In today’s advertising world, digital is the reigning champion. From targeted social media ads to banners that follow you around the web, it seems like digital has it all figured out. But if you ask Tom Goodwin, a business transformation consultant and marketing guru, the digital advertising industry is broken, and it’s time for a major rethink.
Goodwin has spent years analyzing the divide between digital and traditional media, and his conclusion is blunt: digital advertising is built on flawed principles, and it’s not living up to its potential. Here’s what Goodwin has to say about the differences between digital and traditional advertising and why digital might be missing the mark.
Digital Advertising: More Flash Than Substance?
At first glance, digital ads seem unbeatable. “We have so much data to target ads, we can serve audiences of one,” Goodwin explains. In theory, digital is all about precision. Advertisers can pinpoint users based on what they’ve clicked on before, track their actions, and even retarget them with ads they think will hit the mark. “You can see what people do after seeing or clicking on an ad, and that’s supposed to make everything better,” he adds.
But here’s where Goodwin raises an eyebrow. While digital advertising is supposed to be smart, Goodwin argues that it’s become bogged down by data and metrics that don’t matter. “CTR’s mean nothing,” he says, referring to click-through rates, a popular metric in digital advertising. “Countless studies show that CTRs don’t impact business success—they just track weird users and bots.”
And then there’s the issue of targeting. Sure, digital ads can aim at specific groups or individuals, but Goodwin says that hyper-targeting often backfires. “Targeting has largely been shown to be ineffective for most brands,” he explains. “The data is often wrong, and the cost of targeting outweighs the benefits.” Instead of making ads that appeal to everyone, advertisers are spending money to create niche ads that may not even work.
The Good Old Days of Traditional Media
Goodwin isn’t saying traditional media is perfect, but he does believe there’s a lot digital could learn from the old-school ways. Television, radio, and print ads may not offer the same precision as digital, but they have something digital lacks—reach and impact.
“Large companies should be told: TV is dying, print is dead, but you need to be here,” Goodwin says. “Traditional media still reaches mass audiences like nowhere else.”
He’s also a fan of how traditional ads are created. With big budgets and long production timelines, traditional ads are a serious investment. “TV ads were a big deal,” says Matt Mills, a marketing professional who shares Goodwin’s views. “If they failed, companies lost big, so there was a lot of research and creativity that went into making them.”
And this brings us to storytelling. In the traditional media world, brands had the time and space to build stories that resonated with audiences. Goodwin believes that’s something digital media should focus on. “Ads can be built over time and tell stories in consecutive units,” he says. In his view, this approach fosters deeper engagement and helps brands create lasting connections with consumers, something digital ads, with their quick-hit nature, often struggle to achieve.
Digital’s Obsession with Complexity
For Goodwin, the biggest problem with digital advertising is that it’s become too complicated for its own good. “Every single thing about digital media seems sophisticated, explainable, but dumb,” he says bluntly. While digital tools like targeting and tracking sound impressive, he believes they’re often more of a distraction than a benefit.
One of the main culprits, in his opinion, is the industry’s obsession with personalization. “Digital ads don’t need to be personalized—they just need to not be irrelevant,” he says. While the industry pushes for hyper-targeted, personalized ads, Goodwin argues that most brands don’t need this level of detail. “Hyper-targeting brings no volumes or impact,” adds Alessandro Lo Piano, a media buyer who agrees with Goodwin. The focus, they say, should be on reaching people with contextually relevant, not overly personalized, ads.
Goodwin has a simple solution to the mess: focus on creativity and clarity. “Digital ads need to be beautiful, big, and simple,” he says. The internet offers a fantastic canvas—high-resolution screens, real-time updates, and interactive elements. But instead of making use of these features, many digital ads end up looking bland and forgettable. “The resolution is incredible, images can move, sound can be played, ads can be 3D, animated, seductive, whatever you want,” Goodwin points out. So why aren’t we making ads that take advantage of this?
A New Way Forward: Keep It Simple
Goodwin’s vision for the future of digital advertising is all about simplicity. “We don’t need cookies, we can target people by context,” he says, calling for an end to overly complex data collection and targeting. Instead, he believes ads should be relevant to the content people are already engaging with, without the need for invasive tracking.
And then there’s the issue of measuring success. Goodwin is a big critic of metrics like CTRs, which he says are meaningless for most businesses. Instead of focusing on these vanity metrics, he suggests advertisers get back to the basics—creating compelling ads that tell stories and build brands over time. “We need to destroy the 90% fraud and inefficiency in the industry and make pleasant, simple ads that perform, as measured by common sense,” he says.
Kevin Neary, CEO at Orcawise, agrees with Goodwin’s take. “The opportunity for businesses to demonstrate a unique point of view through TV-series-like storytelling has never been better,” he says. Goodwin believes that by shifting the focus away from metrics and back to storytelling and creativity, digital ads can finally reach their full potential.
The Bottom Line: Digital Needs a Creative Overhaul
Tom Goodwin’s critique of digital advertising isn’t just a call-out—it’s a challenge to the industry to do better. While digital offers incredible tools and opportunities, Goodwin believes the industry has gotten too caught up in data and metrics at the expense of creativity and effectiveness. “Digital advertising doesn’t need to be complicated to be effective,” he says. “It needs to be creative, impactful, and most importantly, simple.”
By focusing on what really matters—telling compelling stories, reaching broad audiences, and creating beautiful, simple ads—Goodwin believes digital advertising can finally live up to the hype. It’s not about abandoning the data and technology that make digital ads unique but about using them in a way that serves the bigger goal: making ads that resonate, engage, and ultimately work.
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