The Shared Myth of Advertising is Dying
I've said for a long time that vendors and marketing departments have been living in denial, and just assuming that advertising works. Well - there's new information out there (from Business Insider) that demonstrates what a bad idea that denial is:
"you are 31.25 times more likely to win a prize in the Mega Millions than you are to click on a banner ad." Not only that, "you are 87.8 times more likely to apply to Harvard and get in...112.50 times more likely to sign up for and complete NAVY SEAL training...279.64 times more likely to climb Mount Everest...and 475.28 times more likely to survive a plane crash than you are to click on a banner ad."
This also explains the truly annoying pop-over, roll down (et. al.) ads, which try to trick you into accidentally clicking on them - as if that would actually generate a sale. Vendors have to actually do the hard work of:
- Creating compelling products
- Telling people why those products are useful (in a way that actually engages them - more use case, less flash)
- Stop being lazy with traditional advertising methods
The data is pretty clear; you'll be able to tell the smart vendors from the dumb ones based on how (or if) they react to that data...
Comments
Re: The Shared Myth of Advertising is Dying
[anonymous] July 3, 2011 15:09:47.826
Sure, and the probability the person will buy something is even lower. But, the individual behavior isn't really interesting since advertising is driven by population behaviors. In populations, those probabilities get substantially larger. For example, the population of "people searching for my product" is generally understood to have a probability in the 1-5% range. Multiple that by a billion searches and you're still talking about a large absolute number.