Digital advertising doesn’t work. And marketers don’t care.

Digital advertising doesn't work

Digital advertising is one of the biggest new industries of the Internet era. In 2018, USD 273Bn was spent on digital ads globally.

What if I told you it was all fake?

Or more accurately, what if this article told you it was all fake?

The article has several examples of real-life experiments – e.g., when eBay stopped all its ads on Google for 3 months, the drop in online sales was 0%. Yes, you read that right – zero, nada.

But how? Aren’t people clicking on those ads? How can the impact of removal be zero?

Two factors drive this surprising outcome.

  1. Do you remember the last time you searched for an app on Google? For example, I searched for “Spotify” last week. The first link was an ad, for Spotify.com. So I just clicked on that. And an ad-click counter somewhere in Google went up. This is called Selection Bias. Of the people who clicked on any given ad, you don’t know how many were looking for that item anyway.
  2. Search engine algorithms are trained to show a given ad to people who are most likely to click on it. This Algorithmic Bias magnifies the selection bias. As the algorithm gets better (and Google’s algorithm is pretty mature now), increasingly, the people who are shown an Amazon ad are the ones who were planning to go to Amazon anyway.

In fact, some skeptics believe that ads don’t work at all. That no one is convinced to change behavior based on ads. Could it be true?

Well, do you remember the last time you clicked on an ad while not looking for that exact item? Me neither. (except for that banner selling N95 masks last week, but it was sadly out of stock).

But surely, you say – if digital ads didn’t work, why are marketers still spending hundreds of millions on them?

As the article says, quoting Steve Tadelis, “marketers actually believe that their marketing works, even if it doesn’t.” Good old Cognitive dissonance.

Yes, cognitive dissonance does play a role. But I think there’s a second element too. You know the saying, “what gets measured gets managed“. Google and Facebook report clicks and impressions, not actual incremental purchases. That’s what is available, so that’s what marketers track and optimize. They don’t track incremental purchases, because there’s no way to monitor that.

Digital advertising doesn’t work. And marketers don’t care.

In other words, what doesn’t get measured, doesn’t exist.

Related articles:

[Note: this article appeared in my newsletter, Sunday Reads #84. Read the rest of the newsletter here]

Cognitive Dissonance, or why it’s so hard to persuade people with facts

[Note: I shared this mental model with my email subscribers on Feb 5, 2017. If you want to receive a new mental model every week, join the club.]

Charlie Munger Quote on Cognitive Dissonance

Why is it so hard to persuade people with facts?

You feel like their argument stands on three key pillars, and you’ve destroyed all of them with hard data. Still, it remains standing. In fact, they’ve dug their heels in even more!

Why does being corrected trigger feelings of anger and dismay?
Short answer: Cognitive dissonance.

 

What it is:

Why does cognitive dissonance happen? As this article says, there are two main reasons:

  • Our brains don’t store facts as standalone pieces of information. We remember data points as a network of interrelated “facts”. So, when one of them is called into question, it feels like the entire network of beliefs is threatened. Loss aversion kicks in.
  • When an argument threatens your world view, self concept, or your very identity, facts can even backfire. You become more convinced of your erroneous stand, when you hear you’re wrong.

Strange things happen when you think your identity is attacked.

See the GMO study in the article above, or this interesting example of cognitive dissonance from the ever-provocative Scott Adams.

And cognitive dissonance isn’t triggered only in an argument. In any setback, you choose the interpretation most favorable to your self esteem. Just ask Aesop:

The Fox & the Grapes - Cognitive Dissonance

[Tweet “”We have a habit of distorting the facts until they become bearable for our own views.””]

Rules to follow:

So, what do you do? Or, as the title of this section says, how do you convince someone when facts fail?

  1. First, articulate the opposite position accurately. Acknowledge that you understand why someone could hold that opinion.
  2. Stick to the facts, and layer them up gradually. First, the raw information. Then, a second order inference. Agree on both. Only then, bring up your controversial conclusion.
  3. Keep emotions out. Discuss, don’t attack. No absurd absolutes. No ad hominem. And definitely no ad Hitlerum.
  4. Don’t activate identity when arguing a point. Show how changing facts doesn’t necessarily mean changing world-views.

If you and your stubborn interlocutor are a little geeky, try the Double Crux method. [I’m still trying to find a fellow geek I disagree with, to try this.]

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Further Reading:

 

Linked to: Confirmation Bias

Filed Under: Psychology & Human Behavior