Stone Age of Online Marketing

| June 23, 2010 | 7 Comments

Emergence is being noticed since last 5 years in the online advertising market of Pakistan where Companies are embracing digital media but the question is; why haven’t we noticed something which has overwhelmed us.

Confusion in the online industry of the country is widespread and clear principles are neglected.This makes us think how we are growing. It may definitely be the wrong way of doing it and this is not going to last for too long. We are adding on numbers to the total online media spend but at the end of the day, wasting dollars.

Brands that spend millions of dollars don’t think beyond display advertising a.k.a. banner advertising, where internet marketing is much more than that. Pasting up banners on a website which a brand manager visits is not at all interactive advertising, its destructive advertising! We are still living in the stone age of online marketing where the online marketers don’t even know if there is a metric other than CTR (click through rate) to gauge online campaigns and if there is anything else creative than banner design for an online campaign.

We will be soon standing on a point where brands will be reluctant to spend online just because it will be tagged as one of the most inefficient medium by the marketers and I will blame the digital media gurus of the local scene only. Digital media agencies are striving hard to trade the merchandise they have by fooling the rest.

In fact you should be ready to be fooled by people selling technologies and confusing you with complexities in the digital media landscape i.e. if-you-can’t-convince-them-confuse-them strategy.

Tags: Advertising, Banner, banner advertising, banner design, digital, digital media, display advertising, Emergence, interactive advertising, Marketing, media gurus, media landscape, Online, online advertising, online marketing, pakistan

Category: Advertising, Media, Social Media

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  • http://www.3rdwm.wordpress.com Erfan Afghan

    Well Said. We are still in the age of interruption. We calculate the effectiveness through Click per Interruption. We are switching to the Internet with the same mentality of the Traditional mediums.

    Marketers need to study the internet and they have to come up with novel ways to interact with their target market. Click per Impression aka interruption isn’t working.

  • Usman Jaffer

    well i am amazed to see your ignorance towards some really good work being done by the digital agencies and clients in the country. your article represents a confused thought process where you are comparing online advertising and measurements with digital media landscape. online advertising and its measurement is an important part of digital media and if you think all the media professionals who take decisions to spend on digital can be fooled and confused easily then you are underestimating them all my friend. nobody is that naive that he/she will keep on spending and justifying it with no rationale and reason. i think you need to learn more about digital media landscape but also about overall media landscape before commenting on what’s been done by others. it would be great to see some examples of your work where you had played your role in making a digital case study without spending on online advertising. and it would be great to see the numbers that you achieved.

  • Faisal Kahn

    The gist of the post isn’t that online advertising isn’t effective or online campaigns can be done without that but its just that it plays as a part of the overall digital media campaign but doesn’t cover up the whole digital marketing mix.

    As far as metrics and online media is concerned, the whole digital media is divided into 3 parts paid, owned and earned and paid includes online advertising,which is a small chunk of the overall digital media mix.

    I am part of the digital media scene from long now and there’s not a single campaign executed by myself without PAID media but prior to that there has been an engagement value created by owned media. Also by paid media its not ONLY putting up banners on facebook or yahoo! but it includes all the transactions you do to promote your OWNED media.

    To clear you with the last part of your post there has been various campaigns executed that wasn’t supported by online advertising and i.e. called viral campaigns in my part of the world.

    Let me know if i’ve left you in confusion

  • Usman Jaffer

    again numbers are missing and you are busy in justifying yourself as a guru here :) fine you are an unheard of guru as your working in the industry for LONG, but have you answered all my concerns. read my post again and read it carefully this time. do you have local & global numbers of how much brands are investing on earned, owned & paid mediums? and rationale for spends on each.. lets see where the small chunk actually lies.. secondly, i don’t think you spend on paid media to promote only the owned media.. there could be several other reasons for using paid media? on the other hand it would be great to share some examples where you can shed some light on how each medium was effectively used. numbers & cases are the key here my friend… your confusion continues…. cheers… :)

  • Farzana

    Firstly I’d like to say the article was very well written (in this case ..typed) But I do want to add, paid mediums aren’t just there for promotions of owned, “solely”. I don’t think that has ever been the case. Haven’t been in the field for too long to carry further this debate much, anyways the entire conversation was a good read. Cheers!

  • Faisal Kahn

    again numbers are missing and you are busy in justifying yourself as a guru here fine you are an unheard of guru as your working in the industry for LONG, but have you answered all my concerns.

    To start with your first statement. The reason I mentioned my experience was to clear you out on my understanding regarding the medium

    read my post again and read it carefully
    this time.

    I would prefer you to read the blog post that we’re arguing on prior to making me read your post. Your post was nothing but bunch of irrelevant arguments which I tried to answer in a very kind manner but I think I couldn’t succeed with that

    do you have local & global numbers of how much brands are investing on earned, owned & paid mediums? and rationale for spends on each.. lets see where the small chunk actually lies..

    Seems like you’re acting like one of those uninvited guests who’re ask for takeaways as well.

    secondly, i don’t think you spend on paid media to promote only the owned media.. there could be several other reasons for using paid media?

    For this you need to have deep understanding of OWNED Media. Its whatever you create online. Lets talk in your language and i.e. if you click on a banner and it lands anywhere i.e. even OWNED MEDIA. So paid is always leading to owned media no matter what.

    on the other hand it would be great to share some examples where you can shed some light on how each medium was effectively used. numbers & cases are the key here my friend…

    I won’t comment more on this one otherwise you may take me as an unheard guru but I’ve been part of one of the few interactive campaigns done in the country till date that includes Castrol’s game on the banner, Sunsilk’s interactive campaigns, Pepsi’s interactive activity. Lays Interactive Campaign

    your confusion continues…. cheers…

    Can’t do nothing about that though

  • Tyrone

    Hmm blog post was interesting but the cat fight is even better!

    Faisal we all know or should know about paid, earned, owned. Usman you want numbers why?

    You don’t believe that online banners etc is a small part of digital?

    What are your facts to support your logic/belief?

    Faisal Usman is right that a lot of good work has been done and people are aware of other metrics -dwell time, cpc etc.

    Also there’s little danger of digital staying out in the cold though yes the old mindset in new media is disconcerting.

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