Why it is Not Advertising that is Broken, But Advertisers

MouseIf you were reading this article at Techcrunch quickly you might think that advertising is a waste of money. The article reports that a study by comScore reveals some interesting facts about the demographics of ad clickers.

Apparently around half of all the clicks made on ads are generated by only 6% of the total web population. That is an interesting statistic in itself. While we are all familiar with the 80-20% principle, that is extreme.

But really, when you look at your own stats, is it really that surprising that many clicks are “wasted”? A lot of ad clicks are mistakes. Some are curiosity. Many ads are misleading so conversions are poor. People mis target ads or leave ad placement to media buyers who just want to boost their kick back percentage and delegate to low grade staff who don’t know what they are doing, are counting the hours down to clocking off time and certainly don’t care about your campaign.

The news from the survey gets worse:

The average heavy clicker is 25 to 44 years old, earns less than $40,000 a year, spends a lot of time online but not a lot of money online, and likes to frequent auctions, gambling sites and job boards. Sounds like a lot of these heavy clickers are out of work and have nothing to do.

The implication is these people are just idly surfing and have no intention of spending money with you or really taking any notice of what you have to say.

This really isn’t that big a revelation! Really, if you haven’t been measuring ROI then you only have yourself to blame. If you have been measuring ROI you can sit back smug in the knowledge that despite all these conclusions matter not a jot to your bottom line.

If your best campaign strategy is to simply spend money on likely looking sites then you deserve all you get. You do not have to be happy with this default demographic. The targeting tools at your disposal are getting more sophisticated. Microsoft in particular are putting in a lot of effort into demographic targeting. You can do your own research and testing. Of course, that takes more effort than simply lining up a budget and pulling the trigger, which is perhaps where this problem comes from.

The fact is clicks alone are a poor way of tracking campaign success but are an easy metric to fall back on for lazy marketers or unscrupulous agencies. Clicks are not equal to performance but can be argued as if they are.

Clicks are just one metric out of many. When someone clicks they have only taken one desired action in a chain. There is a complete journey from how many see your ad all the way through to those you get to the point of charging their credit card and hopefully being a happy return customer.

Those days of “I know half of my advertising is a waste but I do not know which half” should be long gone. Unfortunately there are still many advertising strategies out there that rely solely on having a fat cheque book.

Posted on February 14, 2008 by Chris Garrett 
Filed Under Google, Microsoft

Comments

2 Responses to “Why it is Not Advertising that is Broken, But Advertisers”

  1. Bizosphere - Home of Carnival of the Capitalists » Blog Archive » Carnival of the Capitalists for February 19, 2008 on February 19th, 2008 12:14 pm

    [...] Codswollop examines Why it is Not Advertising that is Broken, But Advertisers. [...]

  2. Adam on February 22nd, 2008 6:58 am

    Well said!

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