The 84% who don't click on ads | Hacker News Reader

The 84% who don't click on ads

sethgodin.typepad.com

17 pointscwan7 comments

Obviously wise advice, although without demographic information on the "clickers", besides the vertical market information provided http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArtic... -- there is no way to target those who click.

Now, if we get the demo info about who is clicking (age, sex, income, marital status, job description) it would be a treasure trove to those who create the ads. More importantly, it would be a treasure trove to those of us without Fortune 500 budgets for advertising.

But I digress...

In other news, "The Stupids" is on Comedy Central right now starring Tom Arnold. It shows a one star review on Dish Network, but then again Dish Network's critique also doesn't rate The Goonies with the billion stars it deserves... hmm wonder if it's worth a watch on my break.

While I agree with his overall point, his last statement is confusing:

"It's okay to make an ad that isn't easy to measure. If it works, that's enough."

How do you know it works if it's not easy to measure? This is the thinking that leads to Leo Burnett charging obscene amounts for "3 points of equity".

If you do not demand that your marketing team (or agency) give you metrics and demonstrate success/failure, then you have no way to know if your campaigns are successful. So what kind of metric can you use to measure the success of an ad that isn't primarily for clicking on?

Before the internet, people would run an ad campaign, and then measure sales for that period. We've become addicted to click-counting because its there. But its missing 84% of the data. Come up with another way to correlate ads with traffic, and make your fortune!

Note that those stats are for display ads, not for search ads. Display ads would be the crap you see flashing in your face when you go to a site just to read something. Search ads are a different animal as they're better targeted.

It would be good if he illustrated his point with an example of an ad optimized for the 84%. Brand awareness? Advertising online to bring people in-store rather than simply driving clicks? What are good examples?

Brand awareness. An ad for a BMW for example. You're not likely to click and buy the car right there, so it works the same way as their TV ad does -- it'll keep the brand in your memory until you need to make a car purchase decision.

Am I the only person who uses Ad-Art?

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