Advertising has been called the lifeblood of business. Well it's certainly the lifeblood of the publishing business, with most national and local publications depending not on the cover price but on advertising revenue for their income.
However, while all those ads might help the publications running them make a healthy profit, many of them fail to have the same effect for the businesses placing them. The fact is that many ads actually cost more to place than they ever generate in business — and that can even include those big full page/full colour ads produced at great expense by professional advertising agencies for big name companies. That's because many businesses — especially small businesses - simply don't know how to advertise effectively.
Many small businesses simply copy all the mistakes they see in their competitors' and other ads, or ask the people they book the ad with for advice, thinking they must know about advertising because they work in the publication's advertising department. That's a bit like thinking a hospital cleaner must know about heart surgery because they work in the cardiology department. The reality is that the only aspect of advertising the people who work in publications' advertising departments are expert on is selling advertising space.
As for big businesses, well many of them simply hand over a huge amount of money to some big city advertising agency and leave them to it. In return they'll often get a highly expensive campaign that gives the impression that it's more concerned with letting the advertising agency show how clever and creative it is than with generating business for the client.
