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posted by mrpg on Sunday July 30 2017, @04:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the good dept.

Procter & Gamble Co. 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.
...
It’s unclear whether P&G has shifted more spending to other media, including television, as it tweaks its digital spending approach. TV networks have been making an aggressive case that marketers have over-allocated budgets to the dark alleys of digital, and should move ad money back into TV.

Moving ad budget back to TV would be a brilliant move. Septuagenarians present a brisk market for Pampers.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Justin Case on Sunday July 30 2017, @04:15PM (9 children)

    by Justin Case (4239) on Sunday July 30 2017, @04:15PM (#546717) Journal

    We can hope the marketdroids finally start to figure out that advertising wastes everyone's time and money.

    Salespeople are by nature suckers. They think the product doesn't matter; just excitement and other emotional triggers. That's because they are employed by people who know that what they have to sell is crap, and they want to push as much crap as possible. So to be a successful salesperson, you have to believe nonsense and be able to repeat it with enthusiasm.

    So salespeople are suckers for other salespeople. Advertising networks are mostly selling to other sellers, not to you and I. "Pay us to send your SPAM, optimize your search position, and deliver the eyeballs. We have more 'reach' and better 'targeting'." Bullshit. No you don't. It is all a bunch of hand-waving and cargo-cult mumbo-jumbo.

    It is time for this circle-jerk to end.

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:05PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:05PM (#546728)

    One of my good friends works in advertising, and he is the perfect example of (can't find the phrase for the psychological phenomenon). He is super susceptible to advertising. I've literally seen him do complete 180s on products after seeing single advertisements. He constantly alternates between specific brands (like coke vs pepsi) and follows trends and positive press like none other. However, as he works in advertising, when he puts his more scrupulous hat on, he can instantly identify exactly what a commercial is doing, its primary market, etc.

    My theory is that because he has the more analytical part of his brain working all day on advertising, it gets exhausted. Therefore, when he doesn't realize he is being sold to, he has a lower threshold than average. Does make it really easy to manipulate him into doing what you want as statements like, "but this movie has better reviews," or "so-and-so is more popular," or even, "that one is $0.10 cheaper," will almost instantly change his mind.

    • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:22PM (3 children)

      by Justin Case (4239) on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:22PM (#546733) Journal

      Yeah, that's another thing marketdroids passionately believe: brands matter. On Amazon, for example, I select products by features, ratings, price... but never brand. But sellers think "brand loyalty" is something that will last longer than the first time they screw their customers.

      Well, OK, I guess there are a few people who will buy something just because it comes from crApple. The sooner they are separated from their cash, the less ability they will have to harm the world by subsidizing overpriced hypeware.

      • (Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday July 30 2017, @07:05PM

        by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Sunday July 30 2017, @07:05PM (#546776)

        Official versus clone is still a thing though. If you are buying an accessory to something you're more likely to go official over clone if the price is reasonable.

        --
        SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday July 31 2017, @09:25AM

        by TheRaven (270) on Monday July 31 2017, @09:25AM (#547063) Journal
        Brands aren't completely meaningless, they're a form of reputation. It's much harder to build a good reputation than it is to lose one. A brand that's identified with solid build quality will lose this reputation quickly from a few exceptions. This is why a lot of companies that produce high-end products use an entirely different brand for products in the lower ends of the same markets. Of course, this cuts both ways and they'll charge you a premium for knowing that you can expect quality. You might be lucky and find that a no-name vendor is selling the same product from the same factory, or you might find that they're selling the ones that failed QA testing.
        --
        sudo mod me up
      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday July 31 2017, @01:53PM

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday July 31 2017, @01:53PM (#547139) Journal

        I read just the other day that amazon and other online marketplaces have heavily diluted brands' premiums because users have been conditioned to shop as you described. User reviews have also come to play a much bigger role, so the days of capturing extra margin by outsourcing production to china where quality inevitably suffers while continuing to charge the brand premium are over.

        So amid the heavy job loss caused by the death of traditional retail there's that small silver lining of people saying "so what?" To marketdroids.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Nuke on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:35PM (2 children)

    by Nuke (3162) on Sunday July 30 2017, @05:35PM (#546740)

    Advertising pays! We are told it, so it must be true. And it is true - it pays the advertising industry $billions.

    It is a different matter whether it pays the clients who are paying the advertising industry, the ones who pay out those billions. One day it will dawn on these clients that, on the scale that many of them spend money on advertising, they are mostly wasting it. Hopefully, Proctor and Gamble are the first of many to see the light.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @02:41AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 31 2017, @02:41AM (#546946)

      > Advertising pays

      In the car industry it's well known that if you *don't* advertise, you don't have a chance of selling many of a new model of car[1].
      If you *do* advertise, then you have a chance of selling some of your new model.

      [1] This applies for cars produced in high volume, not talking about limited production of exotic cars.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Monday July 31 2017, @02:13PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Monday July 31 2017, @02:13PM (#547151) Journal

      There's a little more to it than that. Companies and the brand managers within a company like P&G don't really spend that much on the actual ad campaigns. For example, i created the entire digital presence for Johnson&Johnson and about a score of its over-the-counter brands back when i worked on Madison Avenue. Its budgets for digital were on the order of $30-50K, and those were major brands of mouthwash and such that you've heard of. Years later they still run that same material i produced, so the marginal cost of it is quite low. Likewise when they shoot a TV spot they run the same commercial year after year unless the ad backfired or something.

      The deeper reason why ad companies make so much money is because the companies and brand managers use them for product direction and deniability. That is, the ad companies are a sort of professional whipping boy. If a campaign goes well, the companies and brand managers always take all the credit, and if it doesn't the agencies are always to blame. The brand managers are only there to stamp their passports on the way to higher positions. They have no strategic vision or creativity of their own. The resultant psychological dynamic is a bit messed up, in that the ad people are depressed and disgruntled because their creativity and souls are whored out to godless corporations, and the brand managers are egotistical aholes who abusive to the people at the agencies they secretly resent because they have creative talent. That dynamic is worst among the financial clients like banks.

      The whole field has been changing, though, thanks to the internet and people like us who are actively sabotaging their comfy status quo. They don't know what to do, which is why they're flailing around like this. That puts a small smile on my face.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Monday July 31 2017, @11:05AM

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Monday July 31 2017, @11:05AM (#547084)

    We can hope the marketdroids finally start to figure out that advertising wastes everyone's time and money.

    Not as long as the marketdroids still believe getting customers to view ads is more important than showing the product. We have four local television stations. I sometimes have one online at work, mostly to get local weather reports. One station I have never been able to view online and another I have not been able to view at all in quite a long time. Apparently, it would require me disabling AdBlock as well as globally allowing scripts to run, which I will not do. So, instead they lose my viewership entirely. The stations I can view both show some commercials as part of their feed, so it is possible for them to advertise without depending on intrusive third party advertisers forcing their wares upon viewers.