Commenting About Advertising
I made two comments today that I wanted to share …
In response to Grant’s post about why TV advertising has remained consistent as ratings have dropped: “At the end of the day, the problem with agencies and clients hasn’t changed as much as media has: Agencies are work for hire and therefore subject to a different set of metrics than clients. Those metrics, for better or worse, are still about reach. Getting any significant reach on the web takes a lot more work. What’s more, I think we’re seeing the same thing in the online display advertising market. While most in the industry recognize the inadequacies, it’s still the easiest way to guarantee your message gets in front of a whole bunch of people on the web (whether or not they look at it, of course, is a whole other thing).”
And in response to a post about where the revenue stream for Facebook Connect is: “I agree with you that the data thing is a funny angle, but something still isn’t sitting quite right with me. As you wrote, ‘Google AdWords sit between queries and results, but Facebook sits between people and their friends. That’s where the money in Facebook Connect is.’ That spot Google sits in is valuable because it allows advertisers to target based on consumer mindset/step in the purchase process. But why is sitting between people and their friends valuable? As the New York Times reported, ‘just 57 percent of all users of social networks clicked on an ad in the last year, and only 11 percent of those clicks led to a purchase, IDC said. And it turns out that marketers are not so interested in advertising on pages filled with personal trivia and relationship updates.’ How does this make that situation any better/different? I totally buy that it’s a power play, but I don’t necessarily think Facebook knows to what end.”