The Beautiful Illusion of Digital Marketing Success

It has been said that "digital" is the most measurable form of advertising ever created. That is true. It sure does throw off an awful lot of numbers. It has also been said that, with digital, you can get the right ad to the right person at the right time. That is true. It sure is possible that that can happen, kinda like a hole-in-one in golf. You can definitely get a hole-in-one, maybe. The clickety-clang of coins spewing from the slot machine or the occasional winning hand at black jack keep those gamblers coming back like sweet, sweet nectar drawing moths back to the flame. The flame in this case is setting your digital ad dollars on fire so virtually all of it goes up in smoke by the end of the year, because you have to "spend it all" anyway right? The sweet, sweet nectar is the larges quantities of ads to buy, the low CPM prices, and the high click through rates. The clickety-clang of coins in this case is the illusion of success (claiming credit for sales and outcomes that were not caused by the digital marketing), which keep marketers hooked on "digital ad spending." Every aspect of digital advertising is set up to help ad tech companies maximize their profits from taking your money, just like every aspect of casinos, Vegas or otherwise, is set up to help them maximize profits by taking money from gamblers.

Targeting / Audience

Marketers inexperienced at digital, but desperately seeking to appear to be digitally savvy, take large chunks of ad budgets to throw at shiny objects in digital. Take for instance ad targeting parameters, and audience segments. These promise the right ad to the right person at the right place and time. No one looked beyond that promise or asked how the targeting parameters or audience segments were created. No one asked about the accuracy of the input data or the accuracy of the targeting parameters created from it. Advertisers just paid more of it, thinking that it would help them target their ads better, because they believe that is possible in digital. Few have ever asked about bots pretending to be particular audience segments to earn higher prices for every ad they caused to be served to them.

But, no matter. Buying the targeting parameters creates the illusion of doing better digital marketing, so let's keep spending more on that. {sarcasm is SO hard to convey in social} {winky}

Impressions

Marketers inexperienced in digital were miffed that mainstream publishers had limited "scale" in terms of the numbers of ad impressions they could sell them. Marketers wanted more ad impressions to reach people in more places. This created the perfect storm for ad tech companies that created the first ad exchanges to take full advantage. Marketers wanted more ads to buy; so they gave them exactly what they wanted -- more ads to buy. No one asked whether those ads were real or if those ads were shown to humans. In 2015, AppNexus magically found that 92% of the ad impressions they sold were fake, so they purged 240 billion of the 260 billion monthly impressions they sold, leaving just 20 billion per month. Interestingly no one who bought ads through AppNexus before that even asked for a refund.

But, no matter. Buying billions of ad impressions creates the illusion of getting more reach, so let's keep buying more on that. {sarcasm is SO hard to convey in social} {winky}

Clicks

Marketers inexperienced in digital would certainly not be so gullible to be fooled by digital charlatans and snake oil salesmen, right? The adtech salesmen said snake oil does work -- see how many clicks you're getting? You're getting far more clicks now than ever before, when you were buying from mainstream publishers with human audiences. Marketers think that more clicks means their digital campaigns were working better. After all, they paid extra for that sweet, sweet targeting -- so it must be the targeting working well. No one ever asked if the clicks were coming from the same bots that caused the ads to load in the first place. Now, no one wants to ask, for fear of find out that indeed those clicks were from bots, not humans. Because humans don't click on ads that much.

But, no matter. Getting SO many more clicks creates the illusion that the digital marketing was doing great; that's what was reported to your bosses already, so let's keep doing more of that ad spending and keep touting those sweet, sweet clicks and how many we got. {sarcasm is SO hard to convey in social} {winky}

Leads

Marketers inexperienced in digital, but who think they are savvy "performance" marketers that pay only when they get the lead, cannot possibly be fooled, right? Marketing success is theirs; after all they pay for the leads, which are the desired outcome. Few to no folks ask if those leads are genuine. Few to none of these marketers WANT to ask if these leads are genuine, because they've been doing this for so long and touting this as the fraud-proof way of doing "digital." But few also know that bots are great at taking stolen information from data breaches and filling those details into the lead forms, so they can get paid the cost-per-lead. As far back as 2013, university marketers had to discard up to 70% of the leads they paid for, because when they called the high schooler to follow up, the person said they never applied to the university. Bots solved the captchas and successfully completed lead forms with entirely correct data, bypassing all checks so they could get paid the CPL.

