Ad Contrarian

I recently read a book by Bob Hoffman, who runs a blog called the Ad Contrarian. It's a very funny book. He's an old-style TV/print ad guy who has been ranting about the stupidity of the online ad market for decades. He makes the point that the reason trad-ad gets so much money, is because everyone knows that ads are annoying. They're annoying on TV, they're annoying on radio and streaming services, they're annoying in cinemas, they're often annoying in print, and they're especially annoying online. In fact they're more annoying online than anywhere else, and less effective at selling stuff than ads in other media - because online ads are poorly targeted, poorly designed, poorly distributed, lacking in context, and generally nearly useless. All of which could have been changed - and it may or may not be too late now. I think it's worth reading the blog: http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/ (And no - I don't get affiliate income from that link.)

This is a very interesting point, which in fact plays in defense of original article. Bob Hoffmann, very influential figure in advertising (http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/) likes to point out that there were not that many companies which built their strong brand with online advertising only. OK, he is old and grumpy dude and he dislikes online ads, but this is a fair point. Once company becomes big enough, it strives to buy a Super Bowl ad spot. And we are well into 10 years of internet being mainstream media, but how many brands were built online only? Not that much, and I'm saying it as "online ads work", kind of guy.

This was a good article from a while back that shows how every dollar spent on online advertising seems to only result in about 3 cents worth of actual ad views: https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2017/01/display-ads-my-3-worth.html

This topic comes up a lot and Ad Contrarian has had my favorite takes on it. His latest- http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2015/04/death-of-tv-continues-not-to-…

> So many commenters are giving the customer a hard time for realizing, "99% of my budget is spent on zero value, i.e. fraud." This is something the Ad Contrarian hammers on a lot (http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/). There seems to a lot of fraud and BS in the system, but it's to the benefit of most players in the system to ignore that. Even for many ad buyers, it'd be embarrassing for the CMO to admit to having thrown away tons of money on something that doesn't work nearly as well as it's said to.

Some good complementary links on this topic: • "Ads Don't Work That Way" (https://meltingasphalt.com/ads-dont-work-that-way/) • "Why Online Ads Haven't Built Brands" (https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2019/01/why-online-ads-havent-built-… Both discussing theorems for how advertising actually works, and why targeted advertising is counter-productive (for medium-to-large brands, anyway). The basic premise is that advertising works by seeding common-knowledge within a society. It's important not just that I know that Nike makes cool sneakers, but also that I know that my peers know that. Otherwise, how can I be sure that my idea of cool sneakers is the same as everyone else's? Culture exists in the interactions between people; for brands, hyper-targeted ads risk focusing on individuals and not cultural influence.

Bob Hoffman at the Ad Contrarian called this in January: "P&G To Online Ad World: We've Had Enough" - https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2017/01/p-to-online-ad-world-weve-ha… Digital advertising is rife with (what should be considered) fraud. Advertisers feel as though they are getting fleeced, and the advertising middlemen reap massive margins. The accountability isn't where it needs to be; there are websites that hide ads under other ads, still reporting displays for all ads per page load. I suspect moves like this one will help the ecosystem change for the better.

This article is a mess. The author states, "An entire industry—billions of dollars and thousands of jobs—is at stake," then goes into a completely different rant, "why is nobody talking about this?" Over half the images are incomprehensible or offer no insight. >https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Clickpath_Analysis… Including an unintelligible graph without an explanation to why it's necessary is bizarre. Even more so writing headers like "Responses to the scandal" and dropping in a stock photo of a gavel. It's like a pull quote, but even lazier. There is some value in this article, >Hoffman, the retired ad agency CEO who I quoted at the beginning, puts it better than I can: >http://adcontrarian.blogspot.co.il/2013/06/the-75-billion-ad-swindle.h… Even the author suggests to read this one instead.

"The Ad Contrarian" blog talks about this a lot. Marketers are apparently obsessed with millennials, but their parents (and older) are the ones with the money who really buy things. For example, the people targeted by car ads constitute 12% of the market, the rest is people older than them. http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-youth-car-delusion.html

Regarding your first point, see: http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2011/08/advertising-and-future-of-app…

Looks like this Aug/2011 prediction is being fulfilled: http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2011/08/advertising-and-future-of-app…

There aren't many stories like that around, because it's so easy to experiment. If you put $20 or $100 or whatever in and it doesn't work for you then you just stop your campaign. It's hardly a horror story. The closest I've ever seen to a horror story was someone who wrote a piece about how Pepsi's loss in market share proves social media doesn't work [1]. That's a pretty controversial view, though [2]. In any case, a branding campaign in social media isn't the typical ad buy that most people on HN would be considering. In my (very limited) experience, Facebook advertising is pretty cost effective though, especially if you ar smart about your targeting. [1] http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2011/03/social-medias-massive-failure… [2] http://www.newmediaandmarketing.com/a-massive-social-media-failure-or-…