There's a Perfect Ad for Everyone (and an Easter Bunny Also) - Jeff Einstein

Neil Mohan, Google's VP of Display Advertising, gave the keynote address earlier this month at the IAB's Innovation Days @ Internet Week event. "There's a perfect ad for everyone," he declared. Whew, that's a relief, 'cause I've been trying to hunt down the perfect ad for years.

In his address, Mr. Mohan cited six reasons why online display advertising will change for the better (with Google's help, of course)…

1. The number of display ad impressions will decrease by 25 percent per person.Mr. Mohan predicts that the delivery of more relevant ads will somehow reduce the amount of clutter. Despite the patent absurdity of his claim, relevancy, like reach, is simply not determined by the ones who manipulate the ad supply. Relevancy is determined exclusively by the 99.92% of us who ignore the ads. The onlyones among us who actually believe in relevant ads are the .08% of us getting paid to sell relevant ads (or relevant ad technology). In truth, only advertising wannabees sell relevancy. No one who actually knows anything about brand reach – the only non-discretionary line item in any big media spend – gives a rat's ass about relevancy.

2.Engagement rates across all display ads will increase 50 percent.Whoa! Slow down there, big fella! A whopping 50% increase in display CTRs will put us somewhere in the .15% response neighborhood! Pretty heady stuff. Of course the only one who can afford to stay in business at that rate of return is someone who gets paid to burn billions of daily ad impressions, someone whose opacity and brute size render any discussion of performance utterly rhetorical to begin with. Someone like Google.

Question: Why does P&G deliver 2,000,000,000 daily ad impressions?

Answer: Because the first 1,999,999,999 don't get the job done.

3.People will have a direct say in 25 percent of the ads they see.Why would we want a direct say in only 25% of the ads we see when we already have a direct say in the 99.92% of the ads we ignore entirely? Besides, how many of us do we think will actually take the time to sit down and fill out a detailed questionnaire about ads we don't want to see in the first place? And how am I supposed to know which one of the four ads I see is the one I requested unless I watch all four? This is much worse than I thought.

4.35 percent of campaigns will primarily use metrics beyond clicks and conversions. Well, I should hope so, because it's getting harder and harder to sell a .08% performance rate. Even the digital rubes won't swallow that rancid bait anymore. It's clearly time to shoot the old messenger and find a new one to shoot later. But relax: according to Mr. Mohan, new technologies will give us the opportunity to measure the enhanced engagement levels of all the ads we now avoid. (Applause.)

5.25 billion ads per day will tell people why they're seeing them.According to Mr. Mohan, consumer notices (like Ads by Google and AdChoices) will become ubiquitous by 2015. Finally, we'll be able to state with absolute certainty which of the ads we already pay to ignore and avoid are officially sanctioned for us to ignore and avoid. Don't know about you, but I feel better already.

6.Over 40 percent of online Americans will name display ads as their favorite ad format. According to Mr. Mohan, a recent YouGov survey of more than 1,000 Americans revealed that online display advertising placed only slightly behind sky-writing (can't make this up) as a favored ad medium. Of course, asking us to rank our favorite advertising media is a little like asking us to rank our favorite allergens; it begins the entire conversation with the wrong question and leads to completely nonsensical results, per the above. Once we initiate a dialog predicated on the wrong initial question, the less we know with each subsequent response – all of which suits Google just fine, since it so perfectly explains their entire revenue model.

Now that I know that there's a perfect ad just waiting for me out there, I can feel much better about the 36,500,000 less-than-perfect ads I'll ignore and avoid over the next 20 years – all thanks to Mr. Mohan, Google and – of course – the IAB.

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