Ad spend is growing but, aren't you missing the point ?

Economist.com | Media industry
Was reading this story as to how the advertising industry seems to be back. Revenues for media groups and ad agencies are picking up. What I found interesting was the fact that not only media but also Internet Advertising specially that targeted at the search engines is increasing.

This is in line with a rise of 40%, to $4.6 billion, in the revenues from advertising over the internet for the whole of America during the first six months of the year, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a firm of consultants, and the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). In Britain, such advertising is growing even more quickly, albeit from a lower base. There, revenue from advertising over the web grew by 75% during the first half of the year.

Put all this in the context of the project we did for our Marketing Research course. We found that really net savvy people the sample including students here with 24X7 access and professors (Dr, Madhukar Shukla & Proff Fenn) along with others whom we roped in for our online survey outside the campus, clearly indicated that internet ads are not effective. Forget about purchase intention, internet advertisement did not generate any significant recall.. Not one of them could recall an internet ad with product, brand and usage correctly matched.

Infact I put forward this point when I attended a panel discussion at the imes Group Media Conclave at IIMA.
Yes we do need new ways to target the consumer, as the marketing head of ICICI Prudential mentioned. Infact ICICI Pru's circulating pamphlets through the now famous - "Dabbadwallas" of Mumbai is a great viral marketing idea. One pamphlet being read by a group of 10/15 executives at a lunch table and loads of Word of Mouth publicity after that. But I disagreed with Yahoo India's country chairman Mr Neville Taraporewalla's suggestion. He believed Net is that one breakthrough different medium that can capture customer attention, in this cluttered world.
Not in India, not just as yet......

Infact I still stick to my point, media seems to have lost respect for the customer and probably has forgotten that too much indundation leads to switching off. It has already happened on TV, the trend is fast catching up in case of print and on internet.