This is a video he’s just made about his experience earlier this year with print advertising. Essentially he invested $30,000 in advertising with three specialised photographic publications, and he describes his results and conclusions. His full post, with stats, is here.
Hat tip to Gary Arndt (@EverywhereTrip) who alerted me. Gary himself wrote on this same subject a year ago on Tnooz.
This confirms what I’ve been saying for years about travel. Print advertising sucks. I’ve talked to many marketing managers at hotels and no one can point to any real success from print advertising campaigns. You spend enormous amounts of money for something that has a click through rate of 0% and no good metrics.
So…
Do you have any evidence to draw any conclusions? Are you detecting a drift away from print advertising to direct ad space purchasing from small online publishers and bloggers?
Post Revisions:
- 12 December, 2011 @ 9:47 [Current Revision] by Alastair McKenzie
- 11 December, 2011 @ 13:28 by John O'Nolan
- 11 December, 2011 @ 13:27 by Alastair McKenzie
Not wrong exactly, just way too broad. I’ve spoken to people in the cruise industry who are in no doubt at all about the efficacy of a Mail on Sunday print ad. Things like cruises and the MoS aren’t sexy, of course, which may or may not be a factor in their being overlooked…
This guy’s experience is interesting but ‘the plural of anecdote is not data’, as they say.
Totally true, Nathan. (and without reviewing the whole video again, I’m pretty sure Trey makes that same point – three is hardly a dataset to work with)
I agree, never underestimate the power of mainstream media like MOS on mainstream markets like cruise.
I think what Trey (& Gary ) are drawing attention to – and what I am certainly drawing attention to – is that advertisers have already shifted mainstream spend to Online in a big way through Google, affiliation networks and through display ads on scaled networks, but that if they also stepped outside their comfort zone and tried more direct sale campaigns with niche sites, including bloggers, they might be surprised by the ROI.
The question isn’t if they can see a result from an ad, the question is how much it costs to get that result.
If print was really that cost effective, newspapers wouldn’t be going out of business and writers would be getting laid off.
1) The guy picked the wrong tools for the job. (A full-page ad in POP PHOTO for a specialized tutorial? What was he thinking?)
2) Plenty of money is being invested in online travel advertising. Much of it is through rep firms and networks, though. (It isn’t efficient to buy a few thousand impressions at a time.)
3) I’d suggest that everyone read an earlier post at Travelllll.com titled “‘Are travel bloggers worth advertising with?’ The media buyer’s perspective”:
http://travelllll.com/2011/10/06/are-travel-bloggers-worth-advertising-with-the-media-buyers-perspective/
Given one of the three mags wasn’t an appalling waste of dosh, I guess the moral of the story is stop wasting money on print by doing your research and advertising on print that will pay dividends.
Sure some big companies could probably be getting some extra results by advertising online (as well) but saying advertising in print is a waste of money simply isn’t true – it just can’t be tied to a specific click.
What is true is advertising the wrong product in the wrong manner in the wrong medium is a waste of money and time and appears Ratcliff did prove that.