10 Facts From The Real World

Every year or so I like to take a step back and look at a few key advertising, marketing, and media facts just to gauge how removed from reality we advertising experts are.

These data represent the latest numbers I could find. I have listed the sources below.

So here we go -- 10 facts, direct from the real world:

1. E-commerce in 2014 accounted for 6.5 percent of total retail sales. 

2. 96% of video viewing is currently done on a television. 4% is done on a web device.
 
3. In Europe and the US, people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared.

4. The rate of engagement among a brand's fans with a Facebook post is 7 in 10,000. For Twitter it is 3 in 10,000.

5. Fewer than one person in a thousand clicks on a standard banner ad.

6. Over half the display ads paid for by marketers are unviewable.

7. Less than 1% of retail buying is done on a mobile device.

8. Only 44% of traffic on the web is human.

9. One bot-net can generate 1 billion fraudulent digital ad impressions a day.

10. Half of all U.S online advertising - $10 billion a year - may be lost to fraud.

As regular readers know, one of our favorite sayings around The Ad Contrarian Social Club is a quote from Noble Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman, who wonderfully declared that "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts."

I think these facts do a pretty good job of vindicating Feynman. 

Sources:
1.  U.S. Dept of Commerce, Feb 15, 2015
2.  Nielsen Total Audience Report,  4th quarter of 2014
3.  Havas Media
4. Forrester Research 
5, DoubleClick
6 The Wall Street Journal
7. US Dept of Commerce and MarketingLand
8. Incapsula
9. Yahoo 
10. Adweek