New Age Advertising: Why you should not advertise online

“Almost overnight, the Internet’s gone from a technical wonder to a business must.” — Bill Schrader

If you threw a rock in a room full of business owners, you would likely hit someone screaming ‘Let’s sell online!’. The enthusiasm of business owners to ‘sell online’ is sometimes masked with their view of the magical return on investment (ROI) they expect once they go online. This almost religious sense of hope, a belief that going online will save their business without understanding that online mirrors offline has ended in disappointment for most businesses.

Is that enough reason not to advertise online? Maybe not, but let us take a look at the advertising world before the emergence of the internet as we know it today.

Advertising in the good ol’ days

Before the internet, there was a giant platform no one could ignore in the advertising world, it was the newspaper. The newspaper is the product of what was known as the ‘The news book’ in 1642, and the Old English population loved the newspaper just like they loved their tea. The first daily newspaper however, only became a reality in 1702, and it was called ‘The Daily Courant’

Let’s let the English man breath for a moment, imagine having a tool that everyone listens to, think of the village gong which was used to gather people to the market square (Yes, I watched Nollywood movies). Now imagine the market size (read eyes/ears) you would control if you could have access to the entire villagers at the village square daily! That was how powerful the newspaper was in the 16th to 18th centuries, having that access to the village square was what birthed the first advertisement placed in a newspaper by Coca Cola in 1890.

Source: https://www.britannica.com/ circa:1890

The great expansion of business in the 19th century was accompanied by the growth of an advertising industry; it was that century, primarily in the United States, that saw the establishment of advertising agencies. The first agencies were, in essence, brokers for space in newspapers. In essence, ad agencies of today like Noah’s Ark, Insights etc were primarily brokers that ‘hustled’ for space in newspapers and sell the same to businesses, sounds familiar? Sure, we call that ‘media buying’ today.

But by the early 20th century agencies became involved in producing the advertising message itself, including copy and artwork, and by the 1920s agencies had come into being that could plan and execute complete advertising campaigns, from initial research to copy preparation to placement in various media.

Bringing this home, the first newspaper publication in Nigeria was in 1859, ‘Iwe Iroyin’ which was published 15days apart in both English and Yoruba. This was later followed by the ‘Anglo-African’ published 3years later. The newspaper in Nigeria became a tool for political discourse especially against colonial rule. Details of this, is a topic for another day.

How did the Internet change the world of advertising?

In 2020, the world’s human population stood at approximately 8billion, with worldwide internet users standing at 53.6% according to International Telecommunication Union . The relationship between economic development and internet penetration per population is properly captured in the graph below.

Consequently, the more economically empowered a population becomes, the greater the internet penetration amongst the population. It is therefore no shock to see that poor countries mostly in Africa rank lower in internet penetration per population with Nigeria ranking highest in Africa with 63.4%.

By region, Africa has a 28% internet penetration per populace this is a clear contrast to developed regions like Europe-85% and the United States-94% or Japan-97%. With the knowledge that online advertising is directly dependent on internet users and that internet users growth is majorly based on economic growth which in turn lies squarely in the hands of the leaders or dictators. It is a dark reality when these leaders/dictators in Africa cut off internet access at will and have little or no knowledge of economic growth.

Despite the slow penetration of the internet in the developing world, like a hurricane wave across the Pacific, the internet has gone ahead to make lasting impacts in our lives, especially the way we advertise.

The Dot-com Bust

Just like the gold rush, the good fortune of the internet soon hit a stop, a momentary stop that led to a change in it’s trajectory and birthed the world of data advertising we live in today.

Dot com bubble was fueled by the opening of thousands of new websites, and tech startups. But most of these companies saw a huge loss of money, depleted their raised capital and could not raise more, which gave rise to a small recession at the beginning of 2001.

Banner ads were resulting in lower click-through rates. But companies were still spending millions buying a spot. The ROI was not anywhere near as impressive. Most of these new businesses focused on expanding their consumer reach instead of focusing on profit growth. They assumed that reaching a huge customer base would also increase their profits. To reach this goal they spent a huge amount on advertising, which didn’t pay off. Investors were blindly investing in startups with big ideas rather than strong business models.

Online Advertising today

On October 27, 1994, the first online ad was posted . It was a banner advertisement added to a web page. The website that posted the first ad was a precursor to today’s tech website, Wired. And so began online advertising. A banner advertisement is a rectangular, graphic display that stretches the length of a website at the top or bottom of the page.

AT&T paid the website $30,000 (11, 415000.00 NGN) for the banner ad to be placed at the top of the site for three months total. The click-through rate of the advertisement was 44% (today’s average for the same type is about .05%)! Click-through rate is the percent of people that visit a web page and click on a particular advertisement.

Why you should not advertise online

The statistics to support online advertising is enormous, the good of online advertisement cannot be over emphasized, but just like the gold rush, it won’t favour everyone, it is not a magical solution to your business troubles. Here is why;

i) Accessibility

If you sell jewelries and your business is located in Jakali, a remote town in Kastina State, Nigeria only accessible via the ancient modest means of travel…Camel/Horse, It will do you no good to jump on the bandwagon of online advertising because you have not solved the fundamental business setbacks of access to market, delivery, logistics and etc.

For your business to prosper online, you need to fix the basic problems your business face offline.

ii) Internet Access

If you live in a country with less than 20% internet penetration and you sell a product that is the target for the consumption ladder of B,C and D. You will fail spectacularly because you do not have access to the proverbial village square, and you cannot sell to someone you cannot reach.

iii) Expertise

On this, I would like to share a personal experience, there are lots of individuals masquerading as digital marketing experts who cannot differentiate between a GTM and a Facebook pixel. As someone who has worked with agencies to help my company deliver great results on digital advertising, I have met a lot of these charlatans.

However, one agency stood out for me. They are called SociallyNG, they have remained my go to agency irrespective of the budget or nature of project I am working on. They can be reached via Info@sociallyng.com.

Do not advertise online without getting the right experts to help you research, plan, execute and achieve your objective.