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Comment by pishpash | Hacker News Reader

Which begs the question, have advertisers ever actually measured effect scientifically, and whether the arms race of acquiring eyeballs for no net position change will collapse.

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I’ve worked places that have paused ads for a few months to see what happens only to see nothing happen and stop their advertising spend. In both those places, revenue started declining within a year. So I imagine advertising has such a delayed effect that it’s unmeasurable.

Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half.

Then take half of your advertising spend and redirect it into market research. (I.e. add on the bottom of your purchase receipts, email marketing blasts, etc, something like "$10 coupon if you tell us something about yourself"; where "something about yourself" = "which if any of these advertising campaigns did you actually see.")

I think that's a clever quip made by a man who just wanted to keep his marketing budget without being asked to justify what he spent it on.

It’s repeated often enough I think it’s well grounded in reality.

Clever quotes are often repeated. That doesn't make them true for every context though.

When John Wanamaker said what he said I think he was talking about print ads for department stores in an era before ad metrics, large scale market research, etc. It was probably true then to be fair, but that doesn't make it useful now, or applicable to all advertising. For example, if I used this quote when I was talking about Internet adverts I'd just be wrong. It's trivial to track the effectiveness of an online ad

For items/services purchased online. Offline, not so much.

A lot of tech people have this rather Dilbert-esque view of marketing. In practice any halfway sophisticated marketing/advertising/paid search/etc. is a lot more quantitative and data-driven than they probably think.

I sort of admire marketers. They get so passionate about it! I can barely muster that sort of excitement for actually interesting topics.

You can put a phone number on your infomercial and measure how many calls / conversions you get from people calling that number shortly after the ad plays.

That's what "promo codes" are all about, too. Direct feedback as to which ads worked.

Not until now, which is why Facebook was making so much money before they got kneecapped.

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