Marketing ROI Accountability: Why Half Your Advertising Budget Remains Wasted
This article challenges the notion that digital marketing and search advertising have solved the classical problem of unmeasurable advertising waste, popularized by John Wanamaker's famous quote. The author argues that while Enterprise Marketing Automation systems and Google's accountability messaging promise better ROI measurement, click fraud and the fundamental difference between branding and direct marketing create a new form of waste that replaces the old.
Metrics in this report
2%
mean
for paid search advertising, equivalent to traditional direct mail response rates
0.6%
calculated example
for $1 cost per piece, $300 product price, $150 production cost
1000$
illustrative
cost of 20 manual clicks on high-value mesothelioma ads
2%
example target
achieves 200% ROI on direct mail campaigns