• by Steve McClellan  @mp_mcclellan, August 9, 2011

In the advertising and marketing world, the shaky economy had everybody off their game in the first half of 2011, including agencies, advertisers and consumers. That's according to a new report from the London-based market research firm Fournaise Marketing Group.

The firm reports that advertising campaign effectiveness, across both traditional and online media, fell sharply in the first half of the year across 20 markets worldwide. On average, the firm said, customer response to marketing messages declined 19% compared to the first half of 2010.

The company cited three key reasons for the declines, including the uncertain global economic situation. Consumers and businesses have been "very prudent, conservative and pragmatic with their spending and have been much less receptive to advertising messages," the report states.

Fournaise also surmised that those executing many of the ad campaigns in the period had to accept much of the blame for the lack of response. Basically, the firm stated, ads did not arouse much consumer interest.

"The advertising campaigns themselves were less effective," it stated. "Their appeal, value propositions and message relevance scored too low on their target audience in the majority of cases and failed to drive more customers toward the products and services advertised."

The firm added that the strategies crafted by marketers and their agencies appeared to be off the mark. They spent too much time and money on building awareness through creativity and new media "instead of taking the pragmatic approach of focusing on the customer benefits and competitive strengths their products and services bring to their target audience."

Jerome Fontaine, CEO and chief tracker for Fournaise, stated that the sharp decline in ad response during the period was "alarming." Too many marketers he said, "lost sight of the fact that the job of their ad campaigns is to generate customer demand for their products and services, not to just look pretty and clever in the media."

It also found that certain segments in the online space were more sharply impacted during the reported period. Display ads and sponsorships were down 26% and 35%, respectively, in customer engagement.

Online ads generally were 25% less effective than traditional ads for "incremental customer demand generation," per the report.

Mature markets, including the U.S., Europe and Australia, were hit the hardest, where response was down 23%. Other regions were still down, but not as badly. China and Southeast Asia, for example, were down 16%.

Both the business-to-consumer and business-to-business segments suffered declines in response rates, Fournaise found. The average consumer response rate was down 20%; the comparable drop on the B-to-B side was 18%.