Thank you for taking the time to look that up for me.

It looks like Carlos answered your question about the categories (below) which is great because, to be honest, I haven’t made it far enough past the introduction to find out myself.

I think, from what I’ve seen, that most small business owners are forced to use ads that won’t win any awards simply because they need a direct response to the ad – they’ve got to communicate the benefits of their product or service and then get them to call, sign up, etc. Unfortunately, I think it’s hard to do this in an appealing way but the people who need the product don’t care.

That makes me think about those Cash4Gold ads that cropped up a few years ago. At first, I was really surprised when I saw that the company had an ad during the Superbowl this year, but it made sense that now that the economy is in the toilet, people are getting desperate and selling off their old jewelry (sad, but it’s the reality). Those ads are terribly unattractive, but they very clearly and directly communicate to the target customer what the business is and what they do, and the benefit it will give the customer.

So as a small business owner, what do you think is the better approach: going the viral route with a nice looking ad, or getting Billy Mays to yell at people about how useful your product/service will be to them? (By the way, the ShamWow! really is a great product.)