Why Traditional Ads Work, and Digital Ads Don't | Hacker News Reader

Why Traditional Ads Work, and Digital Ads Don't

baekdal.com

44 pointsnreece26 comments

From the article:

> Advertising works in traditional magazines because they are extending the content. It is part of the content itself. It provides editorial value.

The magazines shown are pretty much advertisements themselves -- the editorial value of the content is very low. Look to magazines that aren't about shilling product and I suspect the difference is minimal.

> Traditional advertising extends the content, and enhances the value. Online advertising disrupts the content, clutters up the page, and lowers the value.

On a site I used to work on, we handled our own advertising and only allowed ads that matched the subject area of the site. We had an unprecedented click-through rate on our ads. In many cases, users considered the ads as valuable as the content.

So I agree with the author in that ads related to the content do better than ads which don't. However, his conclusion is completely wrong -- there isn't anything specifically online or offline about it.

"We had an unprecedented click-through rate on our ads"

Around what percentage if you do not mind saying, and also the general subject area of the site, i,e IT?

Just curious.

Over the entire history of the site, one of our more clever types of ads has a 1.54% click through rate on 41 million impressions. The general subject area of the site: Coffee.

It's interesting to see results from the strategy the author said "worked" in the article.

I've also noticed something similar in television ads. On a golf telecast, for instance, many ads are about golf products, but not all. They are about products that demographic might like, such as luxury sedans or investing. Does the same thing apply to online ads?

I agree that the mechanisms behind lower success aren't specific to digital, but they do often apply more. Much of it is about honesty and trust. Beyond relevancy, most of us have learned to distrust and ignore ads. Certainly even in traditional media, the U.S. has had lower standards as far as claims and truthfulness go. So the credibility value of ads has declined. Of course trust for vendors online with no physical address or phone number (not that a phone means much anymore) will be even lower.

It really hit me a while back when talking to someone dealing with selling hardware and landscape supplies. He went on and on about the great results he got advertising on Spanish speaking radio compared to other stations (rural area in California, not a major station). The audience, much of it illegal aliens, regards the station as a trusted friend compared to the rest of the world around them. Some of the trust rubs off on the advertisers. (This was a long time ago, I'm sure the trust has eroded some) Looking at Spanish radio was a bit like looking back in time at English speaking stations and earlier days in media.

We're in an era where the public sees through most online sites as being there solely to make money by nearly any means, not out of any love for a particular skill or interest and desire to make a living from it.

The shift from local owners to large corporations or VC groups has accelerated the shrinkage of trust in broadcast media. The anonymous or corporate behavior of most online sites is even worse. Unless you've acted in a way to make people love you, you're more apt to be ignored. (There's a major lesson to learn from Apple here!)

How many sites actually care if their advertisers are a good thing for their readers? How many sites don't support data-mining of their viewers?

If you treat your readers as hog bellies to sell to advertisers they'll grow to hate you. Look at how many people feel towards broadcast tv. (NBC stands out) (To whom it may apply) Your ethics are showing and you're paying the price.

Indeed, you are quite right. We frequently target specific artist pages and their related artists and also specific genre and have been for many years. It is a major selling point in a cut-throat industry.

I'm a little skeptical when people say "this ad works and that ad doesn't" without providing even a shred of data to back up their claims.

That's been a pattern in the traditional print media industry (lack of data on ad effectiveness) but publishers throughout the 20th century were able to exploit this quite nicely by spinning whatever data was available (demographics, circulation) as well as intangibles such as the magazine/newspaper "brand" to justify extremely high prices.

I felt the same way. I was going along with the ride when I saw obvious connection between ads and content. While that doesn't make his thesis true, I was able to see how those magazine ads were clearly different from the typical online ads I see.

But he lost me with the Gap ad. How does he know it doesn't work? It contradicts his thesis, but using that as a reason for why the ad doesn't work is begging the question. Maybe people see that ad and are more likely to buy Gap jeans. We don't know without data.

The author never defines “work”, so perhaps his definition isn't related to making money, but it seems to be that ads work pretty well by that definition. For click-through ads, it's easy to measure how much money is made (on both sides), and people simply wouldn't use them if they don't work.

It's harder for the advertiser to measure the effectiveness of display ads, but that's true in both the online and offline case. Yahoo has done a controlled study showing that display ads effect both online and offline sales (with the usual disclaimers that it was in one particular case, at one point in time, and that the results may not generalize, etc.).

Traditional advertising firms don't have research arms that publish on the effectiveness of their techniques, and they don't even seem to try to do controlled studies, A/B testing, etc., to figure out which ads are more effective. It's harder to do in the offline case, but that's no excuse; it can be done: Capital One is known for doing that with their mailings. It's even harder, but still possible, to do something similar if you're a retailer taking out an ad in newspapers and magazines.

I think the post misses one key difference between traditional and digital ads

Traditional ads (in printed magazines, newspapers etc) are generally part of leisure-time reading. The reader spends a lot of time on the publication and so ads in the publiations have a lot of impact.

Web reading/browsing is generally a short activity and often a work-time activity. Readers spend a very short amount of time on any single website (often less than a minute) and so they are much less likely to look at any ads on the site.

Cherry picked examples.

Some magazine ads are relevant to the content (particularly when the magazine intentionally runs features relevant to certain advertising bases and then approaches relevant advertisers). Most aren't.

Some websites curate ads very carefully, some even integrating affiliate links and algorithmic recommendations to a far greater extent than is possible on paper.

It's a little easier to quantify digital "ad-blindness" though...

> They are incredibly adapt at spotting advertisements, and will simply block them from memory.

[Citation Needed]

[Editing Needed]

In the comments, there's some discussion about ad quality. Users should be allowed to upvote or downvote ads. (Maybe upvote only is better?)

