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The great advertising myth - busted?

Ads -- they're everywhere on the Net.

You can't visit a webpage anywhere these days without being blasted by gaudy and irritating animated Flash ads, horrifically intrusive banners or even Google's little AdWords messages.

Of course they're a necessary evil and those ads pay for much of the content we eagerly consume without paying a single red cent.

Online advertising has been touted as the best advertising their is -- because advertisers can track the effectiveness of each and every ad, each and every placement.

However, it's starting to look as if some forms and some placements of online advertising don't deliver much in the way of results.

First of all we had GM announcing that it was giving up on FaceBook advertising -- saying that those ads didn't seem to influence customer purchasing decisions.

And now there have been other reports which indicate that the world's most valuable piece of cyber real-estate (FaceBook), really isn't such a good place to advertise after all.

Apparently, FaceBook users don't click ads, according to a recent survey.

Now that, on the eve of its IPO, has to be very bad news for FaceBook.

Not only do its ads not produce an immediate action (a clickthrough) on the part of users, they also don't work well to promote a brand either (according to GM).

So is this just a FaceBook problem, or is it more widespread?

Could it be that online banner advertising is really a bit of a bust?

Or is all advertising a bust -- it's just that the ability to analyse and accurately report the effectiveness of online advertising makes it easy to realise this?

Although I rely heavily on the revenues from advertising to earn a crust, I have to admit that I seldom click on ads. In fact, I can't recall the last time I clicked on an ad while online.

Does that make me unusual -- not according to the survey quoted above.

I'm pretty sure that some forms of advertising are very effective. Put an ad for KFC BK or Maca's on TV at 5:30pm and you're bound to reap a rich reward. That's targeting -- that's an easy-sell.

But what about the ad for a $40,000 car, or carpet, or an Acer notepad?

Do these ads have any influence over people's buying habits?

We all know that you can buy Holdens, Hondas, Toyotas and Nissans -- right? Will seeing an ad on TV or a webpage really influence which brand and model of car you buy next?

Certainly a lot of people must act on those YouTube ads or I wouldn't get a red cent from my ventures in that area -- but do you?

I'm thinking that the future of online promotion is probably not in advertising but in sponsorship, product placement and viral promotion. I wonder how long it will take before key advertisers catch onto that.

I certainly don't want ads to go away, they're an essential path to free content and earnings for content creators. However, I would like to see far more thought put into product and brand promotion than simply buying a small chunk of a webpage somewhere and placing an insanely distracting Flash applet on it.

Have you advertised on the Net? How did that work for you?

When was the last time you clicked an ad?

Have you ever purchased something on the basis of what you read in an online review?

If you had to pitch something using the Net as your medium, how would *you* do it?

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