Examining Digital Advertising

In Technology Review.    Read the complete thing.

Digital Advertising Takes a Hit
Big-name advertisers have begun to question whether they’ve placed too much faith—and money—in targeted advertising.   by Kate Kaye   

Since its infancy in the 1990s, the digital advertising industry has trumpeted the special power of digital ads. Unlike newspaper or television ads, online advertising can be aimed precisely at the very people a company wants to reach, so businesses won’t waste money by showing ads to those consumers outside predetermined parameters.

Then last year Procter & Gamble’s chief marketing officer, Marc Pritchard, declared that the company would pull back on ad targeting on Facebook. One of a number of recent announcements by Pritchard regarding P&G’s dissatisfaction with digital advertising, the news led some to question the value of digital advertising’s distinguishing characteristic: its capacity to target narrow segments of the population.

P&G’s reëvaluation of its approach is part of a trend that appears to be growing among advertisers, says Tom Riordan, special operations consultant at Adobe Advertising Cloud, a platform that helps advertisers manage ad strategy and measurement (see “The End of Internet Advertising as We Know It”) .... "