No, that isn’t a typo. We meant to write “winners” because, in a perfect world, almost every program should have multiple controls for the obvious reason: different segments respond to different messages.

The point of no return comes when too many controls cost too much money and response rates per segment are too low.

But the point of no return in online advertising is so far away you can barely imagine it. Ad-serving technology combined with a sophisticated knowledge of the customer/user, overlaid by malleable creative strategies allow us to come as close to one-to-one advertising as technologically possible. We are no longer forced to make heart-breaking decisions about which creative to keep or kill. We can have them all!

The Excel maniacs love this: matrices can get uber-complicated. We market to micro-segments. Counter to our intuition, we often learn that by sifting out what appears to be unproductive creative can lower overall results. Which may mean the ad that isn’t earning clicks is in fact an important response driver. So we add it back into the mix and response rates rise.

We’ve seen over the years that a True North online ad program never has one winner. And there are rarely two. More ads that make for bigger response rates are more better. (And that’s not a typo either.)