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I like to think incentives matter, always have and always will. TV had "viewers", but how many were changing the channel during commercials? Newspapers had "c

I like to think incentives matter, always have and always will. TV had "viewers", but how many were changing the channel during commercials? Newspapers had "circulation", but how many were sitting in hotel hallways or mulching on driveways? Direct mail had "addresses", but how many of those were left on the side of the road or tossed straight into the trash? Radio had "listeners", but nobody believed those numbers anyway. Etc. Speaking of, by far the most popular "videos" on YouTube are music videos. How many of their so-called watch time metrics are actually people listening to music while they work? For me that's several hours a day. So yeah, the crazy thing to me is how poor of a job our society has done at teaching people how to think for themselves. INCENTIVES MATTER!

linuxftw 6y ago
I'm not in the advertising industry, so my knowledge is quite limited. But TV adds do work. Are you in the US? "Better Ingredients, Better Pizza, Papa Johns." I even know what Papa John looks like. Then there's the surveys they send out to consumers like "Which of these brands have you heard of?" and that kind of stuff. They can loosely extrapolate advertising penetration with that information. There's always going to be some portion of advertising that is ineffective. Not everyone is going to see every commercial or read every piece of junk mail (junk mail being the bottom end of traditional effectiveness, I think, but they have these coupon envelopes that have local small businesses and I'm pretty sure those are quite effective). As far as TV/Radio, they have lead in and lead out commercials. Those commercials closest to the content are most valuable. > Speaking of, by far the most popular "videos" on YouTube are music videos. Totally agree here. I've never tried to advertise on YouTube (or most media, for that matter, not my industry), but smaller niche channels seem to be good at picking up their own sponsors and advertisers. Similar to how some radio shows do live reads of advertising material. The "My Pillow Guy" buys a lot of these, same with Sherri's Berries.
- jlbnjmn 6y ago
  All advertising viewed/heard by actual humans has potential to increase sales. I was not meaning to say that any of those mediums are ineffective, simply that inflated numbers aren't a new problem. YouTube ads are actually one of the best values right now, because 1) a lot of advertisers are scared of video ads and 2) you get access to search audiences. That being said, I don't care how great Google tells me my YouTube campaigns were. I care about dollars spent and leads that became paying customers (with a recognition that direct attribution undercounts, so break even is positive).

linuxftw 6y ago

I'm not in the advertising industry, so my knowledge is quite limited. But TV adds do work. Are you in the US? "Better Ingredients, Better Pizza, Papa Johns." I even know what Papa John looks like. Then there's the surveys they send out to consumers like "Which of these brands have you heard of?" and that kind of stuff. They can loosely extrapolate advertising penetration with that information. There's always going to be some portion of advertising that is ineffective. Not everyone is going to see every commercial or read every piece of junk mail (junk mail being the bottom end of traditional effectiveness, I think, but they have these coupon envelopes that have local small businesses and I'm pretty sure those are quite effective). As far as TV/Radio, they have lead in and lead out commercials. Those commercials closest to the content are most valuable. > Speaking of, by far the most popular "videos" on YouTube are music videos. Totally agree here. I've never tried to advertise on YouTube (or most media, for that matter, not my industry), but smaller niche channels seem to be good at picking up their own sponsors and advertisers. Similar to how some radio shows do live reads of advertising material. The "My Pillow Guy" buys a lot of these, same with Sherri's Berries.

jlbnjmn 6y ago
All advertising viewed/heard by actual humans has potential to increase sales. I was not meaning to say that any of those mediums are ineffective, simply that inflated numbers aren't a new problem. YouTube ads are actually one of the best values right now, because 1) a lot of advertisers are scared of video ads and 2) you get access to search audiences. That being said, I don't care how great Google tells me my YouTube campaigns were. I care about dollars spent and leads that became paying customers (with a recognition that direct attribution undercounts, so break even is positive).