It's Not the Internet. It's Google-Mart. Part 2

The End of Brand Advertising - Seeking Alpha
There were 12 comments as of this am. Interesting discussion.

In the good old days of performance-less advertising, engagement didn’t really matter because you generally couldn’t quantify it. Studies on Reach, Frequency, and Recall aside, General Motors (GM) had no way of measuring the marginal benefit (much less revenue!) of a particular advertisement. But on the internet, it is quite clear that if nobody is clicking on your ad, then nobody is noticing it, much less “connecting” with it. Proctor and Gamble has likely spent millions of dollars on Facebook advertisements that attract a few dozen active “followers” – probably the same hit rate they had in Time magazine 20 years ago, but with one key difference: Now anyone can prove that people don’t engage with the advertisement!

But watch out direct mailers! Bold face is not in original.

Pundits will argue that with increased ad targeting, profiling, and all sorts of other algorithmic alchemy, online ad revenues will be boosted. In my opinion, such talk is nonsense insofar as brand advertising (not direct response) is concerned. Rather, a seismic shift is underway – one that will not only change the nature of advertising, but will also show that the last century of offline advertising witnessed a tremendous amount of money being flushed down the toilet. We are a lot smarter than we were 50 years ago, and those analog dollars really should have been analog pennies all along.

One of the comments:

Some of the most backward conclusions I have ever read. Same kind of 'inevitable' logic led to the tech bubble. The narrow focus of this post pre-supposes an 'Online only' consumptiive world. Even with the net erosion, Old media has real and established metrics New Media would kill for. The threat to stand alone New media companies is a hybrid Old-New model that shows that fallacy of New media only ad strategies.

As Barry Diller has aptly stated, these kind of 'new media only' predictions are fad-ish and sophomoric.

Aside from direct mail and coupons, what metrics exactly is this commentator referring to? Number of exposures? Size of audience? If anyone can help out with this it would be much appreciated.

It's not the Internet. It's Google-Mart. Part 1
Google Mart Economy Blog