Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet

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If I am hoping to book a travel trip, I would be only too pleased to see a relevant advert for an airline or a tour company on a page with a YouTube travel video.

But I have never seen any travel adverts on YouTube.

In fact only about 5% 0f YouTube videos carry adverts.

And it is generally the least attractive videos that carry adverts.

And the adverts are usually for junky American entertainment products.

In TechCrunch, we read "Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet" by Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at the University of Pennsylvania.

(See: How can YouTube survive?)

Clemons argues that an internet site, where the public can give their opinions, may provide us with very useful information that product X is good, but product Y is bad.

Personal recommendations are better than gaudy adverts.

Clemons claims we don't like online advertising, as it exists today.

(Most adverts appear to have been designed by nasty people for nasty people.)

One comment on a story about YouTube's advertising: "If advertising is made one iota more intrusive, I shall use other video sites instead."

According to Professor Clemons: "commercial messages, pushed through whatever medium, in order to reach a potential customer who is in the middle of doing something else, will fail".

But, let's say I like to watch YouTube videos of a political nature.

Pages with such videos could carry adverts for suitable books and other products of a political nature.

AND, I would be keen to click on some of those adverts.

We suspect that the people in the advertising world tend to be all of one type, and they are not very good at getting their message across to most of us.

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