display advertising

Remember the old saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”? You’ve heard this of course. It’s a pretty common complaint among advertisers who are using television, radio, billboards, even newspaper. That’s because these are medias that don’t lend themselves to very accurate tracking methods. Image source: tracead.net Does it mean they don’t work? I think you would have a hard time finding evidence, or even consensus of that. The [...]

Google screwed up advertising. Well, that’s not completely fair. It may be more accurate to say that Google screwed up online advertising expectations. Let me explain. In the days before the internet, advertisers would invest in television, radio, newspaper, billboards, magazines and yellow pages. These same advertisers would tell you that half of their advertising was wasted, but that they couldn’t tell which half. It was impossible to truly measure the ROI of most of these advertising channels. With the [...]

At about 4:15 AM, I was reminded of one of my favorite things about the human brain. Allow me to share. I drive a Jeep. As any Jeep owner will tell you, putting the top up and down is kind of a pain. So when we park our Jeeps each night, we are faced with a decision. Put the top up in case it rains, or risk it so we don't have to go through the trouble of messing with [...]