But, no matter. We're savvy performance marketers who only pay when we get the lead. And our bonuses are based on hitting aggressive numbers of leads acquired. It's not even our department that follows up on those leads, so it's SEP ("someone else's problem"). Let's keep telling our bosses that we're performance marketers and rejoice at how many of those sweet, sweet leads we got. {sarcasm is SO hard to convey in social} {winky}

Sales

After all of the above, marketers inexperienced in digital will say "but, but, we got sales." Yes, you got sales, but were they caused by your digital marketing campaigns? Are you sure? Are you sure enough that you'd be willing to accept the following challenge -- turn off your digital campaigns for a week, or a month, and see if there's any change to sales and business outcomes. Of course you won't do that. And you don't even need to do that, if you are willing to acknowledge that there is only tenuous "cause and effect" between the majority of digital ad spending and actual sales. That's because few to no marketers are doing proper incrementality measurement. If you don't understand what that means, you're one of them. There is NO shame in that; just ask for help from someone who does or who can help you get set up to do it correctly.

But, no matter. We're getting sales WHILE we were spending money on digital. As long as our bosses believe the sales were caused by the digital ads, why spook them and tell them otherwise. We'll keep getting invited to Cannes (see you on the beach next week), and they'll keep giving us bonuses for all those sweet, sweet sales that were attributed to us. {sarcasm is SO hard to convey in social} {winky}

Installs

Marketers inexperienced in digital will think that if they only pay when they get the app install, they are immune to fraud and therefore, savvy. But as we know from the Uber lawsuit, the mobile exchanges were falsifying the reports to make it appear that ads ran on legit sites. They were also fabricating the numbers in the excel spreadsheets entirely when no ads were run and no app installs occurred. So literally the savvy marketer paying for app installs was actually paying for excel spreadsheets, that contained entirely fabricated data.

But, no matter. Some will just look the other way. As long as the reports we're getting from the ad tech vendors show we are getting app installs, and they keep taking us to nice steak dinners, there's no need to ask any further questions that may require us to do more work. {sarcasm is SO hard to convey in social} {winky}

Foot-fall

Marketers inexperienced in digital will easily agree with adtech shysters that "footfall" in stores cannot be faked; just like they still think that "ad fraud in CTV is zero, because it's impossible." The shysters will appeal to your common sense -- "did that person walk into the store? Yes, they did." Yes. They actually did walk into the Dunkin' Donuts, but they walk in every morning because it's their morning ritual, not because your 300x250 ad caused them to do so. And no one will ever ask if the data was simply falsified to make it appear they walked into a "polygon" (the geographic boundaries of the store location).

But, no matter. As long as the reports we're getting from those location data shysters say millions of users walked into stores because of the ad budgets we paid to them, let's keep spending that sweet, sweet money on foot-fall. {sarcasm is SO hard to convey in social} {winky}

So what?

In addition to all of the beautiful illusions above, inexperienced marketers of the video game generation all think that higher scores and bigger numbers are better. So let's demand more and more impressions, clicks, leads, sales, installs, and foot-fall. More is better. And cheaper is better too, since we're all a part of the Costco generation. Let's have our procurement departments force the vendors to give us lower and lower prices. Who cares if they have to resort to fraud to achieve those impossibly low prices? {sarcasm is SO hard to convey in social} {winky}

If you've stuck with me so far, you're brave. AND you may not be one of those inexperienced marketers who would actually have to take some action after reading the above. But, if some of the above is new to you, or to someone you know, send the article to them. Do some soul-searching and ask yourself what you can do move on from the illusion of digital marketing to actual digital marketing. The best place to start is to ask harder questions of the adtech salesmen selling you oil (as in "adtech salesmen" are the new "snakeoil salesmen" and you're the mark.).

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