In my last blog post, I talked about the importance of value-added marketing and how traditional marketing techniques are becoming increasing ineffective. While browsing through the course blogroll, I realized that this concept relates strongly to what Devon discusses in his blog post about the challenges of social media. Devon mostly discusses the risks of a company losing control of an ad on social media platforms, but I want to take it to the next level and discuss the very act of placing an ad on social media—is it worth it or not?

Sure, social media seems perfect in theory—it’s cheap and personalizable and can reach a large amount of people. However, web users are so immune to these “one-way” marketing techniques that they can easily filter out this sort of marketing. In fact, Forrester has put out a new digital marketing report, which shows that online banner ads and social marketing ads lie at the bottom of the trust index. In other words, consumers very rarely trust online ads. According to this report, we are also able to see interesting cultural variances that marketers need to be aware of—for example, Europeans are generally more cynical and consistently trust online marketing less that Americans.

It seems as though the promotional part of the marketing mix is definitely more complicated to approach than it was in the past. Consumers today look for value in advertising and decided themselves when and where they engage with brands; it is easy for them to switch in and out of content. Marketers need to recognize this trend and understand that although marketing techniques such as utilizing banner ads on social networking seems great as it can reach many people, it is usually quite ineffective.