4 ms·

Well I think there's an important thing to be mentioned here (something that I believe Nielsen stated in the past), which clogged the mind of many marketers - t

Well I think there's an important thing to be mentioned here (something that I believe Nielsen stated in the past), which clogged the mind of many marketers - the effectiveness of a medium isn't bound to an action. An ad doesn't need to be clicked, or have any form of interaction, to be effective, because there's no correlation between clicks and brand impact/recall. It's like for years brands were buying snake oil and online advertising brought the truth forward, and was the only truly transparent medium - backed by data. Funny enough it has been increasingly showing itself as nothing but transparent... fortunately there are tools and organizations focused to help clear these waters (with ad fraud and viewability metrics). Anyway, this all goes to say that, depending on the brand, a proper media mix for a brand communication strategy is quite complex. For a long time there has been data to back it up (though admittedly not the most accurate one - but still, it had something to support it). In some countries radio is audited by declarative studies for example - it's far from perfect, and it has room to improve - but it's not a blind pick based on gut feeling. Online advertising just created this odd gap between marketers and traditional media. Maybe because the barrier to access online advertising was lower, both in terms of cost as well as to the medium itself... but it has always been in use. For an instance, luxury goods never stopped investing in OOH... Apple positions itself near such OOH communication as well, for a long time. So, it's good media owners are focused on improving the measurement of this medium, and maybe should focus as well on the way it's bought (though they seem to do fine without the bidding system of online advertising).

reaperducer 8y ago
I've noticed that the biggest online advertisers are rarely the largest advertisers overall. Sure, there are airlines that target travelers and travel sites. But I've only once seen a Coca-Cola or McDonald's ad, for two examples. Yet these are massive companies who seem to only advertise offline. There's a reason for this. They didn't get to become enormous companies by having stupid marketing departments. They know more about advertising than anyone at AdWords or Exponential or Federated. The advertisers I see online are smaller companies, and internet companies advertising at each other. The only times I see a big brand advertise online, it's when the ad has been very carefully placed on very specific websites that match what the brand offers.
- libertine 8y ago
  Well I guess that depends a lot from market to market. For example, here in Portugal both Coca Cola and McDonalds use youtube a lot (well coca cola used to advertise more overall, now, not so much - maybe because other brands present no threat in this market). But mass market companies can afford the "waste" broad media has, and can afford frequency - so they pump a lot of GRPs to achieve their goals... a lot of reach and quite some frequency.
analyst74 8y ago
> Maybe because the barrier to access online advertising was lower, both in terms of cost as well as to the medium itself You mentioned about this offhandedly, but this is one of the main reasons for current landscape. For companies without a massive revenue/profit and marketing budget, which is most of them, investing a large chunk of money into something that "maybe" works is a hard decision. Heck, even hiring someone who has a track record of delivering good off line marketing result is probably out of reach for them. Think of it this way, before online ads, how do small companies market their product/service to non-local customers?
- libertine 8y ago
  Well it might have been a poor choice of words, but there was also a time where online advertising was a mayhem with no centralized inventory - it just evolved very quickly. Well before online ads and a DIY (or in house) media buying for small companies, there used to be agencies that would help with this - media agencies exist for quite some time... but outside of this, I guess it would depend on the product/service. Basically they had centrals to buy media space a "re-sell" it. Other then that, you had to go POS (Point of Sale) communication, or go to someone who bought and managed media (agencies).
rdtsc 8y ago
> An ad doesn't need to be clicked, or have any form of interaction, to be effective, because there's no correlation between clicks and brand impact/recall. With billboards there is an implicit "click" in a way for every car that drives by. It is shoved into their faces, whether they want to or not. At least online, you can block ads. So the action is a car driving by. With some modeling could guess how many average cars would drive on that particular segment. A billboard on a rural road might be worth a lot less than one one say I-90 or I-75. With magazines it's the same, they know how may subscribers it was sent to, so there was always some modeling around number of impressions made. How well that's correlated to the people interested, and then people who went and bought something because of it is probably where most of the snake oil is. Another interesting thing is that online, users don't have to just block click, but they can actively subvert the click-based metrics by generating false clicks. Which this extension does: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/
- closeparen 8y ago
  No, there is not an implicit click. There’s an implicit impression. The online ad business has long counted and valued clicks and impressions separately.
  - rdtsc 8y ago
    Ah you're right. A click would indicate user is interested while an impression is that they just saw it.
    - libertine 8y ago
      Just to add that a click can be a mistake as well, or can even not be a human click... one has to be very critical when checking this data. You can generate interest and just trigger an impression (depending on the creative).

reaperducer 8y ago

I've noticed that the biggest online advertisers are rarely the largest advertisers overall. Sure, there are airlines that target travelers and travel sites. But I've only once seen a Coca-Cola or McDonald's ad, for two examples. Yet these are massive companies who seem to only advertise offline. There's a reason for this. They didn't get to become enormous companies by having stupid marketing departments. They know more about advertising than anyone at AdWords or Exponential or Federated. The advertisers I see online are smaller companies, and internet companies advertising at each other. The only times I see a big brand advertise online, it's when the ad has been very carefully placed on very specific websites that match what the brand offers.

libertine 8y ago
Well I guess that depends a lot from market to market. For example, here in Portugal both Coca Cola and McDonalds use youtube a lot (well coca cola used to advertise more overall, now, not so much - maybe because other brands present no threat in this market). But mass market companies can afford the "waste" broad media has, and can afford frequency - so they pump a lot of GRPs to achieve their goals... a lot of reach and quite some frequency.

analyst74 8y ago

> Maybe because the barrier to access online advertising was lower, both in terms of cost as well as to the medium itself You mentioned about this offhandedly, but this is one of the main reasons for current landscape. For companies without a massive revenue/profit and marketing budget, which is most of them, investing a large chunk of money into something that "maybe" works is a hard decision. Heck, even hiring someone who has a track record of delivering good off line marketing result is probably out of reach for them. Think of it this way, before online ads, how do small companies market their product/service to non-local customers?

libertine 8y ago
Well it might have been a poor choice of words, but there was also a time where online advertising was a mayhem with no centralized inventory - it just evolved very quickly. Well before online ads and a DIY (or in house) media buying for small companies, there used to be agencies that would help with this - media agencies exist for quite some time... but outside of this, I guess it would depend on the product/service. Basically they had centrals to buy media space a "re-sell" it. Other then that, you had to go POS (Point of Sale) communication, or go to someone who bought and managed media (agencies).

rdtsc 8y ago

> An ad doesn't need to be clicked, or have any form of interaction, to be effective, because there's no correlation between clicks and brand impact/recall. With billboards there is an implicit "click" in a way for every car that drives by. It is shoved into their faces, whether they want to or not. At least online, you can block ads. So the action is a car driving by. With some modeling could guess how many average cars would drive on that particular segment. A billboard on a rural road might be worth a lot less than one one say I-90 or I-75. With magazines it's the same, they know how may subscribers it was sent to, so there was always some modeling around number of impressions made. How well that's correlated to the people interested, and then people who went and bought something because of it is probably where most of the snake oil is. Another interesting thing is that online, users don't have to just block click, but they can actively subvert the click-based metrics by generating false clicks. Which this extension does: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adnauseam/

closeparen 8y ago
No, there is not an implicit click. There’s an implicit impression. The online ad business has long counted and valued clicks and impressions separately.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  Ah you're right. A click would indicate user is interested while an impression is that they just saw it.
  - libertine 8y ago
    Just to add that a click can be a mistake as well, or can even not be a human click... one has to be very critical when checking this data. You can generate interest and just trigger an impression (depending on the creative).