to my computer for my personal backup of the internet

 

Maybe I like it because I used to have a cat that climbed my chair and sat on my head. I said, "This crazy cat thinks he's a hat!" and that's how Crazy Cat earned his name.

 

I still think that's the best hat I have ever seen on a cat!

The phrase, "... or I'll eat my hat," comes to mind.

 

Overall, advertising is an inefficient process and connecting a specific advertisement (such as a commercial or billboard) to an actual purchase (determining correlation VS causation) has been obscure and an uncertain process.

However, with automated ad tracking (like Google invented), the practice of "mass marketing" has been declared all but a failure. The proliferation of Pop Up and SPAM blockers eloquently demonstrate that people don't want indiscriminate advertising unless they are interested in that specific product in the first place.

Targeted advertising (based on the past history of visits to various commercial sites) seems to be more efficient. Sites like YouTube also monitor the exact number of seconds that a pop up is displayed until the viewer clicks the "X" or a positive response is detected. With scientific feedback, advertisers are now getting a good picture of what does -and doesn't- work

 

Targeted advertising (based on the past history of visits to various commercial sites) seems to be more efficient. Sites like YouTube also monitor the exact number of seconds that a pop up is displayed until the viewer clicks the "X" or a positive response is detected. With scientific feedback, advertisers are now getting a good picture of what does -and doesn't- work

Or so they like to think. But they have a hard time taking a number of significant factors into account and, as a result, generally ignore them altogether. For instance, I (and a growing number of people) block third-party cookies, so they don't have access to the majority of my visit history. Also, I often glance at ads that are on websites (provided they aren't annoying) and I occasionally will look into the item or company but never by clicking the ad on the site. I will use Google or some other way to get information and links. So on the rare occasion that I have ended up making a purchase, it might well have been because of their ad on a website but they think it was from using Google (or whatever). This distorts the data. How much is an unknown.

Also, conclusions drawn about marketing effectiveness based on internet behavior is almost certainly not very applicable to other forms of marketing as people's behavior is very context dependent. I would imagine that I am not alone in almost never even glancing at an advertisement in Time or some other main-stream publication but I often look at ads in magazines that are related to my interests such as ARRL's QST or other electronics publications or even aviation or scuba diving pubs.

Also, even highly ineffective advertising can be profitable if the cost is disproportionately low.

 

WBahn,

Relevant sponsored ads on google also cost money and the more money spent, the higher number of times you maintain the top spot. Even those may or may not be cost effective. I don't have any figures on the conversions from ad clicks to paid customers handy and anything on the internet will be by someone with a marketing background.

As a new business (repair shop) to an area about a decade ago, I had chosen one of those small "free" magazines (distribution of about 10,000) and placed a one month ad. From that ad, I got a phone call wanting me to advertise on the telephone book cover given out by the chamber of commerce. The other call, was from the printer who produces those paper place mats you see in diners. Well, the only thing I got out of my ad was two contacts in 10,000. Also it got me thinking "who in the hell reads those place mats?" I started reading them and the ads were unusual. Is there someone out there in the world who goes to breakfast and read the place mat to find a funeral home? That's more than likely just a venue to "get your name out" and not really drive clients to your door.

I had asked my brother in law, a well digger, how many contacts his business received from the "yellow pages". He didn't know.

The internet had made advertising more targeted.

Speaking of advertising, about twenty years ago, it was considered proper netiquette, not to market on the BBS', however, putting your website address was ok, and wasn't considered advertising unless you purposefully mentioned the website in an attempt to "drive" people to your website. There were strict rules against such spam. I think I still have that printout of netiquette in my files. But, times have changed.

 

Last year I interviewed at a small technology company, so small that the main interviewer was the company founder and president. At one point I asked about marketing. He showed me the Google ads and stated that's the only marketing tool used. These ads generated 100% of new business.

 

Speaking of advertising, about twenty years ago, it was considered proper netiquette, not to market on the BBS', however, putting your website address was ok, and wasn't considered advertising unless you purposefully mentioned the website in an attempt to "drive" people to your website. There were strict rules against such spam. I think I still have that printout of netiquette in my files. But, times have changed.

PRINTOUT? What kind of early technology adopter were you? It should have all been saved to your hard drive, not printed and stuffed into the 5-drawer Steelcase file. How do you copy and paste flames to violators when it is saved as a hard copy?



I guess you do recover with...

But, times have changed.

 

The printout was from yhe late 1980s when bbs' were popular. Im sure it was on and old floppy drive .... 5.25 all zipped up with otjer files.