Ugly Ads Strike Again

I'd like to share another one of the ads I see every so often while checking my e-mail. This one would probably be best classified as guilt-marketing or shock-marketing (to a lesser extent).

I suppose if I was married and had a young girl and was without life insurance this advertisement would be effective...however since I'm not in that (specific!) situation this ad impression is wasted on me. Who is the advertiser targeting? Too specific in my books...soften and broaden the message a little more to cover a wider audience. If you make your net bigger you can sometimes catch more fish (if the net is thrown in the right area).

I have a hard time believing that Comcast Webmail has a higher percentage of uninsured parents than any other site - so it would seem this placement is random. I guess that's the nature of the beast for most advertisers - your target audience doesn't often (if ever?) do exactly the same things, which means advertisers are always aiming at a moving target. Otherwise marketing would be easy...and boring.

I do give these advertisers props for having some paid search engine coverage to support their other efforts. Search for 'Life Insurance' on Google.com and you will see a paid advertisement within three or four spots from the top for 'accuquote'. I checked this out because without effective cross-channel advertising, ads like the one shown above would probably be pretty worthless.

Whats my point? I don't have any earth-shattering statement to make other than the observations I've made (not what you were expecting, huh?). Since working in the interactive marketing world, my thought process has changed quite a bit and I have found it very enjoyable to try analyzing what I see. I've been exposed to advertisements online for the past 10 to 12 years of my life, but for the first time I've been seeing them in a different light.

See, learning can be fun!