Since posting this, just noticed that the controversy over Phorm is growing with one group's lawyer claiming that the system for providing these targeted ads could well be illegal in the UK. See:

news.bbc.co.uk

In the print world,targeted, personalised mailshots seem to do the trick. Why shouldn't they work on the net?

All this doean't bode well for those who want to monetise their blog!

But in the print world, targeted mailshots don't work. Their success is, at best, 4%. That means they fail 96% of the time. How is that working?
The advertising industry has been deluding itself for decades.

And as for monetising blogs - those days are over, frankly. Concentrate on information and reputation building and you'll get your money in other ways.

Fair points here Graham, but I was wondering why you thought marketing people keep on deluding themselves?

Surely if marketing, along the lines you have discussed, was such an utter waste of money the industry would have woken up to its ineffectiveness? I accept that some marketing people don’t have two brain cells to rub together – but there are enough brains in the industry to spot what would be a fundamentally expensive flaw.

Paul, thanks for your comment. I suspect that it doesn't actually matter if it's innefective. Indeed, I know some marketing people who tell me privately that there's little evidence for the success of some marketing methods - however, their customers are happy to carry on paying....! And therein lies the problem - businesses know they must sell their products and services. The advertising and marketing industry appears to have a solution, so they buy it. Because people keep buying it, the industry begins to believe it is successful. However, look at the "churn"; people try one advertising agency, eventually get disappointed, try another, then another and so on. Everyone is looking for a "magic pill" and it doesn't exist.

Businesses know that only half of their advertising works - they just don't know which half. No-one does. What we do know is that people buy from people they like. It's all about relationships at the end of the day and the best marketing builds REAL relationships, not the so-called "relationships" that many businesses have with their customers. I bet my mobile phone company reckons they have a relationship with me, I bet I even have a "relationship manager" somewhere. Well it's all tosh. Companies are deluding themselves they are doing the right things; they aren't.

Graham, the success of any activity is relative to the objectives set for it (let's assume for now that the objective is a sound one as well, which I know isn't always the case!).

I know that to non-marketing folk, the thought of rejoicing at a 1% response rate sounds odd, but it's return on investment that really matters. If a piece of marketing activity pays for itself several times over in terms of revenue brought in, that's a success in my book and that can be achieved on a low response rate in some cases.

Saying that any marketing activity with a single digit response rate is a failure is a bit sweeping and is a bit like saying that a winning football team has failed by only winning 1-0 because they didn't score every time they got the ball.

I do agree with you though that there is a lot of dire marketing out there which will be failing and losing money. Poor marketers ruin it not only for themselves, but for the good marketers, by ruining overall perceptions of marketing.

Far too few advertisers study the art of communication and how people receive and respond to information. They base their ads not on their customers, but on what competitors and other companies do, and assume that anything that's being done by everyone else must work. Poor targeting and copywriting is everywhere, you barely need to even look for examples.

I hear what you're saying about Google, but not every business can rely on growing virally like them, they're a very rare example. Some well thought-out marketing still has a part to play for a lot of businesses in my opinion. As you've said, marketing can't do it all and once you've established interest you need to work at building a deeper relationship which marketing alone can't do, but you have to find prospects and customers in the first place.

Ad agencies have a lot to answer for and people have way too much trust in them. This post has certainly sparked some debate!

I disagree. Wander along the Seine in Paris. A huge number of the posters for sale are advertisements. Good advertisements that people enjoy and count as akin to art.

Advertising in general doesn't work, but good, strong content that people want to share spreads. It can be a funny video (like the Trunk Monkey ads on You Tube) or a very succint poster. The best ads make the brand a mere adjective in a piece of content that speaks of a shared experience to a majority of individuals rather than targets a lot of consumers.

Targeting consumers, I'll grant you, is never a good idea. But creating attractive content that people want to share is good, evocative, and lucrative marketing.

Thanks for your comment Linda. However, are people buying those prints of the adverts for the graphical quality - the art? Or were those adverts successful in selling the products? If all that is sold is the "art" then the advert has failed. Advertising only works if it also sells the product. Being great art is what many advertising creates strive for - and that's why I think they miss the point. The advertising industry would no doubt congratulate itself for having successful sales along the Seine. But that's not the point; being good at art is not the same as being good at selling the product the art was intended to sell. All to often advertisers focus on their art, rather than the real intentions of their business.

Even so I agree with you that there is some lovely art in advertising posters for sale.