Maybe a click-through should count as an upvote. :)

I seem to remember Facebook tried upvotes and downvotes for ads. I'm guessing the downvote button disappeared because too many people used it.

I do have a suspicion they used the data though... I dont see very many online moneymaking scheme scam ads these days

Facebook toughened their ad policies and began policing ads and landing pages rather heavily. Users just hated scam ads.

They still have an X button in the corner of the ad, and a "thumbs-up" button below it.

I think digital adds actual succeed in places where print ads fail miserably. More and more people are shopping online. Many people have paypal/CC/debit that they have/can use online.

Print ads do not drive you to the store to buy a product, however, online/digital ads bring a product to you; you can buy it right away. Of course there are ways in which the experience can be better, but not every thing is always perfect.

Check out Fusion Ads (http://fusionads.net/) and The Deck (http://decknetwork.net/) for vetted, pretty, and usually at least somewhat relevant ads that are online. Banner ads and cluttered pages usually suck, but I've probably clicked on 80% of the Fusion/Deck ads I've seen.

Digital ads can better track their effectiveness pretty well, traditional ads IMO not so well. Until that gap closes, it's harder to say which is better and which is worse.

But might the same criticism be leveled at web content in general? So the advertisements are disposable, but then, so is most of the content.

My suspicion is that people have a penchant for content that they actually hold, because tangible things have intrinsic value (more so if they're pretty). When people start valuing the content, they (IMO) will also start valuing the advertisements.

By his logic, if you were to extend Google's policy of selecting ads based on the page content to ads with images, you would have a successful model for banner ads. I don't know if that's true though, because whereas the flashier a magazine ad is, the better, people prefer more toned-down ads online, since they're already getting bombarded with so much content.

Malarkey! Balderdash!!

The author claims that traditional ads work because they 'extend the content' of magazines, and digital ads don't work because they don't extend the content.

It's all in how you execute. There are myriad strategies for pairing online ads with content. Some work well, others don't. Some are cheap, others are expensive. No different from print.

However -- depending on your goal -- this may not even be necessary. I work with direct response advertisers who place ads with massive ROI: cost per acquisitions with 4-5x margin. It's a little more difficult to measure if you're not selling things online, but there's plenty of evidence it works.

Further, it's not an either/or proposition. A good campaign hits numerous channels. And print, as a channel, is on life support. Tons of important decision makers rarely, if ever, pick up a dead tree.

they don't...the difference is that with digital ads you get to track conversions...with traditional ads you don't.

+ traditional ads have much higher production values and get to tell their message in 30 seconds, instead of just having a small banner to do it in

--advertising works in traditional magazines because they are extending the content--

i liked the pages that he gave as examples but i believe that the reader who buys -elle- does not care what is -advertising- and what is -content- for the consumer-girl who reads fashion magazines -marketing is the product-

think about the magazine as a kind of mirror - the girl reading the magazine already has a signature style - when she looks at a page she reflects herself and sees herself in that product -- how does this skirt fit my style - no its too boring - turn the page - its gap - i have too many denims - turn the page - should i change my hair color to red - it looks good on her but i dont have that matching beret that highlights her hair - should i buy it -- and so on

the magazine is a mirror that transforms her into her glamorous self - when 5 glamorous girls go out for a girls night out each of them will look the same on a superficial level at a first glance - this is so because according to the strict rules of girl groups every girl must fit the group - she is horrified of 2 things - wearing the exact same thing as another girl or being totally out of synch with what everyone else is wearing -

during the 3 hours that she spent to style herself for the social dynamics of this occasion she expended a tremendous amount of dialectical reasoning to decide how to differentiate herself within the given constraints - she dwarfed the entire accumulation of western philosophy in her powers of analysis to decide how much of her erogenous zones she must expose - the variables she needs to consider to find the right balance that would make her the center of attention of her group are close to infinite so there is no need to list them here

why is she thinking so hard - she must conform to the style dictated to her by the fashion industry for that season but she must also differentiate herself within her social network by building on her signature style

to a naive outsider -probably a male- all 5 girls having fun will look the same - wearing the same color and the same hip stuff - but as seen by each other the differentiation points will be obvious

you can easily tell how a girl differentiated herself for the occasion - because as soon as her friend meets her she will acknowledge her friends efforts to differentiate herself by pointing at it -i love your beret where did you buy it-

so fashion industry and the modern consumer-girl living in it is a complex ecosystem that we as outsiders cannot hope to fathom by looking at advertising and content in the pages of a girl magazine - its all marketing to her - and the fashion industry knows how to market to her

I think the problem might be that google has completely ignored advertising. I do not think it has changed much in the past perhaps five years, much less than search. They looking to copy facebook, or twitter, or everything else and to tell me what I want to eat, but focus on their core products which is search and advertising.

So, there is a real opportunity for someone to come up with a much better algorithm than Google's in regard to targeting ads. But then, if you do not have much inventory, you can not really target, and a website owner would rather have an untargeted ad than nothing.

So I think the problem of targeted advertising is quite complex. For example, link adsense are targeted well, images not so well because perhaps they are more expensive to make and thus there isn't much of an inventory. Why would an advertiser, but the very few, design an image ad when a one hour to set up link ad might work just as well or better.

In any event, people like an image advert when they see it the first time, they might the second, maybe third, but soon they bored of it and start hating it. So changing the ads often is important too.

I suppose, to conclude, the issue is much more complex than simply saying that the problem is targeting the ads due to the many variables - which the ad network or publisher can or can not control - that go into targeting the ads well. That might perhaps be why there is not much progress in this area. The internet has basically just copied the model from the traditional world and tried to automate it.

It is an undervalued area though. Not many other things could make one a billionaire on par with google than solving the advertising problem.

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