Wannamaker was wrong until yesterday

I don’t know about you but I dislike quotes.

Since the emergence of social media everyone has gone bonkers on quotes.

It’s a bit like low quality effort of creating content if I’m honest. It requires almost zero thinking; it might get you likes and comments but what about business?

I doubt if it will bring you any business.

As a matter of fact, here’s one of the most famous advertising quotes:

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

(If you’re advertising and never heard of this quote you have some catching up to do).

It’s from a 19th-century retailer called John Wanamaker.

This quote is as relevant today as it was the days this wise man made it.

Originally, with this statement, Wanamaker pointed out that there’s no way to measure the success of your TV, radio or Print ad campaign.

Even to this day, you put an ad of your local business on your town most popular radio station. All of a sudden more business comes you way.

But is it because of your ad? Is it because one of your competitor went out business?

You don’t really know. Radio advertising had a positive effect but you can’t measure the magnitude.

And this is online advertising platforms including Google and Facebook found out there’s a market out there.

Users can advertise their business and measure success. They can check the number of people saw the ad, clicked, converted and so many other metrics to optimise their ad performance.

That was the case until recently since the 2 platforms Google and Facebook that have the lion’s share in the advertising market decided to push automated ad campaigns.

Performance Max and Advantage + are more of like black box advertising. You set the budget and the placements you want to show your ads and let them work their magic.

The trouble is you don’t have too much access to analytics and can’t measure success so easily.

It’s like going back to the good old days of TV, print and radio in terms of measuring.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because it’s wise to use critical thinking and find out alternatives to automated ad campaigns.

It’s better to have control over the quality of the results you get with advertising.

To learn how to be a discerning advertiser go here:

https://wearesavoury.com/opt-in/