Online Advertisers: Don't Read This.

In our never-ending battle to poke holes in the holy religion of Online, we try to bring you real, actual facts. You remember them? They're not as easy to come by as glib, fashionable opinions, but they have the novel benefit of being true.

Unfortunately, religions don't place much value on facts. So if you're a committed Online-ist or a Traditional-Advertising-Is-Dead Head, we recommend you click to another page before reading on, as you may find this upsetting.

A recent survey on advertising conducted by Nielsen and reported in Ad Age found that consumers consider tv advertising more persuasive than online advertising by an astounding margin of 14 to 1. Here are some highlights from that survey:

... TV advertising overwhelmingly remains the most influential with 81.4% of the 25-54 adult segment, compared with advertising on internet (6.5%), newspapers (5.8%), radio (3.9%) and magazines (2.3%).

Those surveyed also overwhelmingly reported TV had the most persuasive advertising (69.9%), as opposed to 9.5% for newspapers, 7.5% for radio and 8.1% for magazines.... Remarkably, the current darling of marketer attention, the internet, scored lowest in persuasive advertising, at 5.1%.

Memo to puffed-up web gurus and gullible agency bandwagon-eers:
No one is smarter than the facts.

Not even me:
I'm looking for a good fight, here. Click comments and let's rumble. Or forward this post to your friends in online agencies and let's get it on.