That’s refreshing to hear, thanks. I never manage to convince ANY of my coleagues.But I’ll be using your “emperor is naked” methaphor mov8mg forward. It hit the nail in the head.

The branded searched keyword are the tip of the iceberg. Every campaign auto-optimize toward people in late stage of their purche yourney. For people wha already made.the dexision, but are not ready to purchase yet. But branded keywarods are a good example. While this is most common explanation given by the agencies - agencies LOVE the branded keywords - it’s not supported buy any acctually reaserch. When one is done, almost without fail, it shows that branded ads for competitors doesn’t work. Who intentionally clicks on HP ads while they intentionally searched for lenovo specifically? Users are very good at ignoring those and clicking on the next one. Organic or paid. All clicks are basicly exidental and are trash. This is a “cheap” defense from non-existing threat. You compeat alomost exclusively with your own organic.

There is even a study of a company who merged with his own competitor. Both brands existed perarelly for a while, so they choose to test those assubtions. Conclusion: waste of money. But agencies will die on the hill of branded.keywords every time.

https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/mnsc.2019.3534

Yes! And we have examples natural experiments where becouse of the error advertise didn’t launch in some regions… And nothing happened. And no one inside the industry is even talking like this. Bubble will burst on day and it will take entire free internet with it.

But measuring online is not that accurate as everyone portrait it to be. Long story short if you show ads to people waithing for the waiter in the restaurant than you can report that it had amazing “buying dinner conversion rate”. We are getting better and that, and tools are getting better at forcing you to do it or obscure that you do it in the first place… And it’s still expensive as hell.

You are not entirely wrong. It’s a boubble where no person involved benefits from saying “hey, is our budget too big?” It’s basicly given, that any known brand have negative ROI on it’s marketing, but we are all, so brainwashed with need for growrh, that that we know only one solution to decreasing results. Throw more money at it.

Nice try, ad.

Somehow I find it very disconcerting, that you didn’t write “our” lifetime.