Many marketing decisions hinge on this ratio. It used to be the dream of every marketer and every business manager to have high conversion to impression ratios. It still is. One of the most telling metrics for a marketing campaign is the sales it results in for every 1000 impressions.

While the target should still be to achieve as high a ratio as possible, marketers (and their bosses) must understand that the absolute value of that ratio shouldn't be a target. For example, if the target for the ratio was 2%, 5-10 years ago, it is simply fatal for the campaign to have the same target ratio of 2% today.

While the average exposure of a person to media where advertisements can be aired (outdoor banners, television, mobile phones, laptops, tablets, radio) is increasing exponentially, her disposable income is simply not able to keep pace with that increase. As a result, if she was buying 2 products after being exposed to a 100 advertisements a few years ago, she only buys 2 products after being exposed to a 1000 advertisements today.

When this is the case, it is foolish at best and self-destructive at worst for marketing campaigns to be held to absolute conversion ratios. The only metric should be the difference between the amount it costs to create the campaign and the amount it brings in through extra sales.

With the real estate for advertisements increasing exponentially, it is no longer viable for a lot of brands who are not Coke or Nike or Tide, to spend the necessary amounts to garner enough impressions that will lead to a telling change in their sales fortunes.

So sure, go ahead and claim that content marketing is a farce and that social media marketing doesn't work, and that native advertising is outright foolish. But unless you put in enough effort to make these cheaper (much cheaper) alternatives work in your favour, and stop cribbing about it not working ffor you, you will soon find that nothing at all will work for you.