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P&G Cuts More Than $100 Million In 'Largely Ineffective' Digital Ads (wsj.com)

schwit1 quotes the Wall Street Journal: Procter & Gamble said that its move to cut more than $100 million in digital marketing spend in the June quarter had little impact on its business, proving that those digital ads were largely ineffective. Almost all of the consumer product giant's advertising cuts in the period came from digital, finance chief Jon Moeller said on its earnings call Thursday. The company targeted ads that could wind up on sites with fake traffic from software known as "bots," or those with objectionable content. "What it reflected was a choice to cut spending from a digital standpoint where it was ineffective, where either we were serving bots as opposed to human beings or where the placement of ads was not facilitating the equity of our brands," he said... The cuts echo marketing executives' mounting concerns around the efficacy of digital advertising and the growing perception that they are wasting money on digital ads that never reach their intended audience.

10 of 204 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ads on the Internet != Other mediums by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ads on the Internet make me less likely to buy a company's products. If I go you Youtube to watch a video, and Foobar, Inc forces me to sit through five seconds of their stupid ad before I can watch the video I want to watch, then I become pissed off at Foobar, Inc, and remember that next time I go shopping.

    The good news is that stories like this show we may be seeing the beginning of the end of the whole Internet advertising scam.

  2. A $100 million study by Arzaboa · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It took them $100 Million to figure out what they probably knew themselves.

    I have more or less trained myself to not pay any attention to ads. This could be part of my overall "training" in the workforce to try and block out everything while I focus on said task, while co-workers are nagging me about lunch, beers, other projects, etc., while I'm trying to focus.

    Regardless, the constant barrage of online advertising from the flashing text of the late 90's, animated GIF's of the 00's, interactive flash from this decade, are enough to make any human that spends a large portion of their time online, shy away from this garbage.

    The idea of ads doesn't bother me. The forceful "We'll make you read it, like it or not, and we know we aren't targeting you, we only need 1% to respond" type of advertising, is what made me think like this. I actually feel GOOD when I know there is an ad and I know I haven't digested any of it.

    With this type of reward system, its no wonder I enjoy not looking at ads. At some level, there is a piece of me that feels that I'm "giving it to the man", when I purposefully don't read their ads. By spending any energy even avoiding this, I also feel like I have lost. In the end it makes me despise the system even further.

    Like everything, the bad apples destroy the good intentions of others. I'm sure I would benefit from some form of advertising as there are services I do use and would benefit from if they actually were "cheaper, faster, better", but when I can't trust any of it, the sites that claim "low impact ads", end up getting hurt first, and the 1% of the time I might care, I miss.

    Of course, on the other hand, there is a part of me that feels the folks making a killing off of ads no one pays any attention to, are in one sense "winning" from the perspective that the companies, willing to dump money into something so worthless, deserve what they get.

    1. Re:A $100 million study by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Keep in mind that the people at P&G planning the internet ad campaigns need to justify their jobs, so they will find any bogus stat they can, starting with "Ad spending on Facebook is up X% year-over-year, we have to be there too." Internet ad buys are heavily influenced by what competitors are doing, rather than on any proof that it works, because it's really easy to show what the competitors are doing (screenshots of their ads) and really hard to show any effectiveness (mostly because there is none, and the fallback "creates brand awareness" is now more and more known to be bullshit).

      Hopefully the trend will continue, and social media will DIE DIE DIE!!!

      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
  3. Re:Ads on the Internet != Other mediums by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Ads on the Internet make me less likely to buy a company's products.

    The ads I'm seeing online are mainly for products I have already bought.

  4. Re: Spend that 100 million on improving products by negRo_slim · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It has nothing to do with "shady" site placement and everything to do with the fact digital advertising simply by and large doesn't work. Seems like YouTube and Spotify, sites with a captive user, are the only ones that can even get their ads noticed (albeit marginally) with most other ads being completely ignored. Though sometimes they really try and force you to look at an ad (covers the page, countdown to proceed) which then causes people to find active ways to remove them from their online experience.

    --
    On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
  5. Re:Ads on the Internet != Other mediums by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That too. 'Targetting' advertising basically just means showing me ads for things I already own.

    Any company paying for this crap has far more money than sense.

  6. Here's an EASY way to make sure by p51d007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your digital ads might work better. STOP SHOVING THEM IN OUR FACE! Make your ads static, like in a newspaper, magazine, etc. When I'm reading an article and start to scroll down, and then all of a sudden some stupid ad starts blaring in my face, and I have to scroll up to shut the #(!@(^% thing off, it makes me NOT to want to do business with that company. When people have to install ad blockers to at least enjoy some content without having to worry about pop ups, pop unders, auto launching video ads (with the volume cranked to the max), then you know you have a problem. There are sights (like /.) that I whitelist because their ads are STATIC. THAT is how web ads should be. I'm more likely to click on a static ad, than a shove-it-in-your-face ad.

  7. Re: Spend that 100 million on improving products by dk20 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    get a safety razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.... best move you can make.. blades are easily replacable and super-cheap. I picked up 100 for around $20 like 3 years ago and still have some left....

  8. Re:Ads on the Internet != Other mediums by 0123456 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There was a ton of free content on the Internet before advertising. The main result of advertising has been to flood the Internet with useless sites that exist solely to make money from advertising.

  9. Most advertising is useless by gman003 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    On the rare occasions I see ads, they're almost always for things I already know about. Who the fuck buys a Coke because they saw a commercial for it? Literally everyone in America knows who they are, there is no reason why they need to advertise anymore except for new products. Likewise for any other big brand - sure, maybe Disney needs to advertise their latest movie, because it's new, but what is the point of Ford reminding everyone "hey, that F-150 that's been a staple of the American truck market for most people's entire lives is still around"?

    Whatever tiny psychological effect that comes from constantly pestering people can't be worth the huge cost of it all.