Ads Are Drugs

By | December 17, 2007

Ads are drugs. We spent $36 billion on them this year (and $48 billion in 2008).

VCs slobber over them.

But they’re hugely ineffective. You only have to look at your own experience with them to know that.

Even Google’s contextual and search-based ads, where the user is often in an active “search-and buy-mode,” and pound for pound are as good as it gets, give you lots and lots of noise.

Ads in video from YouTube/Videoegg are promising, no doubt. And the artesian ad networks make the point that online ads don’t have to be crap. You can put the right ads in front of the right people, if you don’t need to dominate the world.

And it’s not to say that some really good companies with great services didn’t make it through ad revenue.  But why so much money is poured into ads with so little gained (even the holy click doesn’t equal a conversion) is a conversation we just don’t want to have.

Sort of like . . .

The funny thing is that marketing through word of mouth  online costs half as much and is (at least) twice as effective.