Here at The Ad Contrarian World Headquarters we are well-known for believing that it is much more fun to identify problems than to offer solutions.
As a matter of fact, offering solutions is how we make money and the idea of giving them away free on a blog is just plain anathema to us.
Nonetheless, there are moments when we feel unaccountably generous and give million dollar advice away for nothing. Today is such a day.
The case in point is our strategy for online advertising. (I don't have the patience to explain it again, so click the link.)
As regular readers know, we have long advocated the idea that the web is good for fulfilling demand, but not for creating demand.
In short, the web is a lousy version of television, but a terrific version of the Yellow Pages.
Our advice is to forget most of the baloney about social media, content, banners and whatever else is flavor of the week, and advertise on the web where people go who are actively looking for something.
Of course, this advice has been widely ignored by the demented doofuses in the marketing and advertising industry who want you to believe that people have nothing better to do than have conversations about your brand on line. (And, oh yeah, maybe there's a buck or two in it for them if you buy this bullshit.)
Well, someone seems to have learned an expensive lesson.
According to Bloomberg, Priceline's ceo Darren Huston, says that Facebook and Twitter have failed to deliver results. I'm shocked...shocked I tell you.
Priceline's online spending last year was an astounding $1.8 billion. But according to Huston...
“For Facebook and Twitter, we have endless amounts of money. But we haven’t found anything there....But Google has been a great thing.”In fact, Priceline's cost of marketing increased 41% last year while their business grew 29%. It looks like it's back to Google for them.
People who understand the "creating demand vs fulfilling demand" strategy would know in about 2 seconds that Facebook and Twitter would not be as effective for Priceline as Google.
Using the web for creating demand is dumb. Using it for fulfilling demand is smart. You owe me a million dollars.
