Digital Tonto
digitaltonto.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2009
Digital Tonto is Greg Satell's blog on innovation, technology, organizations, and statistics, covering platforms, ecosystems, and quantum computing.
What HN saysHN commenters engage with its claims on advertising and influencer marketing, with skeptics pointing to research suggesting influencer marketing is less powerful than assumed.
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What HN people wrote when they linked it
tim333 · 2015-11-17
> advertising is much more powerful/effective today than it ever was before
I'm sceptical of that. I grew up pre internet and much information on stuff to buy came from TV ads, magazines financed by advertising and the like. Now I've basically stopped watching TV and reading those, read non commercial stuff like HN and when I want to buy toys check out the review sites to see which product is best, not which has the sexiest ads. Here's a graph showing ad spend tailing off http://www.digitaltonto.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Ad-spend-and-GD…
(from http://www.digitaltonto.com/2011/how-digital-leakage-is-redefining-mar…
carbon8 · 2013-03-15
Parts of this post are premised the "influencer" marketing model, but there is at least some research indicating that it might not be as powerful as generally assumed. For example:
* http://misc.si.umich.edu/media/papers/wsdm333w-bakshy.pdf
* http://www.digitaltonto.com/wp-content/uploads/WattsandDoddinfluential…
"Grouped: How small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web," the book by Paul Adams @ Facebook (http://www.amazon.com/Grouped-groups-friends-influence-social/dp/03218… talks a bit about this.
Anecdotally, I've also seen quite a bit of evidence first hand that suggests the impact of influencers is not clear-cut.