“Your money’s worth” was a book published in the late 1920s in the US. The book was about the futility of advertising and the mind -manipulation that advertisers were accused to be doing. The author duo of Stuart Chase and Friedrick Schlink was not against capitalism and consumerism of any sort but was critical of the purpose that advertising seems to be serving then. Beyond the book, they also started a newsletter for select subscribers, intending to debunk the dubious claims made by advertisers in their communication. This movement against “unscrupulous” practices and false claims of the advertiser, gathered steam further in the 1930s. Many social commentators started referring to advertisements as wasteful expenditure. Rexford Tugwell, a member of Franklin D Roosevelt Brain trust said that nine-tenths of advertising was an economic waste. In the same context, another quote by John Wanamaker became famous. The successful American marketer was quoted as saying-“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”
During the later days of Radio, TV, and Print, advertising as an industry, art, and process became scientific and started to shed the negative of being misleading and propagandist but the aspect of the audience measurement was starting to become a matter of contention. The quote by John Wanamaker was perhaps more relevant in these decades and was the often-cited statement to counter any voice purportedly questioning the effectiveness and efficiency of monies spent on advertising. The “problem” of advertising has shifted in this era. The content of the advertising wasn’t so much in question now. There were regulatory bodies that had been set up to address the issue of content. Now the problem was more about the economics and measurement of advertising effectiveness. Earlier it was about the message and content. Now it was about the mediums and their failure to understand their audience in terms of their size and nature.
Fast-forwarding to 21st century, starting middle of the first decade, digital and social media advertising were considered to be the holy grail of audience measurement and advertising effectiveness. Audience accumulation made way for attention harvesting. A decade back, it was almost assumed that by having more precise information about the user ( a more inclusive term than the audience, reader, or listener), advertising spends will be far more rewarding than in any other era.
But we find that this problem of efficiency in advertising expense has not changed much. Here are the numbers which we see dominating the discussions for digital and programmatic advertising.
1. The percentage of bot traffic could be as high as 40%. (2019 Bad Bot Report, Ditill networks) – This could mean that 40 % of the impressions that you get for your ad are coming from bots.
2. In 2022, 44 billion dollars will be lost as ad revenue because of ad fraud (Source: Juniper Research, Appnexus).
3. More than 30 % of all video ads published remain unseen (not including ads on Youtube)
For a major part of the last decade, digital media could take a high ground claiming better accountability and efficiency over traditional giants. The war for audience attention seemed to be won emphatically by the seemingly more accountable digital medium. Advertising’s battle for a consumer will eventually be swept by digital advertising. There is no doubt that it will or perhaps has already won this war but the problem of spend efficiencies still exists and could even become bigger.
Maybe the argument of efficacy that we expect to be part of an advertising medium is not a tenable one. It could be simply said that this is how the world of advertising operates. What we, perhaps refer to as inefficiencies of the system are not actually inefficiencies but are the core of the system. Inefficiency isn’t a bug in this system, it is the system.
