离线广告太烧钱，效果堪比“禁毒战”

    大品牌及其消费者之间存在脱节。人们在互联网和各种数字设备上花费的时间越来越多，然而广告主们仍对将钱花在数字领域心存疑虑。曾担任互联网分析师的风险资本家玛丽•米克估计，应该投入互联网，但最终却投往别处的资金高达500亿美元。

    盛世长城（Saatchi & Saatchi S）首席执行官犹达•席勒在参加关于广告业现状的一次头脑风暴科技讨论时称：“我认为离线广告和禁毒战有点类似。过去数十年，我们花费了数千万美元。我们知道这不会奏效，但至少我们知道自己能得到什么。”

    少数公司愿意冒险一试。惠普（Hewlett-Packard）目前已将广告预算的40%投入数字领域。该公司负责数字营销战略的副总裁克里斯•科廷表示：“我们在交互广告领域投入了很多钱，特别是社交和移动平台上。假如必须要进行分配的话，我们希望能将更多的广告预算投入交互广告。”

    这一番推销有些棘手，因为各公司还在努力界定“交互式[广告]”成功的量化标准。微软（Microsoft）去年进行了一项营销活动，向成为必应（Bing）粉丝的Facebook用户免费赠送“农场现金”——Zynga旗下热门游戏FarmVille中的虚拟货币。

    必应全球市场部总经理维斯•尼科尔斯在谈到关于此次营销的内部讨论时表示：“大家的看法两极分化。”从表面上看，我们取得了巨大成功：必应迅速新增了50万Facebook粉丝。不过，他们会一直力挺必应吗？

    尼科尔斯表示：“争论仍在继续：这些粉丝会保持活跃、再度访问必应吗？还是说他们成为必应的粉丝，仅仅是为了免费获得农场里的小猪？”

    There's a disconnect between big brands and their customers. People are spending more and more time online and on their gadgets, but advertisers remain wary about shifting their spending into the digital realm. Internet analyst turned venture capitalist Mary Meeker estimates that there's a $50 billion gap between where the money goes and where it should go.

    "I think there's something analogous to the war on drugs," Saatchi & Saatchi S CEO Judah Schiller declared Wednesday at a Brainstorm Tech discussion on the state of the advertising industry. "We're spending tens of millions of dollars over the decades. We know it doesn't work, but at least we know what we're getting!"

    A few companies are taking the plunge. Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) spends 40% of its ad budget on digital. "A lot of our dollars that are spent, particular in social and mobile, are on the engagement front," said Chris Curtin, HP's vice president of corporate marketing digital strategy. "If we had to split it, we'd like to see more of our advertising dollars go to engagement."

    That's a tricky sales pitch when companies are still struggling to quantify the success metrics for "engagement." Microsoft (MSFT) ran a promotion last year offering free "farm cash" -- the virtual currency of Zynga's hit FarmVille game -- to those who became Facebook fans of Bing.

    "It was very polarizing," Bing Worldwide Marketing General Manager Wes Nichols said of the internal discussion running the promotion. It was an apparent runaway success: Bing immediately gained 500,000 new Facebook fans. But are they staying engaged?

    "We still have the debate," Nichols said. "Are those friends active and coming back, or did they just friend Bing to get the free pig on the farm?"