Interesting ads, at least on the internet, have such low return because the ratio of time/effort/money put into them vs how much they make is so low. If the re

Interesting ads, at least on the internet, have such low return because the ratio of time/effort/money put into them vs how much they make is so low. If the return, in absolute terms, is the same as for an ad that no time/effort/money was put into (largely just mentioning the brand name, which is what a lot of ads are) is going to be a higher ratio and thus what people end up generating. It's purely economics. Even video ads, on television, that could be considered to have "gone viral" may get a lot of face time in front of consumers because they are interesting, but they don't necessarily increase actual sales. And a lot of these more interesting ads may not focus enough on the brand--how many times have you seen an ad on television and thought "what exactly are they trying to sell me here?" or "is this really the message they want to send about this product?"--and you may remember the ad but forget what it's about. Making ads "interesting" isn't some silver bullet that is going to increase sales, but it most likely is some silver bullet that will get more eyeballs looking at your ads. When was the last time you saw a car ad that didn't have a bunch of meaningless data points (some defensible but largely irrelevant mention of "handling", damn even MPG is used like a throwaway data point in car ads) or show the car driving through some city scape or mountain pass? They _all_ show exactly the same thing. I'd like to see more ads like the early radio ads (does Paul Harvey still these?) where something is specifically endorsed by a personality (rather than just being a paid familiar voice) and the ads are less fluff and catchphrases and more listing benefits and competitive comparisons. This would be hard to do because a lot of ads are purposely misleading or downright lies because they are advertising commodities or consumer items that actually have no benefits or are not differentiable. Truly informative ads might not be entertaining, but they would definitely be more useful than, oh, say having the "Tap The Rockies" Coors Light song in my head because I mentioned "Silver Bullet" up there. And I _don't_even_drink_or_intend_to_drink_ Coors Light (so that's a wasted ad on the part of the advertiser).