Internet, a mass marketing tool ?

Now that the internet has made millions of people readily contactable the web is now a marketers playground. Traditional media platforms where once the major advertising platform though with the move into technology and the accessibility of any and all information being unlimited, marketers and advertisers have moved into a digital era of marketing.

Gian Fulgoni states that in 2013.

• Today’s smartphone would have been the most powerful computer in the world in 1985
• 120 million people in the U.S. now own smartphones, up 30 million in just the past year
• For $600 you can buy a disk that can store all of the world’s music
• 30+ billion pieces of data are added to Facebook every month
• 72 hours of video are added to YouTube every minute
• By the end of 2012, comScore was capturing 1.4 trillion digital interactions per month
• 92% of the world’s data was created in just the past two years

These figures clearly show the temptations that marketers have to mass market there information/product to many thousands of people. Though we are being to filter through the ads depending on their relevance or become completely oblivious to the ads.

Amy Gesenhues from MarketingLand.com conducted a survey showing that 'data provider Adroit Digital found 56 percent of all its survey participants are likely to skip online video ads, while 46 percent said a video ad should be no more than 15 seconds in length...At 64 percent, Adroit Digital said 18 to 24 year olds are most likely to skip online video content, while respondents age 35 to 44 year olds are least likely to skip an online video ad. Of all the respondents, 56 percent said they skip online video ads most of the time.' (http://marketingland.com/study-56-viewers-skip-online-video-ads-46-think-ad-15-seconds-long-88299). 

What Is the Optimal Length for a Video Ad?

(image sourced from http://marketingland.com/study-56-viewers-skip-online-video-ads-46-think-ad-15-seconds-long-88299)

Do You Skip Online Video Ads?

(image sourced from http://marketingland.com/study-56-viewers-skip-online-video-ads-46-think-ad-15-seconds-long-88299)

How Do You Consume Video Content?

(image sourced from http://marketingland.com/study-56-viewers-skip-online-video-ads-46-think-ad-15-seconds-long-88299)

As you can clearly see by the last graph the increase in ads being view through web platforms, instead of traditional media and/or broadcast. Watching the same ad before every youtube clip can get quite repetitive and can become very annoying to the consumers, which could in turn reflect badly on the company.

Laura Lake from about.com further mentions that 'Technology has made us more efficient with our marketing, but perhaps it's time to consider that maybe it's made us less effective' (http://marketing.about.com/od/internetmarketing/a/Marketing-Communication-How-Much-Is-Too-Much.htm). Which asks the old question, Quantity vs Quality ? Are we being exposed to too many adverts through the web that don't effectively communicate with the ideal target audience. Mass marketing can become very easy through the use internet and social media and become very tempting to do, though might be more of a negative then positive, and can become far less effective than a targeted quality based digital marketing campaign.