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advertising

Living in 1990

June 17, 2010 20:51:24.039

I love this take on the effectiveness of newspaper ads, as compared to social media/web stuff:

I can choose to place an ad in the New York Times if my target is nationwide or in my town’s paper if it is locally relevant. I can direct (control) who sees my ad. The folks following me on Twitter are from all over the world. As far as I know, there isn’t a simple way to reach only the those in a particular market. Nor do I currently have a strong enough local base of followers. I would need to find someone else local with a bunch of followers and hope they’d re-tweet for me.

The targeting thing is only partly correct. Why? Well, what are the circulation numbers? What's the demographic uptake? At least in the US, the readership for printed news drops through the floor the lower the age bracket gets.

The better question is, would traditional ads do you much good anyway? I still think most advertising is a shared fiction, where the buyers and sellers agree to pretend that something useful is happening.

posted by James Robertson

Comments

Re: Living in 1990

[Byron] June 17, 2010 23:41:21.080

Er, most online advertising options let you target to metro area pretty easily.

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