Tag Archives: Advertising and Marketing

November 19, 2018 · 2:28 pm

Why Does Anyone Buy Digital Ads?

Billions of dollars are spent marketing via programmatic advertising. Many billions more are spent paying for app installs – money that changes hands when an ad convinces a consumer to install an app on their smartphone. Ask yourself this: in what other business do you as a customer have a pretty decent chance of being defrauded? Off the top of my head, I can think of used cars and the investment world as places where customers should tread exceptionally carefully. Each of them has a certain subculture of ripping people off and there is a small percentage of bad actors who cause the bulk of the problems.

Try to wrap your head around these numbers. Somewhere between 3% and 37% of ad impressions were found to be from robots and not actually delivered to human eyes. That doesn’t seem bad until you do the math and see that over $6 Billion is spent on fraudulent ad impressions.

Do I have your attention yet? How about this from eMarketer:

eMarketer estimates that $7.1 billion will be spent on mobile app install ads in 2018, up from $6.5 billion last year…Several companies have conducted research that indicates how expensive install fraud is for marketers. Mobile marketing analytics firm Adjust estimated that between July and September 2018, 13.7% of app installs were rejected as fraudulent. According to Tune, app-install fraud cost marketers nearly $2 billion in 2017. DataVisor stated that for some ad networks, half of their app installs are fraudulent.

Is the industry trying to solve this? Of course it is, but it’s almost a Sisyphean task. One problem is solved and another method to defraud marketers and publishers pops up, and it’s been going on this way for as long as I can remember. Even among the legitimate ad service providers, there is an industry-wide reluctance to share the “black box” of how these systems actually do what they do. Do you think it’s only the little guys? It’s not. Facebook has been sued for overreporting how much time users spent watching videos. The suit says that Facebook knows that the majority of video ads on its platform are viewed for very short periods of time—users scroll right past. They claim that if advertisers were more widely aware of this fact, and in particular, if they knew that their advertisements were among those that were not drawing viewers’ attention, they would be less likely to continue buying video advertising from Facebook.

I tell clients that they need to be extremely careful if they go beyond search engine ads into other forms of programmatic. While I am well aware of how effective digital marketing can be, I constantly wonder if the bad actors are making that effectiveness almost impossible to achieve. I don’t know why anyone would enter the sewer that the digital ad world has become, at least not without full protective gear. Am I being too critical here?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media, Huh?

Tagged as , , , ,

October 31, 2018 · 3:43 pm

Going Negative

It’s a bit less than a week before Election Day and I, for one, can’t wait for the elections to be over. That will mean that the political ads will end too, and that can’t happen soon enough.

Putting aside politics, the vast bulk of these ads are horrible marketing. One thing that marketers learned long ago doesn’t work is badmouthing your competition; yet damn near every ad I see across the multitude of channels I watch and stream is 30 seconds of negativity. These folks spend their allotted time distorting positions, taking things out of context, and flat-out lying in many cases. The candidate-produced ads are bad and the PAC-produced ads are even worse. You’d think they’d stop. In 2007, the Journal Of Politics did a study of negative ads. They found:

…that negative ads tended to be more memorable than positive ones but that they did not affect voter choice. People were no less likely to turn out to the polls or to decide against voting for a candidate who was attacked in an ad.

While campaign consultants seem to think that these ads work, science proves otherwise. Of course, there are many folks out there who don’t believe in science but that’s another screed…

It’s bad marketing. Going negative makes you look petty and unprofessional. Playing up your strengths always works better than bashing a competitor’s weaknesses. Good marketers explain how they are going to solve your problems. I think good politicians should do that too. I don’t want “small” people representing me. If you can’t run on your positions and your solutions, then how am I to trust that you can outperform the one running against you?

This applies to your business as well, obviously. Do you see a lot of non-political negative ads? No, you don’t. There are many good reasons for that. Do you see a lot of false claims in non-political ads? You sure don’t – there are laws against it. The FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive advertising in any medium. That is, advertising must tell the truth and not mislead consumers. A claim can be misleading if relevant information is left out or if the claim implies something that’s not true. It seems to me that many political ads do just that, unfortunately.

Politicians may be brands, but they sure don’t advertise as if they were. Going negative isn’t particularly helpful in non-political marketing and it’s just as bad in politics. That’s one man’s opinion. What’s yours?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Huh?, Thinking Aloud

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 1, 2018 · 11:09 am

Learning From Ed Mitchell

I’m going to start the week with something a little unusual (for me, anyway). Although I’ve moved out of my little town in Connecticut I still follow the local happenings there via a couple of local blogs. One of the best is from Dan Woog, a life-long resident. One of his posts this morning really resonated and I thought it would be a great way to start the week here on the screed. You can read Dan’s entire post here and I’d urge you to do so. However, I’m going to summarize some of it below.

The subject is a local clothing store, Ed Mitchells. What resonated with me is how the store puts the customer first and foremost. In an era when the death of local retail at the hands of national chains and online giants is being screamed about in the business press, Mitchells demonstrates that its possible for any business to succeed if it follows a few principles we’ve often discussed here. They know their market and their customers and go way beyond whatever expectations whose customers have. Having shopped there myself I can tell you that this commitment is visible even to the infrequent customer such as myself. Yes, the store is very expensive. Yes, some of what it carries can be found in department stores at lower prices. But I’ll grab a few quotes from Dan’s blog to demonstrate how Mitchells has managed to overcome the challenges many businesses face through great service.

Their website encourages customers to email their personal style advisor, or call a sales associate. All emails are answered by real people…When the store is closed, a phone message offers an actual number to call in the event of a fashion emergency. Those calls are answered by an actual Mitchell family member. Immediately, the problem is taken care of…An unexpected funeral, and no suit. A business meeting, and a forgotten shirt. Things happen. A Mitchell family member will open the store on a Sunday for those issues. If needed, they send a tailor to a customer’s home.

Are those things you’d be willing to do for a client or customer? To demonstrate that this isn’t all store PR, here is one quote from the comments to Dan’s piece:

So here is a great Mitchells story. A friend of mine had to go to London for an emergency work week and dropped all of his suits off to be cleaned and it was Saturday night when he realized he had none of his suits. Here is your fashion emergency. He called Mitchells and they not only opened the store on Sunday for him for 30 minutes to get a few suits, but they had the tailor meet them there and alterations done by 3pm for his night flight.

If you want to be in business for 60 years and counter all the negative trends in your industry, Ed Mitchells is a great place for you to look for inspiration, don’t you think?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , ,