I'm a little frustrated with Nolo Press, the publisher of my (and Rasberry's) Marketing without Advertising. Why? Because the first chapter, written 25 years ago and still prominent in the 6th revision, makes it clear that most advertising doesn't work. The whole business world, these days, is coming to this same conclusion about advertising ineffectiveness.
We make clear in the book the distinction between advertising, banner ads, billboards and TV spots and listings such as Yellow-pages and Google click-thrus. Listings are where people go to look for information, advertising is 'in your face' with 99% irrelevant issues.
Advertising doesn't work, rarely did, and the business world is finally catching on. The Internet, which is 90% listings (think Craig's list) is only getting a small part of the benefit.
Here is the data: Four years ago total U.S. advertising was $150 billion with very little on the Internet. Today the total is down to $120 billion with $25 billion on the Internet. So overall advertising has really dropped over one-third, more than $50 billion and been replaced by more effective listings of $25 billion.
Not only does advertising rarely work, but listing costs much less to accomplish the same goals.
Back to Nolo Press. They have done little or nothing new to promote the whole point of this book and connect it to the real world of business. The business world is waking up... we were awake to the same issues 25 years ago.