C. I think its impossible to prove that any given $1 of advertising earns back $1 in profit for any sufficiently complex advertiser.
Targeted ads for largely online companies: If your customer sees an advertisement on Facebook and YouTube, and sees a few sponsored search results on Bing, then opens an ad in an Amazon mobile app six months later and converts, which ad was effective? Which was priced right? Lets assume you can 100% correlate all of this activity. Can you justify spending $X on platform Y will return >$X?
Brand awareness ads for largely offline companies: Your products are largely sold at retail, and you are a large multinational company like Coca Cola or Nestle. Which of your ad campaigns this quarter drove sales? Can you justify spending $X on platform Y will return >$X?
It may be possible, but it's a hard problem. Are the people doing this calculation in your company competent in statistics, or are they just trusting what their ad management tools tell them?
Targeted ads for largely online companies: If your customer sees an advertisement on Facebook and YouTube, and sees a few sponsored search results on Bing, then opens an ad in an Amazon mobile app six months later and converts, which ad was effective? Which was priced right? Lets assume you can 100% correlate all of this activity. Can you justify spending $X on platform Y will return >$X?
Brand awareness ads for largely offline companies: Your products are largely sold at retail, and you are a large multinational company like Coca Cola or Nestle. Which of your ad campaigns this quarter drove sales? Can you justify spending $X on platform Y will return >$X?