Display's Dismal Dysfunction

For years here at Ad Contrarian global headquarters, we have been questioning the marketing industry's delusional enthusiasm for online display advertising. Despite consumers' ongoing indifference, and the pitiful performance of this form of advertising, marketers continue to pour billions of dollars into this black hole.*

There are naive clients who insist on throwing their money away on display ads despite the admonitions of responsible agencies. And there are agencies who continue to hustle these ads to clients with a combination of digital jive talk and misleading data.

Finally, there are some in the industry who are getting fed up with the deceptive "metrics" and hype, and are starting to see that the emperor has no clicks. An article from Reuters recently laid out the case for the dysfunctional state of the display advertising industry.

• Display ad prices have dropped about 50% since the dot-com boom. 

• Last week, Microsoft had to write down essentially all of its $6.3 billion investment in display ad network aQuantive. Reuters says: "Microsoft's spectacular capitulation is the latest admission of failure on display advertising." 

• Facebook is desperately attempting to justify its IPO price by flooding the market with display ad inventory, further deflating prices. 

• ValueClick has lost half its value since 2007. 

• In 1998, Yahoo was getting a CPM of $25 for banner ads. By the end of 2011, that had dropped to $11.50. Yahoo, too, is worth about half what it was worth in 2007. 

• Despite the promise of pinpoint targeting, it looks like display is becoming the province of the exact opposite type of advertiser -- the tonnage direct marketer who used to buy the 2 am TV inventory. One industry veteran calls display "...a ghetto for bad direct-response." 

• Display advertising has become so devalued that according to one industry insider, Microsoft may be considering giving away display ads.

According to Reuters, "Advertisers now question the performance of display ads more as Internet users train themselves to avoid such marketing."  Duh. How long have we been saying that? 

But facts don't bother the display ad apologists. Despite the fact that 15 years of display advertising have failed to produce a single major consumer-facing brand, and TV advertising has produced thousands of them, you can still find spurious data to prove that display advertising is more effective than TV.

Accordingly, I have written a little poem that you might want to use as the first slide in every agency Powerpoint presentation. Maybe you've met someone like this:

There once was a digital guy
Who was brilliant at pie-in-the-sky
Sooner or later
He'd torture the data
To prove that elephants fly 

 Tell the truth. Where else do you get ad poetry?


 *There is a sensible strategy for utilizing display advertising which you can find here.

How The Higgs Boson Can Help You Build Customer Engagement

Executive Summary: Start by creating a Boson-link (Blink). Then co-create by sharing Blinks about your brand with a million billion trillion zillion other Blinks and, like, then those Blinks will, like, totally connect and grow exponentially and before you know it you're delivering brand messages and branded content and branded branding to everyone online without having to give a penny to that creepy Zuckerberg kid. 

Yes, the recent discovery of the Higgs Boson by scientists at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN changes everything for marketers.

First, it poses a huge challenge. How will you use the Higgs Boson to build stronger engagement between your brand and your customers?

Scientists tell us that without the Higgs Boson matter would have no mass. There would be no stars, no galaxies, and no cinnamon raisin bread. Without mass, we would have no mass media and no mass transit. Massachusetts would be called achusetts.

The calcified old-world thinking of Madison Avenue, with its TV commercials and display ads, relied on dreary, clunky electrons to deliver a one-way message to a passive viewer. But now, electrons are dead!  Today's particle-wave-connected consumer, or (as we like to call him) the average schmuck, is just another bump in an ever-expanding Higgs Field.

Messages embedded in a Higgs Boson bounce right off the average schmuck and create an immediate channel connecting him to someone else -- in many cases, a below-average schmuck.

Here's an example of how Higgs Boson marketing works in a worldwide, inter-globulated ecosystem of engagement: Let's say a Higgs Boson  passes through my arm. In the next instant it may pass through your foot. Or it might pass through some super-hot nympho's tiny skirt and go bouncing around in her thong. How awesome would that be? (We'd finally get some data-driven insights we could really use, if you get my drift.)

Today, the consumer is dead! I mean, she's in total control (unless she's had wine at lunch, then look out!) Scientists now estimate that somewhere between 14 and 600 million billion trillion zillion Higgs Bosons penetrate a typical consumer's body every moment. Can you imagine how many would penetrate it if she was totally naked?

According to one theory proposed by physicists at the Very, Very Small Teflon Collider in Rhode Island, there are actually more bosons in the universe than social media experts in Brooklyn.

Three Ways To Incorporate The Higgs Boson Into Your Marketing Plan Right Now!

1. Remember, activating Higgs Boson technology is only one part of your 360 degree marketing mix. It's actually about 154 degrees. So you still have 206 degrees to play with. Don't neglect all your other important marketing activities like tweeting, podcasting, crank calling, and going to Cannes to snort coke with Swedish account planners.

2. Collecting "likes" on Facebook is still a great way to stay busy without actually accomplishing anything. But it's not too early to start accumulating "Bosos." A "Boso" is like a "like." It occurs when a Boson interacts with another particle and then something amazing happens and your score goes up and you can win a new dining room set.

3. Three words: Gamify your bosons!

One warning. If you haven't activated your Higgs Boson integrated worldwide artisanal strategy already, it's too late and you and your brand and all your colleagues and friends and their families and pets are dead!

The Real Poop On Marketing

The Ad Contrarian is on sabbatical. For the sake of blogaholics I am reprinting some old stuff that is either still relevant or still silly. Here's a silly one from 2008.

Something I read recently got me thinking that we may be flushing millions of dollars right down the old crapper.

It turns out that in marketing today, poop is some valuable shit.

- A big-time Manhattan spa is offering a Japanese-style "Geisha Facial" which features all the goodness of real bird droppings.

- Peter Jones, an upscale retailer in London, is offering the world's most expensive cup of coffee. At 50 pounds (these days, that's about 10 million dollars) you can get a cup of coffee made with real cat excreta.

- If you want to send a note that says "I care", how about sending it on paper made of elephant shit?

- Sending photos to a loved one? Now you can send them in picture frames made from panda patties? (Panda's are so cute. Imagine how adorable their doodies must be!)

- And finally, if rubbing it on your face, drinking it, and sending it to loved ones isn't enough, now you can live in it. Michigan State researchers have developed the Eco-Floor, a floor for your home made of -- you guessed it -- cow shit.

Apparently, brown is the new green.