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At the same time, I don't buy a coke by clicking on the ad' when it airs on TV... The impact of commercial is beyond the simple immediate relation "click & buy"

by Joky 12y ago

At the same time, I don't buy a coke by clicking on the ad' when it airs on TV... The impact of commercial is beyond the simple immediate relation "click & buy".

jonnathanson 12y ago
Yes, but with so many alternative online advertising vehicles that can be measured more precisely, or that can be attributed to purchase in a shorter and more direct cycle, website display advertising gets deprioritized in media plans. There's a very real value to awareness campaigns, but awareness campaigns are out of fashion at the moment. It's all about attribution and measurable response right now. The pendulum has swung too far in that direction, if you ask me. But it's very hard to argue with numbers you can tool around with and impact directly, or with placements that you can buy into programmatically, and not on fixed sales cycles. Also, no one site or publication -- no matter how valuable its readership niche -- can outcompete the scale and the addressibility of the dozens and dozens of ad networks out there these days. (Or, at least, very few sites are perceived to be able to outcompete networks.) Ad-supported publishing is in an unfortunate and precarious position, as this piece sadly but correctly identifies.
B-Con 12y ago
There are different goals of advertising. Brand awareness and purchase oriented (I forget the technical names). Most online advertising has revolved around driving purchases, with brand awareness only establishing even a non-negligible online presence fairly recently. When someone creates the ads the ad almost always focuses on one of those two things. Purchase oriented ads are expected to produce a certain number of actual purchase, have metrics to measure their success, and have one set of techniques. Brand awareness has different metrics and generally takes different means to be successful. My understanding (as an outsider who doesn't work directly in advertising) is that failed purchase-oriented ads are not viewed as successful brand awareness ads. If they wanted brand awareness they'd do a separate ad campaign that targets that specifically and would do a better job. So if a purchase ad fails to drive purchasing, it's still considered a failure.
- EdwardDiego 12y ago
  > There are different goals of advertising. Brand awareness and purchase oriented (I forget the technical names). Most online advertising has revolved around driving purchases, with brand awareness only establishing even a non-negligible online presence fairly recently. What? > My understanding (as an outsider who doesn't work directly in advertising) Aah. Yeah, in our market, you're not correct about brand awareness campaigns being a) recent and b) neglible. Most of our biggest spending campaigns are branding campaigns, and have been since 2007. Big caveat - I'm not in the US market. The technical terms tend to be CPM/CPC/CPx/CPO, depending on who you're talking to - cost per thousand impressions (branding), cost per click, cost per conversion, cost per order.
  - inthewoods 12y ago
    I think the words he's looking for are brand awareness vs. direct response.
  - B-Con 12y ago
    Yeah, I am in the US market. My impression was that impressions were much less popular campaigns to run. But that's really an aside, and I might be wrong. :-) My point was that (by my understanding) an ad aimed at generating clicks or conversions was measured for success by whether it generated clicks or conversions. It wouldn't be redeemed by being getting a lot of impressions if it failed on those counts. If the advertiser cared about impressions, they'd be running a campaign targeted at impressions.
    - EdwardDiego 12y ago
      Well, CPC/CPx/CPO campaigns only pay on those events, so yeah, impressions are a cost only. But those campaigns tend to predominate on low-value inventory, whereas the branding campaigns naturally want a higher end of the market for impressions and the demographics viewing them. Non-CPM is where Google really shines, their click-through on CPC is, AFAIK, an order of magnitude above the industry average.
randallsquared 12y ago
In order to make you actually want to view an advertisement, though, the cost of doing so has to be low in comparison to the cost of skipping it. For TVs, this means that short spots and commercials on live content work well, and others not as well (which is reflected in the pricing for 30 second spots). For the web, adblock and "click to skip" means not even seeing an ad for the many (most?), which removes the chance to have any positive impact. The ways forward as I see them are Make your advertising compelling in and of itself, so that people want to see it. Make the content that is being shown after or around the advertising so compelling that people will put up with your attempts to advertise to them (there's been a lot of pushback on such attempts on the web; does anyone bother with popups any more?). Do something that's not advertising.
andrewbinstock 12y ago
As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, you're quite correct. However, that kind of advertising works primarily in the consumer market, where repeated exposure via many different channels ultimately leads to a purchase. In software development, which is dominated by small vendors, that approach is not as workable.

