False choices
Especially in this economy, it's clear that there are pressures on everyone in the advertising ecosystem to do more with less. This results in advertisers (or their downstream reps, ad-buying agencies) trying to decide how to allocate resources in the most effective way possible. But some of the thinking I'm seeing seems a bit rushed. In particular, many decisions are being framed as "either/or" when they can more effectively be looked at as optimizations ("and/"how much").
Let's take a look at five areas where advertisers are often being pressured to make pointless choices.
Search vs. display advertising
Everyone seems to understand that there are multiple parts to the purchase process, and yet there seems to be a disconnect when it comes to search and display advertising. Obviously, if you can reach buyers right before they make a decision and steer them into an online purchase, that's great. It's also measurable and trackable -- and why Google is worth $380 billion. But that is not the whole story. Brand decisions are formed way earlier than searches, as a result of the media choices people make and the advertising to which they are exposed.
Also, how many people search before making offline purchases in categories such as consumer packaged goods? Or search for where they are going for lunch for that matter? Display ads are a powerful part of that mix, and the idea that buying one obviates the other makes no sense.
