Nail It With A Shoe

I think we’ve all been in a situation where we didn’t have the right tool for the job.   Maybe you tried to hang a picture using a shoe to drive the nail rather than the hammer you wish you had.  Maybe you tried to do some delicate knife work using a 12 inch chef’s knife rather than the paring knife you needed. Whatever it was, you probably appreciated the need to use the right tool.
Which is why I’m baffled this morning by this headline: CBS, Conde Nast Find Online Banner Ads Worth Only 16% Of A TV Spot. It’s an article on a research study they sponsored which found:

Among Web users, nearly two-thirds (63%) of banner ads were not seen. Respondents’ eyes “passed over” 37% of the Internet ads and “stopped” on slightly less than a third, McPheters & Co. found.

In contrast to online ads, TV and magazine ads generated a strong propensity to be seen and recalled. Full-page, four-color magazine ads were determined to have 83% of the value of a 30-second television commercial, while a typical Internet banner ad has 16% of the value.

Disclaimer – I have not read the study, just this article, and the reporting may be a shoddy as the premise.  However, if this report of what the study found is accurate, my response is a big DUH.
Aside from the fact that this seems to ignore ad skipping on DVR‘s, and page skipping in magazines (lots of research on both of those), it neglects video ads on the web as well as the most important fact: the companies who use digital and other media the best all understand what each medium does well.  TV is great for reach (though less so than it was 15 years ago) and awareness.   Print is great for conveying lots of information. Both are one way media and are NOT how markets engage their consumers. While I’ll admit to having talked to my TV (mostly yelling at a game of some sort), that’s not really two-way and the reality is that banners are only a small piece of what digital marketing is all about.

I hope most folks can see through the self-serving, ridiculous nature of this waste of good research money. Frankly, I wish they’d hired me to help them understand that using the right tools for the job is what is called for in media as well as elsewhere and just because I sell shoes doesn’t mean my tool is the right one for the job.