I love Derek Thompson at the Atlantic.  But this article compares “attention” and “users” across marketing vehicles, which ends up having very little to do with marketing ROI for advertisers.

The largest advertisers are not dumb- they utilize advanced statistical modeling and toolsets to optimize their marketing spends pretty precisely.   So why do they still spend so much on print?  Because it works.

The true story is more complex and nuanced than the charts suggest.   If I were to show these to the large advertisers, they would say “Yep.  So what?”  They know that  “attention” and “users” are not equivalent across marketing tactics.   TV controls the whole screen with video and sound, while a little box next to your facebook page is easily ignored, and radio catches you in your car- when you’re less likely to change channels.

But at the end of the day, they simply don’t care much about the mechanism of how or why different ads work.  There is enough evidence and proof that they do work, and they work differently, but they drive sales and margin, often with positive ROIs.