Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?

#151

Post by leobg » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #150

leobg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m impressed and surprised. Can you share what the product was?

Gamer glasses. Reduce blue light kinda thing. There really wasn't much to it, I just borrowed the manufacturer's videos and pics, threw up some ads and then people started ordering.

Geez. Well done! So what made you stop? With so many tweaks untapped, it sounds like guaranteed profits.

Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?

#152

Post by lordnacho » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:11 PM UTC

leobg wrote: post #151

lordnacho wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gamer glasses. Reduce blue light kinda thing. There really wasn't much to it, I just borrowed the manufacturer's videos and pics, threw up some ads and then people started ordering.

Geez. Well done! So what made you stop? With so many tweaks untapped, it sounds like guaranteed profits.

Well it just didn't seem very obvious what would move the needle, plus moving up a notch would take some actual work, and actual costs.

Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?

#153

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

leobg wrote: post #151

lordnacho wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gamer glasses. Reduce blue light kinda thing. There really wasn't much to it, I just borrowed the manufacturer's videos and pics, threw up some ads and then people started ordering.

Geez. Well done! So what made you stop? With so many tweaks untapped, it sounds like guaranteed profits.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?

#154

Post by leobg » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 5:23 PM UTC

lordnacho wrote: post #152

leobg wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geez. Well done! So what made you stop? With so many tweaks untapped, it sounds like guaranteed profits.

Well it just didn't seem very obvious what would move the needle, plus moving up a notch would take some actual work, and actual costs.

Gotcha. Plus, I would imagine, selling drop-shipped plastics on Facebook probably isn't the most inspiring thing in the world. I can see how that can get boring very quickly. Especially to someone who is much more interested in figuring things out than in making money to lie on some boring beach. (I'm projecting, of course.)

Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?

#155

Post by dont__panic » Mon, Feb 07, 2022, 6:40 PM UTC

kcplate wrote: post #54

vanilla_nut wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this for me, too. I make lattes and cappuccinos pretty often at home. I don't drink dairy milk, so I'm constantly on the lookout for decent alternative milk brands. I've tried pretty much every brand I can find at local stores, and some that I have to order online... Except Oatly. Because when I lived in NYC, their subway advertising was so aggressive, in your face, and annoying, I swore I'd never buy the pro…

>Except Oatly. Reminds me of this scene from Pirates of the Caribbean.. Norrington : You are without doubt the worst pirate I've ever heard of! Jack Sparrow : But you have heard of me.

Honorary shout-out to JIRA, the product that always makes me think of this line when it login thrashes, or spins out moving a ticket between columns, or starts displaying small portions of inscrutable errors and java stack traces in a tiny dialog box at the top of the screen.

Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?

#156

Post by pooper » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 12:19 PM UTC

names_are_hard wrote: post #98

pooper wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A certain national bank which I shall not name had a banner on top of its app. The link opens a web page that goes to double click and then opens the bank's website. Why would a bank app take me through a double click link just to take me back to their own website? My guess is this is the same reason why eBay shows you ads for things you just bought. There are massive inefficiencies in these large organizations. I'm…

Wow...I think you just discovered a hole in Apple's draconian app store policies. They don't let you link to your website from your app if the site has a way to buy a subscription without paying the Apple tax. But what if you sell ad space in your app through an intermediary, and then turn around and bid on ads for users that have your app installed? You might be able to get them to notice you and sign up on the web…

Thank you for your reply. I went back to look at where I had mentioned that I had used an iPhone but you're right. I have an iPhone and and Android phone but I use banking apps exclusively on the iPhone.

Interesting idea. Probably still would be cheaper than paying 30% tax to Apple.

Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?

#157

Post by Gtex555 » Tue, Feb 08, 2022, 9:20 PM UTC

I feel advertising only really works when the person paying goes for a monopoly , remember when every small youtuber was sponsored by square space , then ExpressVPN. After you have seen 50 square space plugs and you want to setup a website with no programming skills you will go to square space. Outside of that everyone one pays for advertising to stop their competition from having this aforementioned monopoly so its less of the advertising working and more stopping your competition from having a monopoly.

Re: Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?

#158

Post by lordkrandel » Wed, Feb 09, 2022, 1:54 AM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #146

lordkrandel wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to a supermarket, or to Amazon. Trying them one time and seeing if they're good. Reading unsponsored comparisons, or asking to a friend. And... no?

I don't think anyone truly does that 100% of the time.

It's more common than you think: when you dont have the money, you buy off-label. And if occasionally should I buy something that is advertised, is that worth decades of ad bombing every 5 minutes of every tv show and every web page? To me, it looks like there's a huge disproportion of effort vs the actual gain. I mean, I can sing all the ad jingle of my teen years. Maybe I have some strange anti-ad gene, but that's just a lie. Or probably not having tv channels, just helps.