Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.
This week’s High Five is about Internet advertising and metrics.
#5: Is 2010 the Year Digital Will Eclipse Print Ad Spending?
A recent Outsell study predicts that advertisers will be spending 32.5 percent in digital media versus 30.3 percent in print. The silver lining for print is that it predicts advertising expenditures to increase slightly. For some time, this has been a question of when and not if, and so while it comes as little surprise, it is no less momentous.
Link: Wired
#4: Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love
While print advertising is taking a beating these days, it’s not all moonlight and roses for digital advertising either. Ars Technica decided to conduct an interesting experiment on their own site to block their content from visitors who were using ad blockers, since this was detrimental to their revenue stream. After all, everybody needs to put food on the table. While the experiment was a technical success, it was a social failure. They determined that the backlash from this was far worse than the lost revenue, but more importantly they discovered that they had made a false assumption. Their visitors, as it turns out, were not blocking the ads out of malevolence. The simply hadn’t considered the ramifications of doing so and the vast majority were more than happy to whitelist the site. The takeaway here is <drumroll> communication works!
Link: Ars Technica
#3: Chart of the Week: Marketing Budgets Shifting to Digital Tactics
Another marketing survey, this one from Econsultancy and ExactTarget, confirms a shift not only away from print but radio and television as well. In all, 66 percent of companies surveyed are increasing their investments in digital marketing.
Link: Hubspot
#2: 35 Crucial SEO, Twitter & Social Media Statistics for Business People
Given the mass exodus from traditional marketing into Internet and social media, it’s important to have data to determine which which digital channel is appropriate for a given campaign. This article posts a long list of recently gathered statistics that are helpful in that regard.
Link: SEOptimize
#1: Odds Are, It’s Wrong (Science fails to face the shortcomings of statistics)
Fair warning – this article is fairly dense with mathematics and statistics. However, the bottom line and the reason it’s included here is that with all of these statistics and metrics, it’s important to maintain some healthy skepticism. Almost every week, I see a marketing company either make faulty logical assumptions (here’s a bonus link: 7 Common Logical Mistakes People Make), rely on poor sampling, or flat out use the wrong statistical calculation.
Link: ScienceNews
Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…
