#OnlineMarketing — is it really #Science or #Art garbed in a Science attire..like the Wolf in a sheep’s clothing – remember Red Riding Hood?? We know that #Google’s search engine’s revenue came from selling advertisements. Companies could buy paid links to websites that would appear at the top of users’ search results. And Google works as a middleman, connecting websites with ad space to advertisers to get their banners seen.
We are told its highly measurable. You pay for whatever works. Today we are told it’s all analytics….all data..Now add a dollop of #AI and #ML to all these and you will have situations, where even before you think the advt would pop up.
But all this to what extent is real? Click, Click, and customers start buying your products. This is what Google and Facebook tell us. They will tell the next PM candidate is good or bad, they will tell us what to buy and with what payment options.
But is this all real? Is it really effective? Could these platforms be manipulating? In 2018, more than $273bn dollars was spent on digital ads globally, according to research firm eMarketer. Most of those ads were purchased from two companies: Google ($116bn in 2018) and Facebook ($54.5bn in 2018).(source: https://thecorrespondent.com )
In a highly acclaimed book, Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff predicts a “seventh extinction wave”, where human beings lose “the will to will”. Marketers can predict and manipulate our behaviour.
The advertisement charges by these platforms typically will be on search word volume, which means if there are more people searching for the specific, the search volume increases and so is the rate card…no one is questioning! So even if somebody is searching for it, how many of those are the ones typically buying — from the #GenerationX or early #Millennial Y who actually may not buy online. People constantly on the net is #GenerationZ who could be the influencers but maybe don’t have the buying power, but all goes into the search volume.
People in the tech world, will try to ‘out-jargon’ the customers and the advertisers with acronyms and some newly coined words, where you start believing, stop questioning because you feel questioning will put you in dim light and you will be perceived to be a dumb guy. If you just glance through a meeting room where some digital agency guy is making a presentation, there will be people who are just nodding their heads.
There are stories on ‘#ebay’ who had stopped advertising and it didn’t impact their sales and ‘ebay’ will not be the sole advertiser but then with so many digital advertisers and agencies mushrooming every day….the challenge will be who will bell the cat?
The worst part is there are new terminologies which are validated by the creator themselves – so it is like company A creates the balance sheets and company A only audits it. There is definitely an overlap of click rates and more clicks, where finally with so many clicks no one is buying and everyone is clicking. So in this click economy—everybody #clicks! No one buys! Add to this Remarketing algorithm, where you keep seeing the ads where the prospect has already bought it offline or no more the buyer. It is like in a retail mall if there are a lot of footfalls for window shopping but no actual shoppers, then the shops will close down sooner or later.
We are creating a platform for failure or a doomsday because we are factoring a wrong factor and trying to optimize it. The privacy laws in the fine print like which read like the Red Herring prospectus is another monster that we are all starring at… essentially it all means is that the medium has changed, but the question of ROI on the advertising spend(read online advertising) still remains unanswered – advertising only 50% is effective? Nobody knows which 50%. This makes only the Agecny and the platform providers #happy.
#Marketing #Digital #ROI #