Mad Marketing
Mike Leitao ~ 10/7/2024
As an accountant and a generally cynical individual, I’ve learned to analyze things with a more business centric mind than I realize sometimes. One place I’ve noticed it the most is my opinion on most advertisements. I can’t stand them. So I decided to bless everything with eyes and a little logic to rank all the types of ads from most helpful and useful, to the ones that are a complete waste of time.
Targeted Website Ads:
Yes, I already know people will see this and assume I love giving my data to the Chinese for them to create clones of myself to be used to take over the world. If we wanna be honest, your data is getting sold all over the world so targeted ads will always be a thing. Even as someone who routinely uses an ad blocker for those websites that go a little overboard on having ads on every little bit of open space, some ads still slip through, and if we really wanna be honest, those are the best ads and the ones that work the best. They are not in my face or feel forced, they normally relate to things I’m actually interested in or considering buying, and I am the one who has to initiate the click on the ad to really be drawn in and have it take up my time and sanity. When comparing that to all the other types of ads, it is easily the best and it’s not even close. The only drawbacks are, when you click on an ad you then see similar ads from every site you go to for months on end which can be annoying and that the ads can sometimes be way too much, though that is normally the fault of the website allowing that much marketing.
Food Ads:
Most commercials suck (which we will get to soon enough), but one type of commercial is actually decent. Food commercials work for the sole purpose that they are trying to just get their food in the depths of your brain, so the next time you crave it you think of the ad and go get it. For a success level, I think they do a pretty good job. I’ve never once seen a food ad and been so moved that I dropped everything to go buy that respective food. But there have been times where I’ve thought back on a food commercial and it had an impact on where I choose to dine and for me, that makes it more successful than most. Now there is still your fair share of negatives. Firstly, and most importantly, they are not targeted ads meaning that you can get 20 food ads in a row that all are for items you hate or find disgusting, meaning it’s the equivalent of wasted ads for both the advertisers and the audience. Additionally, commercial ads have a general problem that commercial breaks are when people go to the bathroom, talk to each other, get food, spend time on their phones, or basically anything other than reviewing the ad which creates the same wasted ad space as it does when the food is something you don’t like.
Commercials Other Than Food:
Now the real dog shit starts. Commercials are undoubtedly one of the biggest wastes of money companies spend. Most commercials that come out today are a combination of difficult to follow, unoriginal, unfunny, and flat out dumb. While I understand getting rid of all of the commercials would be illogical and probably not good for business, there is no way you can convince me that these major corporations worth billions need to be producing so many commercials that play all the time. There is no reason for the same commercial to play so many times over a few hour period. All that accomplishes is making me resent the company more and be less inclined to buy any of their shit since constant ad pressure is off-putting. Regardless of the quantity of commercials, the quality of them is the real negative. Most commercials either fall into one of two buckets. They either attempt to resonate with comedy and fail horribly or they choose a more serious approach but end up not putting anything of real substance out. For the comedy, it’s easy to see why it doesn’t hit. Not only does every generation see and react to comedy differently, but within a generation there are almost sub generations who also react to comedy differently. That means that when companies put together their commercials one of the first things they need to look at and determine is the main age demographic because that is who the comedy needs to relate to. That’s all fine and makes sense, but it leads to the same issue mentioned above of not having true targeted advertising. But also, the comedy is normally just not great because it’s been so corporated out that it’s just a shell of a joke and never hits. When companies choose to go the serious route, a pretty similar result appears with it being so bogged down by corporations that it’s hard to take any real serious notes from them. When you take into account the lack of targeted marketing, the insane amount of them, the poor quality, and the fact that they rarely ever actually impact your spending habits, it’s pretty tough to beat the general commercial, but one type of advertising does…
Billboards:
Ew. Easily the worst type of advertising. It’s so inefficient, it’s still incredibly high pricing, and no one cares. Best case scenario, you create a funny billboard that gets a little attention from people driving and through word-of-mouth you get some solid inflow. Worst case and most likely scenario, lots of money is basically set on fire as the billboard sits there collecting dust and no one even bats an eye at it. Seriously, why would anyone choose billboards as their choice of advertisement. You cannot do any targeting advertising and you are relying fully on people remembering your ad since they are probably driving so they can’t look up your website or product when they see it without creating a 30-car pile up. How there are people who are actually willing to spend money on these things is insane to me. And you notice how if you ever actually look at the billboard ads they are always random-ass companies who are clearly not successful.
So what can we learn from this? Absolutely nothing. You can say that billboards are a waste of money and companies should tone it down on the commercials, but is that going magically make their businesses more profitable and the current commercials better? No it probably won’t.
