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Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

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Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#11

Post by Mahn »

julianpye wrote: post #6
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

It will be interesting to see how much of that revenue came at Google's expense.

Google is all about searching for results and Facebook is all about demography and thus brands. So Facebook is taking a lot of advertising budget to establish brands that used to be for print and television. Simple example: Diapers. By the time you have a baby, Facebook knows that you as a couple are expecting and you will see ads establishing relevant brands. You would never see those ads on Google, because at that…

I'll give another perspective: In my industry at least, Google has become incredibly expensive due to a few unicorns spending ridiculous amounts of money just to put competitors out of the game (because they have the money for that, even if it doesn't make sense from a unit economics point of view, and Google is cool with it). By contrast, Facebook remains very effective for the same kind of goals, at least for the moment. I get the feeling this isn't unique to my industry so yeah, I'd venture to say there is a lot money shifting platforms.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#12

Post by Mahn »

sly_foxx wrote: post #7

Facebook is the biggest scam for most businesses. 1) They've pulled bait and switch when they decided to charge to reach users that have already liked your page. Most of those users liked your page because you've posted a link to FB on your site. 2) Click fraud is rampant [1] 3) They make money on copyrighted videos + ripping off YouTube content creators [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag [2] https:/…

I guess it depends on the industry but from my own personal experience, fraud is non-existent if your targeting decently specific (i.e. specific interests).

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#13

Post by michaelwww »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #4
michaelwww wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize both are competing for ad dollars and can be called competitors for that fact [1], but my own use of them really doesn't overlap. I use FB for interacting with friends and family, I use Google for interacting with the rest of the web. FB's search is not optimal and Google+ is well... it's not something my parents or my kids are going to use. There's not much overlap in my video viewing habits either. I don'…

The impact would be lower CPCs for mobile ads. People moving their ad spend over to Facebook from Google. One of the interesting myths people used to believe in was that adding a new advertising platform would add more ad dollars to the digital economy. However, the pool of ad dollars is finite, the people who spend them have fixed budgets so when they shift them to new inventory they take them away from somewhere el…

Thanks, I figured I was missing something since I don't know much about the ad business other than what I read about in regards to the impact of ad blocking and efforts such as Brendan Eich's company to mitigate the problem.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#14

Post by gdeglin »

jrcii wrote: post #5

Hopefully for their investors' sake that revenue isn't significantly driven by click fraud, a rumor that's been circulating for years http://thesocialmediamonthly.com/startup-ceo-alleges-massive... * Is anyone aware of evidence of the extent of click fraud on Facebook? I see a lot of discussion about it but not a lot of data.

Companies the spend the most on Facebook ads track the resulting revenue they earn very closely.

So even if lots of clicks were fraudulent, they're looking at ($ earned from clicks)/($ spent on clicks). Based on Facebook's continuing increase in earnings, it's safe to bet that lots of major advertisers are seeing this ratio returning >1, and are therefore increasing their spend.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#15

Post by hayksaakian »

tn13 wrote: post #10
jrcii wrote: post #5

Hopefully for their investors' sake that revenue isn't significantly driven by click fraud, a rumor that's been circulating for years http://thesocialmediamonthly.com/startup-ceo-alleges-massive... * Is anyone aware of evidence of the extent of click fraud on Facebook? I see a lot of discussion about it but not a lot of data.

I dont have data but whenever I buy likes on page they seem to come from people who are totally fake.

like fraud and click fraud are two separate issues. like fraud is highly pervasive, there's tons of evidence on it.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

click fraud less so. i've run marketing campaigns and you do see some clicks missing in google analytics, but it's not as bad as the like fraud.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#16

Post by shostack »

julianpye wrote: post #6
ChuckMcM wrote: post #2

It will be interesting to see how much of that revenue came at Google's expense.

Google is all about searching for results and Facebook is all about demography and thus brands. So Facebook is taking a lot of advertising budget to establish brands that used to be for print and television. Simple example: Diapers. By the time you have a baby, Facebook knows that you as a couple are expecting and you will see ads establishing relevant brands. You would never see those ads on Google, because at that…

Can you elaborate on why you think Google wouldn't know before FB?

Many (most?) people don't go posting anything about pregnancy before for ~3 months traditionally, and odds are you are going to be searching for symptoms when you first notice something is wrong health-wise.

When a doctor or test confirms you are pregnant, I'd be willing to bet that users are immediately pulling up their favorite search engine to figure out next steps vs. blabbing about it to their BFFs on FB.