by Joky 12y ago

At the same time, I don't buy a coke by clicking on the ad' when it airs on TV... The impact of commercial is beyond the simple immediate relation "click & buy".

jonnathanson 12y ago

Yes, but with so many alternative online advertising vehicles that can be measured more precisely, or that can be attributed to purchase in a shorter and more direct cycle, website display advertising gets deprioritized in media plans. There's a very real value to awareness campaigns, but awareness campaigns are out of fashion at the moment. It's all about attribution and measurable response right now. The pendulum has swung too far in that direction, if you ask me. But it's very hard to argue with numbers you can tool around with and impact directly, or with placements that you can buy into programmatically, and not on fixed sales cycles. Also, no one site or publication -- no matter how valuable its readership niche -- can outcompete the scale and the addressibility of the dozens and dozens of ad networks out there these days. (Or, at least, very few sites are perceived to be able to outcompete networks.) Ad-supported publishing is in an unfortunate and precarious position, as this piece sadly but correctly identifies.

B-Con 12y ago

There are different goals of advertising. Brand awareness and purchase oriented (I forget the technical names). Most online advertising has revolved around driving purchases, with brand awareness only establishing even a non-negligible online presence fairly recently. When someone creates the ads the ad almost always focuses on one of those two things. Purchase oriented ads are expected to produce a certain number of actual purchase, have metrics to measure their success, and have one set of techniques. Brand awareness has different metrics and generally takes different means to be successful. My understanding (as an outsider who doesn't work directly in advertising) is that failed purchase-oriented ads are not viewed as successful brand awareness ads. If they wanted brand awareness they'd do a separate ad campaign that targets that specifically and would do a better job. So if a purchase ad fails to drive purchasing, it's still considered a failure.

EdwardDiego 12y ago
> There are different goals of advertising. Brand awareness and purchase oriented (I forget the technical names). Most online advertising has revolved around driving purchases, with brand awareness only establishing even a non-negligible online presence fairly recently. What? > My understanding (as an outsider who doesn't work directly in advertising) Aah. Yeah, in our market, you're not correct about brand awareness campaigns being a) recent and b) neglible. Most of our biggest spending campaigns are branding campaigns, and have been since 2007. Big caveat - I'm not in the US market. The technical terms tend to be CPM/CPC/CPx/CPO, depending on who you're talking to - cost per thousand impressions (branding), cost per click, cost per conversion, cost per order.
- inthewoods 12y ago
  I think the words he's looking for are brand awareness vs. direct response.
- B-Con 12y ago
  Yeah, I am in the US market. My impression was that impressions were much less popular campaigns to run. But that's really an aside, and I might be wrong. :-) My point was that (by my understanding) an ad aimed at generating clicks or conversions was measured for success by whether it generated clicks or conversions. It wouldn't be redeemed by being getting a lot of impressions if it failed on those counts. If the advertiser cared about impressions, they'd be running a campaign targeted at impressions.
  - EdwardDiego 12y ago
    Well, CPC/CPx/CPO campaigns only pay on those events, so yeah, impressions are a cost only. But those campaigns tend to predominate on low-value inventory, whereas the branding campaigns naturally want a higher end of the market for impressions and the demographics viewing them. Non-CPM is where Google really shines, their click-through on CPC is, AFAIK, an order of magnitude above the industry average.

randallsquared 12y ago

In order to make you actually want to view an advertisement, though, the cost of doing so has to be low in comparison to the cost of skipping it. For TVs, this means that short spots and commercials on live content work well, and others not as well (which is reflected in the pricing for 30 second spots). For the web, adblock and "click to skip" means not even seeing an ad for the many (most?), which removes the chance to have any positive impact. The ways forward as I see them are Make your advertising compelling in and of itself, so that people want to see it. Make the content that is being shown after or around the advertising so compelling that people will put up with your attempts to advertise to them (there's been a lot of pushback on such attempts on the web; does anyone bother with popups any more?). Do something that's not advertising.

andrewbinstock 12y ago

As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, you're quite correct. However, that kind of advertising works primarily in the consumer market, where repeated exposure via many different channels ultimately leads to a purchase. In software development, which is dominated by small vendors, that approach is not as workable.