Tag Archives: advertising

December 12, 2012 · 11:25 am

Click Here

We’ve discussed the disconnect between marketers and consumers here on the screed more than once and I had set aside a research study a couple of weeks ago to do so again.  It’s a document from the Adobe folks called “Click Here: The State Of Online Advertising” and it makes for a brief, interesting read.  As one might expect, consumers don’t exactly rave about their love for advertising.  That said, they do seem to recognize the need for advertising and prefer professionally created ads over user-generated marketing:

Consumers and marketing professionals agree that marketing is valued, strategic to business and paramount to driving sales.  Professional advertising is the most effective form of advertising, but 27% of marketers believe that user-generated content is the most popular form of online advertising.

Of course, 53% agree that most marketing is a bunch of B.S. (the study’s term, not mine).  The key to me is, as eMarketer reported:

Marketers and the consumers they are trying to reach disagreed on the effectiveness of a wide variety of ad types, according to the survey. Though both groups thought the best ads were those created by professional marketers, nearly half of marketers said this, compared with just 36% of internet users. There was large disagreement about the effectiveness of paid search ads (touted by marketers, played down by web users) and outdoor advertising (the reverse). Internet users were also much more likely to say there were no good or effective ads—positions which marketers were extremely unlikely to hold, for obvious reasons.

Why are the senders so out of sync with the receivers?  As the study shows, people prefer to get information from people they trust.  The issue, then, is how does a brand penetrate that circle?  Does anyone believe it’s through fake “likes” on Facebook where we see friends (even dead ones!) shilling for stuff they wouldn’t ever use?  Maybe we need to be less lazy – tell better stories, do better creative – since 68% of consumers find online ads “annoying” and “distracting” and 54% say banner ads don’t work. I suspect this dichotomy has ever been so to a certain extent.  For people in the market for various products, marketing messages are important and welcome.  For everyone else, they’re an annoying fact of life.

Here’s the thing – EVERYONE is in the market for something nearly all the time.  Food and entertainment, for example, are daily “purchases”.  As the research shows, until we on the marketing side do a better job of connecting, our ability to influence those decisions will always be less than it could be.   You agree?

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October 24, 2012 · 10:44 am

Who Has A Reputation Worse Than Politicians? You Do!

We often hear that the professions that have the worst reputations among the public are bankers and politicians.  A study commissioned by Adobe and fielded by research firm Edelman Berland and reported in Ad Age finds that there is a group of professionals held in lower esteem:  marketers.  The study found that while people understand that marketing is an important role in business, they also think very little of those of us who do it and the value we bring to society.  According to the study, the majority of consumers –53%– stated that most marketing is “a bunch of B.S.”

When asked if marketing benefits society, only 13% of consumers agreed. And compared to other professions, the results were grim. Teachers — despite how little they are often compensated — were valued at the top of the list, followed by scientists and engineers. That’s somewhat to be expected. But what was more surprising was that advertising and marketing ranked below nearly every other profession, including bankers (32%), lawyers (34%) and even politicians (18%). Marketing and advertising were tied with the job of an actor or actress in terms of its value.

Ouch.  Then again, we bring these things on ourselves.  Think about what the public experiences with respect to marketing these days.  Spam in their in boxes.  Data being gathered surreptitiously and used without their knowledge or permission.  Those go along with issues that have been there for years – ads that seem (or are) sleazy (way too much fine print to be real), using media as a bullhorn via the “spray and pray” method, and an industry with not enough accountability for results.

Fortunately, we have a chance to change this as the nature of marketing itself has changed.  While consumers don’t like ads in digital (there’s a lot of evidence on that) they DO welcome the opportunity to engage marketers in conversation via these channels.  The study shows that just 2% of respondents believe information about a brand from a company’s social-media site is credible, however, so there is some work that needs to be done there.  As we’ve discussed before, there needs to be a paradigm shift on the part of we who communicate with consumers before the consumers will respond with a similar shift.  It takes time to build trust.

This is not a study that should make anyone engaged in marketing feel good.  It should be a wake-up call for transparency and more respectful  grown-up dialog with our customers.  That’s my take.  What’s yours?

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October 4, 2012 · 11:00 am

Advertorials

If the internet has a downside, it’s that is has neither barriers to entry nor a filter.  Of course, that’s also part of what’s so good about it.  However, there is really no way to tell if what you’re reading is from a credible source that did research or if it’s just made up crap.  One way I think users can distinguish one from the other is by considering the source.  Legitimate news operations tend to have done their homework and there’s usually some sort of editorial control in place to assure that some writer’s fantasy doesn’t get put out there as fact.

That’s why I found the story in this morning’s Media Post so disturbing:

If there is a red line delineating the church and state of journalism, some big news publishers have just crossed it — introducing a spate of new “native” advertising formats that blur the line between advertising and editorial content in new ways, including brand-produced videos served directly in the news organizations’ video news players.

This is not a new phenomenon.  “Advertorials” have been around for a long time.  These are long-form ads written to appear as regular editorial and are designed to look like a legitimate and independent news story. It might be a TV piece that’s an “infomercial,” or as a segment on a talk show or variety show. In radio, it might be a discussion between the announcer and a brand representative.  The brand usually controls all of the content and there are subtile differences – a tiny “advertisement” written someplace – that make it hard for someone encountering the content to tell that it’s brand advocacy, not editorial.

I’m not a fan.  Obviously I’m a big fan of ad-supported media – I worked in it and sold it for decades.  I do think, however, that doing this in digital in particular is an issue since there is so much content out there and users’ expectations of editorial integrity as explained above are not met when the line is crossed.  It calls into question all of the legitimate reporting.  I get that people might ignore advertising but pay attention to this.  They need to know it’s not the same as other content.

The pressure for revenue can’t undermine the integrity of the news brand, and while it’s easy to rationalize including this sort of advertising, you’re ceding control to someone who may not meet the same sort of standards you set for your organization.  I don’t think that’s smart.

What do you think?

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