Word-of-mouth is enhanced significantly when online ads are part of the marketing mix. So-called "influencers" were over twice as likely to cite web ads as a source of information as non-influencers. Specifically, those influencers factored in the message from those ads when they were searching the internet for information about the advertised product.

Ummm...maybe it's the Maker's Mark talking, but, quite frankly, this is news? It's called contextual advertising. The appearance of relevant ads alongside searches or pages of product information makes the ads more, you know, relevant. So of course that means they're going to play a bigger part in overall brand/product opinion.

And don't get me started on the unreliability of asking people their recollections of how much they were influenced by ads. People are notoriously bad at giving accurate accounting of such impact.

So is there s a reason I chose to write about this? I guess not. I think I'll go back to the Maker's Mark.