Skip to main content

Is The Drunken Orgy Over For Digital?


Is it possible that after 15 years of pissing away billions of dollars on idiotic fantasies, advertisers and agencies are finally waking up to the horseshit they've been sold by the online advertising industry?

Let's have a look at some charts.

This first chart shows us that according to Standard Media Index, growth in online advertising spending in 2016 was about half what it was in 2015.

This second chart shows us that while over the past 4 years, year-over-year growth in online spending has averaged about 19%, in 2016 these numbers dropped a whole lot. Year-to-year growth averaged only 6.8%, quarter-to-quarter in the 4th quarter it average 4.3%, and month-to-month in December it was just .7%. As time goes on spending growth seems to be dropping dramatically.

The third chart may be the most revealing. What it shows is that all the growth in online spending went to Google and Facebook. The rest of the online industry actually lost ad revenue. The amount of the loss depends on whose numbers you choose to believe. The source I used had the drop at 2%. Others had it at 3% and 5%.


The big question is, are advertisers coming to their senses? According to the CEO of the Standard Media Index, the "...trajectory of digital spend has recently hit a major speed bump as brands question the efficacy of the medium."

All I can say is, fucking duh!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's There To Laugh About?

Laughing@Advertising is my new book. Yes, this time I've gone too far. It's a collection of my most irresponsible and inappropriate blog posts, essays, and cave drawings. You might say it's 200 pages of insults, wise-cracks, cheap shots, and dirty words. In other words, fun for the whole family! I'm out to disrupt the disruptors -- those somber, imperious souls who have made marketing and advertising such an earnest and humorless endeavor. I am hoping this is the silliest, most injudicious book about our industry you've read. And in some unwholesome, subversive way, the truest and funniest. It is on sale now at Amazon. It is only available in paperback. There ain't gonna be no ebook. Why? Pixels aren't funny. At $6.99 the paperback is cheaper than most of the stupid-ass marketing ebooks you buy anyway. So quit whining and click here .   And don't say I didn't warn you. Update : Huge thanks to everyone. It launched yesterday and it immediately becam...
Post a Comment
Read more

Facebook's Dangerous Ad Model

People sometimes ask me some version of the following question: "Why are you so down on political ads on Facebook and not on TV?" It's a reasonable question. The answer has 3 parts: 1. Television advertising is obviously advertising. When we see a TV spot, we know exactly what it is. No one ever mistook a TV spot for a news broadcast. Ads on Facebook, however, look exactly like "content." It is hard to differentiate an ad from a post or a post from a news item. Consequently, political ads on Facebook often serve as fake news even if they are not intended to be such. 2. On television (and radio) political ads are required to be identified as such. Not on Facebook. Facebook maintains the absurd position that it is not a media company. In fact, it is the largest media company in the history of the world. By saying they are a "platform" or a "tech company" or some other obfuscation, they have exempted themselves from the adult responsibilit...
Post a Comment
Read more

Parachuting Behind Enemy Lines

This is gonna be fun. I'm about to enter a contest called "The Q Award" sponsored by Ad Age and Quantcast (they do media hocus pocus with AI) that could win me a trip to Cannes and some kind of Grand Prize. I am compelled to enter this thing because it would allow me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sip putrid rosé with everyone in the world I've ever insulted. The contest goes like this... "The Q Award Details We are looking for people who challenge the status quo, question everything and strive to break conventional wisdom. The winning team will have discovered new insights and implemented a new strategy, campaign or product that ultimately resulted in increased brand awareness, growth and sales." Am I crazy, or is BadMen a slam dunk to win this fucking thing? Just one little hurdle: Somewhere along the line I've probably called everyone on the judging panel a dickhead or an imbecile.
Post a Comment
Read more