Now, if you are basing it purely off of carpet bombing people targeting off of demographics, yes, FB probably has more solid data there as it is self-reported and not inferred. But you sure as heck won't get self-reported pregnancy info earlier than Google will know you are interested in it.

If anything, I'd argue Amazon would have that data in a similar timeframe if people start looking up pregnancy books.

This also entirely discounts the notion that there is 3rd party data sets at play which both Google and FB leverage to enrich their data.

All of this is not to say your point on the brand advertising is incorrect--I actually agree with that as the "feed" has become the new television. But definitely do not agree on the specific example cited.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#17

Post by arasmussen »

sly_foxx wrote: post #7

Facebook is the biggest scam for most businesses. 1) They've pulled bait and switch when they decided to charge to reach users that have already liked your page. Most of those users liked your page because you've posted a link to FB on your site. 2) Click fraud is rampant [1] 3) They make money on copyrighted videos + ripping off YouTube content creators [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag [2] https:/…

Big spenders do a lot of due diligence to make sure that the money they spend is actually giving them a positive return. It's not like businesses just throw millions down the drain and hope it gives them results. Facebook is working great for them and it is not a scam otherwise businesses wouldn't be spending billions on advertising there every quarter.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#18

Post by such_a_casual »

gdeglin wrote: post #14
jrcii wrote: post #5

Hopefully for their investors' sake that revenue isn't significantly driven by click fraud, a rumor that's been circulating for years http://thesocialmediamonthly.com/startup-ceo-alleges-massive... * Is anyone aware of evidence of the extent of click fraud on Facebook? I see a lot of discussion about it but not a lot of data.

Companies the spend the most on Facebook ads track the resulting revenue they earn very closely. So even if lots of clicks were fraudulent, they're looking at ($ earned from clicks)/($ spent on clicks). Based on Facebook's continuing increase in earnings, it's safe to bet that lots of major advertisers are seeing this ratio returning >1, and are therefore increasing their spend.

To expand on this, I think you can eliminate a significant amount of this fraud by properly configuring your ad campaigns (or whatever facebook calls them) and using "tricks of the trade". The companies that spend the most on facebook ads, will likely allocate a good amount of resources to hiring people who are experts in facebook marketing. So you have a lot of people not being experts in configuring their ads getting fraudulent clicks/likes/followers/stalkers/customers/etc and losing money on advertising when they go down this route, but the big companies spending more money on facebook as they get better at new_revenue/ad_costs.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#19

Post by AJ007 »

gdeglin wrote: post #14
jrcii wrote: post #5

Hopefully for their investors' sake that revenue isn't significantly driven by click fraud, a rumor that's been circulating for years http://thesocialmediamonthly.com/startup-ceo-alleges-massive... * Is anyone aware of evidence of the extent of click fraud on Facebook? I see a lot of discussion about it but not a lot of data.

Companies the spend the most on Facebook ads track the resulting revenue they earn very closely. So even if lots of clicks were fraudulent, they're looking at ($ earned from clicks)/($ spent on clicks). Based on Facebook's continuing increase in earnings, it's safe to bet that lots of major advertisers are seeing this ratio returning >1, and are therefore increasing their spend.

Facebook is the only platform that lets advertisers target a mass audience with very fine demographic precision. Google you lose the demographics. Television, you lose the the precision.

All advertising platforms deliver fraudulent/worthless/imaginary/bogus views. Print has a problem with publishers making up circulation numbers. Television has a problem with ads running while no one is watching. Radio has a massive problem as their listener numbers have collapsed. The display ad exchanges have tremendous problems. Mobile apps have an incredible amount of accidental clicks which may often either be 10 year olds trying to play a game or just outright fake. Video ad networks have a problem with ads auto-playing on repeat that are seen and heard by no one.

Google and Facebook are about the easiest to deal with, by far.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#20

Post by AJ007 »

sly_foxx wrote: post #7

Facebook is the biggest scam for most businesses. 1) They've pulled bait and switch when they decided to charge to reach users that have already liked your page. Most of those users liked your page because you've posted a link to FB on your site. 2) Click fraud is rampant [1] 3) They make money on copyrighted videos + ripping off YouTube content creators [2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag [2] https:/…

You are wrong on #1. The biggest con was Facebook selling those "likes" to your competitors.

#2 addressed elsewhere

#3 YouTube started through copyright violations and continues to benefit from copyrighted content today (if the rightsholders do not try to enforce.)

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