Hiding Truth by Hiding Stories

Thursday, December 11, 2014
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Hiding Truth by Hiding Stories

How do you keep morale high? Some rally the troops with truth. Others tend to stretch statements to obfuscate truth by stating poorly constructed opinion. Still others merely remove what's offensive to their senses, and the troops then fail to get the truth. Radio Ink is getting into the habit of the latter.

This is not the first time Radio Ink chose to remove something within hours of my posting. It is time, though, to speak about it.

"Curious, but that article was removed from the home page within hours of my posting the comment, along with the entire 'Digital' tab on its home page."

A Radio Ink article titled "CMOS LOVE DIGITAL BUT WANT R.O.I.," posted on December 9, contained what I consider irrational comments aimed at avoiding truth:
1) "A lot of money being spent on digital is being spent without
any logical explanation"
2) "And radio does have data that proves its strong ROI"

Long time readers know I bristle when hearing comments from radio industry communicators that seem fabricated. Reading this Radio Ink article gave me the same reaction. So I wrote a comment. (On what, in a moment.) Curious, but that article was removed from the home page within hours of my posting the comment, along with the entire "Digital" tab on its home page.

Read the Radio Ink article; my comment follows below. (Can you guess why it was removed?)

It's articles like this that give a false sense of security to those selling radio.
1) There are logical explanations for digital ad buys.
2) Radio cannot PROVE R.O.I.
3) "Name one brand that was built on Facebook or Twitter or Insert-Digital-Company-Here": Pandora was launched strictly online. (There are more.)

Relative to the article's claim that "radio does have data that proves..." I then gave a link to an academic paper from Yale which went through the math of choosing online CPA and CPC ad buys. Clearly, radio does not offer proven ROI (though, if it chose, it could).

I'm not going to waste more time on this. Just be aware that items of knowledge are being kept from people in radio - or, at least, are not being given as much of a chance to circulate as the happy talk articles radio industry trades conjure.

That Radio Ink headline of "CMOS LOVE DIGITAL BUT WANT R.O.I." (my bold), I'm not sure what it's supposed to mean. When properly bought, a digital campaign delivers ROI unlike any form of media short of coupons. So where does the "BUT" come from?

Protecting radio sales people from truth or, just as bad, filling their heads with wishes does no one good. Full disclosure on competition makes for a better radio sales staff.

Study this report titled "Performance Based Pricing Models in Online Advertising: Cost per Click versus Cost per Action," even if you don't understand the advanced math. (These equations and more are in it.)

This confirmation of investment return is being done every day in the digital ad world. It's one reason why selling impressions is radio's Achilles heel. Just don't let the troops know.

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