Media Daily News recently published an article by Wayne Friedman covering key statistics about viewing of advertisements.

It shows a striking truth: 63% of people say they ignore all internet ads while only 14% say they ignore all TV ads. And even more interesting: young consumers (18 to 34) ignore banner ads much more than they ignore TV ads.

The statistics in the article are from a specific study (I’ll let Wayne’s article give you the details). These numbers are confirmed by those reported through observational research: Web ads are ignored at very high rates.

Truth is, it makes sense. Think about it – do you pay ANY attention to ads on the web, mobile, Twitter, or Facebook? (The only reason I do is as an advertising guy to see who’s losing their money by paying for that space.)

New media advocates are shameless in the things they claim for the web – even going so far as suggesting all anyone needs is the web. And they yell so often and so loudly that they often drown out sanity and reason at even the most sober of companies.

And if anyone suggests they’re wrong, they always fall back on the idea of change – that the young & hip ignore everything but the web so if you want a future you’d better do everything they say. But the statistics don’t support them. And practice doesn’t either.

Truth is that for all the unusual capabilities of new media, it isn’t strong enough to build and maintain mass markets. Two reasons…

1. New media are all specialized meaning they work best reaching smaller and smaller fragments of markets.
2. New media are very poor for reaching out to people who don’t know why they’d care about your message. Once they know about what you have to say, you might begin to have some web success even though they remain highly fragmented.

In other words, if you have a new product, it’s generally dead via web unless you can use the web to get…um…well…traditional media like the TV news guys to report on it.

If you want more proof, read my post about how online companies are increasingly turning to offline advertising – because they can’t get enough success otherwise.

Then look at your own balance between online and offline advertising. It’s likely that a return to using offline advertising in a smart way will improve your company’s economics.

Copyright 2010 – Doug Garnett