15 Questions About Online Advertising

Massimo Moruzzi

Jul 2015 · 15 Questions Book 1 · Massimo Moruzzi

About this ebook

#NOT a real book (Just a screed)

The real question of course is: Does Online Advertising work?

Unfortunately, it's impossible to give a simple answer to this apparently straightforward question. For starters, this is not a single question, but three. 

The right question to ask would be: for whom does Online Advertising work?

Do Banner Ads, what we once called Interactive Advertising and now call Display Ads because nobody clicks on them, and much less "interacts" with them, work for Publishers? Do they work for Advertisers? Or do they just work for the Middlemen based in Silicon Valley?

The 15 Questions:

1. Why Banner Ads? 
2. What was Online Advertising supposed to be like? 
3. Did it work out as advertised? 
4. Why not? 
5. Why are Banner Ads still around? 
6. Is all this Targeting good? 
7. Is this Advertising at all? 
8. How big is this thing? 
9. What is Programmatic? 
10. Does Online Advertising work for Publishers? 
11. Does it work for Advertisers? 
12. Does it work for the Middlemen? 
13. Is it a gigantic scam? 
14. Should my company stay away from Banner Ads? 
15. Is there any hope for Online Advertising? 

Download it now: it's a smart 15 minutes' read.

Ratings and reviews

The introduction to 15 questions to Online Advertising was informative, Moruzzi lets us know that when questions this topic you can ask a straightforward question because the topic itself isn’t straightforward. After reading what happened to advertising by Moruzzi this book was almost a filler as it fills in the gaps and answers some of the questions I had from the previous book. One thing I noticed in the first couple of chapters is that Moruzzi touches on a few of the same topics in the previous book I read including interactive advertising and banner ads. I was surprised to learn you are much more likely to survive a plane crash than to click on a banner ad which is true as I personally never click on them and actively avoid websites that have lots of ads. As we approach the half way mark I was surprised to find Moruzzi spoke in depth about banner ads and why they are still around if they don’t work in getting more click-throughs to a company or individuals website. We also learn that currently over 40% of people use an AdBlocker – I am one of them which is quite a high number which only provides prove that ads don’t work in drumming up more business or views for companies. Moruzzi also talks about programmatic advertising which is technology that promises to make the ad buying system quicker and more efficient, although history has proven that in order to make a big impression and draw interest to is better to create unique ads targeted to your specific audience than universal ads that just say “come buy this”. As we enter the final section of this short book Moruzzi talks about the people online advertising does and doesn’t work for and why and it is surprising to see how little people actually benefit from online advertising and many large companies still rely on TV, radio and newspaper ads alongside the online presence. Overall this book provides some astounding figures and ideas about online advertising and its future and I recommend this book to people who are interested in this topic.

Only tried to cover few aspects whereas the online ad is a vast scenario. But then again worth reading.

I loved that this book explained everything to me as if I had never heard of any of this before. I learned quite a bit and am going to put it to good use.

About the author

From the Author of What Happened To Advertising? What Would Google Do?