[Sander_Marechal]

> If online ad campaigns did not bring sales, a lot of people would stop doing them.

I've done the math on this for a few small companies. I an thoroughly convinced that this is just not true for many companies. The vast amount of sales attributed to online ad campaigns are sales that a company would have gotten anyway even without the ads.

[jklinger410]

> The vast amount of sales attributed to online ad campaigns are sales that a company would have gotten anyway even without the ads.

This is a simple test. Turn off all of your ads for a year, compare against the previous. Write a blog post about it, destroy the industry.

[nine_k]

This has been done, in a way.

Some time in 1980s Coca-Cola decided that they have enough of an iconic status, and they don't need as much advertising on expensive large surfaces. They prudently lowered such advertisement a bit, and checked. Shockingly, they noticed a decline in sales. They reverted to the old policy.