KEY TAKEAWAY: Online ad fraud is rampant and media like radio and newspapers are dismissed far too easily by marketers, who need to open their minds to the real possibilities. Marketers can always justify their media choices and make such a good argument they fool the most critical audience of all – themselves.
Consider these facts:
1ne: In a recent study, Adobe found that about[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””] 28% of website traffic showed strong “non-human signals[/inlinetweet],” leading the company to believe that the traffic came from bots or click farms. The company studied traffic across websites belonging to thousands of clients.
2wo: Though marketers such as Mozilla and Pep Boys have said they’re pulling spending on Facebook ads at least for now, advertisers across the board are more likely to keep buying there. They’re giving the social network the benefit of the doubt, calculating that its problems won’t taint them or both.
3hree: Last week. Ebiquity, a well-respected marketing analytics firm headquartered in London released a significant media study. The objective of the study was to compare what advertisers and agencies think different media types deliver to what they actually deliver.
For return on investment (ROI) there is, at least, a much closer correlation between perception and performance. Echoing other research from other independent sources, it is clear that digital media in general gets far too much credit for delivering an ROI versus its actual performance.
Then there are marketers who ignore our aging population..
Marketers obsessed with millennials and “Gen Z” are paying no attention at all to the startling demographic changes that are happening in society. The advertising and media industries have no idea how to deal with older consumers or even how to depict it. Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled “Elderly in U.S. Are Projected to Outnumber Children for First Time.” In the article, the US Census Bureau is quoted as projecting that by 2035 “..[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””].people over 65 years old would outnumber children[/inlinetweet].”
People over 50 are responsible for over 50% of consumer spending in the US. If Americans over 50 were their own country, they’d be the 3rd largest economy in the world — bigger than Japan, Germany or India. They are the target for 10% of US advertising.
[inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]While people over 50 comprise 42% of adults in the US, they comprise only 6% of agency employees[/inlinetweet]. This is even more pronounced in creative departments where people over 50 make up about 0% of the population. [inlinetweet prefix=”” tweeter=”” suffix=””]People over 50 aren’t creative enough to write a banner ad, but they are creative enough to dominate in Nobels, Pulitzers, Oscars, and Emmys.[/inlinetweet] I guarantee you, not one of these brilliantly talented people could get a job in an ad agency today. Not one.
