Tak Tik Boom

Much Better Yellow Pages. Much Worse Television.

In One Sentence
It took me seven years (I'm a little slow) but I figured how to describe the web as an advertising medium in one sentence. Here it is:

The web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television.

You can quote me on that.

On Second Thought...
I've had second thoughts about my last post (The Epic Screwing Of Online Advertisers.)

The second thoughts are not about the

The Epic Screwing Of Online Advertisers

Banner advertising continues to grow at a blistering rate. Apparently, the only thing growing faster is the screwing of the people who buy it.

In the past we have documented the alarming fraud that is happening daily in online advertising. But an article in MediaPost's Marketing Daily last week makes everything else seem like small potatoes. To be fair, the following are someone else's numbers,

Why I Have A Blog, A Facebook Page, And A Twitter Account

People often accuse me of being hypocritical. They say I am constantly whining about online advertising yet I have all the online gizmos.

They say, "If social media is not an effective business driver, why do you have a blog, a Facebook page and a Twitter feed?"

Or, "If online advertising isn't a very good business driver, why do you have a website?"

The answer is, there are certain costs

An Open Letter To Book Publishers

Dear Book Publisher,

Hi. My name is Bob.

I'm almost done with my third book. It's called Advertising Needs Troublemakers.

My last book, 101 Contrarian Ideas About Advertising, has been the #1 ad book at Amazon for almost a year.

But here's the thing. I'm really lazy.

I don't feel like going through the agony of self-publishing like I did last time. It's a huge pain in the ass.

I'm also too

Okay, Sherlock, How'd You Do?

Yesterday I posted a problem to demonstrate the difficulty of understanding some purchasing behaviors.

Here was the problem:

I get The New York Times delivered to my home in the San Francisco Bay Area every morning. Yet when I'm on the road, I don't buy The Times on Mondays or Tuesdays. I do buy it, however, on Wednesdays through Sundays.

Pretend you're a marketing strategist, and see if you

Strategies And Mysteries

Today we have a mystery for you to solve. Get out your pipe and deerstalker hat. But first, the set-up.

Yesterday, Dave Trott had an excellent post about the limits of strategy.

I have always felt that in advertising, strategy is essential but it's not enough. The problem with most of our agency strategists is that they complicate the shit out of the easy stuff and screw up the hard stuff.

The Only Ad Bozo You Can Trust

As regular readers know, I consider people who make predictions idiots.

They almost always turn out wrong and they give smart-ass big-mouths like me wonderful opportunities to make fun of smart-ass big-mouths like them.

 Every now and then, however, I step outside my comfort zone and make a prediction. When it turns out wrong I conveniently forget about it. But when it turns out right, I