Fun With Ad Placement

Kerry Howley | August 30, 2006

Yesterday, Jacob Sullum noted that the Partnership for a Drug Free America brags about the mockery of its hilariously ineffective ad campaigns. The partnership should be positively gleeful about the placement of this ONDCP/ USA Today collaboration: A $100,400 full-page anti-drug ad (courtesy of you, dear taxpayer) directly across from an article headlined "Anti-drug advertising campaign a failure, GAO report says."

Hat Tip: DARE Generation Diary

Comments

Susan|8.30.06 @ 11:11AM|#

They should just go back to the egg. That was at least entertaining.

|8.30.06 @ 11:24AM|#

what, are you and weigel the only two in the office this morning? oooh, I bet it's the Amerster-thingy, ain't it?

|8.30.06 @ 11:25AM|#

what, are you and weigel the only two in the office this morning? oooh, I bet it's the Amster-thingy, ain't it?

|8.30.06 @ 11:28AM|#

Mmmmm, eeeeeeggs....
Aghrhghhh...

|8.30.06 @ 11:30AM|#

Howley and Weigel: Sucks to be the new folks, eh?

|8.30.06 @ 11:45AM|#

#6,
If your theory is correct, where is Dash?

|8.30.06 @ 12:07PM|#

"The partnership should be positively gleeful about the placement of this ONDCP/ USA Today collaboration"

I can't prove it, but my own experience suggests that newspaper layout people do like to have fun juxtaposing things like this. I see it too often for it to be a coincidence.

|8.30.06 @ 12:26PM|#

As the former technical editor for a sad, sad local rag, I can assure you, SR, that you are correct.

|8.30.06 @ 12:30PM|#

newspaper layout people do like to have fun juxtaposing things like this

Only when they're ready to move on.

|8.30.06 @ 12:37PM|#

I remember the local paper running a huge bra ad on the same page with a story about media sexual images allegedly corrupting youth.

|8.30.06 @ 1:26PM|#

I've said it before but let me repeat. The claim that anti-drug ads are a failure is based on the assumption that they are intended to reduce drug use. Personally, I doubt that is the purpose of them at all. Rather they are intended to reinforce support for the drug war among voters in general and parents in particular. Consider the "drugs support terrorism" ads and the ads showing two adults debating legalization and tell me this doesn't seem to be the case.

Has anyone seen research on the effectiveness of the ads in that area?

While I'm in this topic, let me repeat my argument that the drug war has been incredibly successful. Its only a failure if you think the goal is to reduce availability and use. On the other hand, if the purpose is to expand state power and give politicians an excuse for pork spending and free-lunch moral posturing then it has been the most successful govt program ever.

|8.30.06 @ 2:01PM|#

Has anyone seen research on the effectiveness of the ads in that area?

And if you do see research that speaks to anything beyond general correlations between a print ad and perception or behavior, then ignore it...advertising measurement's great problem (not withstanding large quantities of psuedo mathematics and statistics) is precisley that it attempts to measure the impact of something that, in the course of all sources of influence, interaction, and perception-molding, represents only the tiniest fraction of an exposure: the ad itself. A bit like measuring the impact of one sneeze on your lifetime consumption of tissue paper.

|8.30.06 @ 9:59PM|#

I remember the local paper running a huge bra ad on the same page with a story about media sexual images allegedly corrupting youth.

My local paper once ran the two following headlines next to each other in its "brief news snippets"-type section:

- "Come Enjoy the Wonders of Nature"

- "Girl Mauled by Bear on Road to Recovery"

|8.31.06 @ 9:01AM|#

"Girl Mauled by Bear on Road to Recovery"

This one threw me for a second -- I read it as "A girl, while on the road to recovery from an illness, was mauled by a bear."