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Does it Work?

Entry 530, on 2007-05-10 at 18:36:19 (Rating 2, Comments)

I've never understood why advertising is such an important activity for media companies. I mean, the high-tech world's biggest success story, Google, makes huge profits from placing ads on its web sites. Internet video sites, TV stations, and many other media-oriented businesses use advertising to generate their income. I guess research must indicate that its effective. But does it really work?

When deciding what brand to buy I have much better mechanisms than advertising available. There are plenty of review sites on the Internet (and, as far as I remember, I didn't discover them through advertisements), there's the opinions of friends (who might not have picked up their preferences through advertising), and there's discussion forums (and no one there would have been affected by ads... would they).

After further consideration I can see that even someone determined to avoid the bias and inaccuracy of advertising is still being affected by it, even if only indirectly. Maybe that's what Google and its advertisers have already discovered. So much for the informed consumer, and survival of the best products.

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