Years ago I wrote and produced radio ads. Initially I naively believed that large corporations were highly sophisticated in how and where they placed ads. Over time I realized they were more clueless than I ever imagined.

There are a number of retail firms I patronize and always will. Home Depot is one of them. Musician’s Friend is another. Any time I go to the Home Depot web site to look for something, I will get Home Depot ads on my browser for the item I looked at for several days. I wonder if Home Depot has any idea, their ads are being shown to folks who are already their customers. I am not sure they do.

Trying to milk a market for more than it is worth is a common phenomenon but nowhere is it more widespread than in internet advertising. The efforts to put an ad in front of a reader on the internet have become desperate and heroic of the past six months. A reader feels almost as if someone is going to come out of the screen, hit them with a hammer and force them to look at an ad. It is a sad situation but these ads cannot be generating any revenue for the businesses which place them. I have gotten so fast at clicking the add off that I never even see it. I am sure the advertiser gets charged for for the impression anyway.

A smart advertiser knows that when ads become unreasonably too numerous, nobody sells anything. Consumers develop tolerance to advertising techniques the same way they do with some medications. So, it is getting harder and harder to get people to click the mouse. Overkill can kill anything.

There is no crime in advertising on the internet. I just doubt there is any profit in doing so.

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