This Just In: Advertisers Still Idiots

In case you were worried that advertisers had started to learn how to think straight, forget about it. They're just as dumb as ever.

This was confirmed in a recent article about TV on the Bloomberg Businessweek website.

A little background -- for years we have been writing about the stupidity of marketers who are constantly chasing young people. Just to recap, here are some numbers:

• People over 50 control over 75% of the financial assets of the US
• They dominate 94% of all consumer packaged goods categories
• They purchase almost 40% of consumer packaged goods
• Even in technology categories, where marketers assume young people dominate, baby boomers "are purchasing at rates just as high as other segments, and because they are often buying for their kids, many are double-dipping." 
• According to Nielsen, less than 5% of advertising is aimed at them

There have been a lot of articles in the past few years about how marketers are waking up to the foolishness of chasing people with no money and ignoring the people with all the money. No effing way. They're just as stupid as ever.

According to numbers in the aforementioned article, advertisers are paying 13% more for an 18-49 target than for a 25-54 target. Let's see what they're getting for their extra money.

• The median income for someone under 25 in 2010 was $24,140.
• The mean income for someone 45-64 was $60,700.

So for their extra 13% they're getting some people with less than half the income. But wait, there's more.

Since the difference between 18-49 and 25-54 is only the 5 years at either end, and since these 5 years represent only 1/6 of the total number of people in the demo group, advertisers were actually paying 78%* more for 18-25's than they were for 49-54's.

They paid 78% more for people with 60% less income.

Pretty smart, huh?

*Warning: This is copywriter math. If I were you I'd check it.