I like how the primary data points used to justify the dire prediction is "news flow," a metric that's never really explained ... which is then used to give very specific probabilities.
Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
81–90 of 195 posts
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#82Ads have turned the internet into a sh*thole. It's time to go back to a more sensible way ...
What would be paying for most of it? An awful lot of the content out there exists because there's money in it (or at least the hope of money). And most of what pays for that is ads.
I think you could still do ads, but they would have to "come home" to the actual site, and the site itself would be responsible for negotiating ad sales. I think this would be the best bet for small advertisers, in the long run. Yes, there's no chance that small advertisers could afford to advertise on a large site, but most small advertisers want a more-targeted site, anyways. I tried to buy super-targeted ad-space late last year, and it is nearly impossible to buy ad space directly from smaller web sites. They either a) don't do ads, or b) only use a larger ad provider. I think a lot of smaller sites are giving up a lot of ad revenue by not managing the ads themselves (regional competition vs. global competition, as one example).
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few comments on this: 1) The company might be better off capping their impressions to you. 2) The company might be better off focusing on setting their remarketing pixels further down the funnel (unless you entered their funnel as part of the process). 3) How do you reasonably expect the company to treat you differently than they do actual leads? I'll assume the majority of traffic that goes to their website is int…
I don't understand why the job of figuring out how to place the ads best should be a concern of the company, instead of Google itself. Google knows basically everything about me, including where I work and what type of job I do, I'm surprised they can't do a better job at placing their customer's ads.
You have to understand how ad exchanges work (and what they are) and what intermediaries there are.
Ad Exchanges handle the actual delivery of ads. They have a massive inventory of ad slots available on a massive amount of websites and it's their job to fill those ad slots up while making as much money per ad slot as possible. Google (Doubleclick) is not the only display ad exchange [1]. There are quite a few other ones like OpenX, AppNexus, Microsoft, and so on. You can directly buy on these platforms but it's generally better to use a Demand Side Platform (DSP) because they provide a wrapper around these platforms and you can manage bidding, targeting, etc. in one place. They also offer various programatic techniques like real-time-bidding (RTB) that can end up costing you less than you'd spend directly in an exchange. Lastly, some exchanges operate in such a way that small advertisers can't utilize them. It's a human-intensive process that involves spending a lot of money, signing and committing to insertion orders, etc.
Because of this stuff, most people are now using DSP's. The DSP's buy large batches of inventory from the ad exchanges and it's their job to maximize the revenue they get for their purchased inventory. As an advertisers, I can set up my campaigns in the DSP, which might involve setting targeting options, setting up remarketing pixels on my website, etc. With RTB, I set a maximum bid amount (in CPM) in my campaign and when it comes time to serve an ad, if the ad slot matches my targeting or remarketing preferences, I compete in an auction against others and the highest bidder gets the impression.
In almost all cases, the ad exchanges are going to make more money (by means of providing value to end-advertiser) selling to people who are setting their own targeting preferences rather than trying to guess. Within the targeting options presented to advertisers, there is lots happening in the background by machines that are doing things humans can't. Ad tech is pretty sophisticated, even if it sometimes seems that it's not. Ad tech has created much more value for advertisers than it's lost when it isn't perfect.
[1] Many people may think Doubleclick is the exchange but that might be because Doubleclick is the most common ad slot you see on a webpage. However, that ad slot is a different product, Doubleclick for Publishers (DFP). You can drop in inventory for any exchange (or even hardcode an ad in cases of a direct buy) in DFP, so it's displaying ads from other exchanges, not just Doubleclick.
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to infer you want to buy books from a search about nail polish, mixed with whatever else is in your history. There is also the question of who's willing to pay for ads, and for much are they willing to pay. They have to pick from what's available. I see a lot more ads about stuff that is costly and profitable, i.e. photography gear, car rental, insurance.
Google knows where I live, what job I do, where is my office, at what time I go to work in the morning, and almost every page I visit on Wikipedia. It even knows where I parked the car the last time. Is it possible that with all this information it can still mistake me for a potential buyer of that company's product? I think that ads tend to be about costly stuff (if that is true) because they have to discount their…
> Google knows where I live, what job I do, where is my office, at what time I go to work in the morning, and almost every page I visit on Wikipedia. It even knows where I parked the car the last time. Is it possible that with all this information it can still mistake me for a potential buyer of that company's product?
Why would you expect them to be able to? Algorithms aren't mind readers. Just because a human could look at all those individual data points and reach that conclusion doesn't mean a computer could.
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've worked with ad networks dealing with online gaming. While I am not ready to buy your bridge I saw people that were very good at what they did running campaigns that had sometimes way over 20% conversion rates. The compensation structure was revenue share 30-40% for life of the player. People who knew what they are doing were making 50-60K per week. From that experience I formed an opinion that people who know wh…
If you mean new sales, then that's interesting, and you should say that. Anyone who can get 200 new users out of every 1000 ads can certainly do something I can't do, and I'd like to hear about how. Most people use the term "conversion" to mean matching some cookies together.
It's way less drastic in the context of ad network it means a % of users that reached the landing page and then completed signup deposited no less ten X money played Y rounds in the next 30 or whatever days. Still even 5% given the industry was considered decent so >20% is very good.
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google ads in search will always be valuable because you can advertise nail varnish to people who have just searched for "buy nail varnish". Google and Facebook both have the problem that their business model is predicated on having thousands of small advertisers bidding on ads. That's what they leverage to generate profit. In any market that's dominated by a single entity that smaller companies won't compete with fo…
Of all the things that might happen, users going directly to websites rather than through google/facebook is by far the least likely. Whats more likely to happen is that someone will come along with better search with less advertising (just like Google did), or someone might build a better social network with less advertising (just like facebook did). There's as much precidence for these things reoccurring as there i…
Most of the time, people seem more likely to Google for "amazon nail polish" than actually visit the site. Of course, company-name keywords usually mean that the ad and the first hit are both Amazon.
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#87"Facebook on the other hand, has a better control of who is actually seeing its ads, and will benefit from the turmoil by gaining market share." Did they pay you to write this? Google ads in search will always be valuable because you can advertise nail varnish to people who have just searched for "buy nail varnish". This is also about the millionth post I've read which assumes that companies simply throw money at adv…
> If you spend a lot on an ad campaign for a product and your sales don't go up, you notice that and rethink your next campaign. Most people who spend money on ads just want to be seen as the kind of people who spend money on ads, or else they just want to make their boss happy in the short term by telling them that they bought ads on Facebook or whatever. The chain of accountability is very diffuse, and most results…
Citation needed.
I know a dozen companies who spend significant ($1m+) a year on Google or Facebook ads and performance is tracked obsessively.
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to infer you want to buy books from a search about nail polish, mixed with whatever else is in your history. There is also the question of who's willing to pay for ads, and for much are they willing to pay. They have to pick from what's available. I see a lot more ads about stuff that is costly and profitable, i.e. photography gear, car rental, insurance.
Google knows where I live, what job I do, where is my office, at what time I go to work in the morning, and almost every page I visit on Wikipedia. It even knows where I parked the car the last time. Is it possible that with all this information it can still mistake me for a potential buyer of that company's product? I think that ads tend to be about costly stuff (if that is true) because they have to discount their…
But you have to ask, why would Google go to all the trouble of being your personal experience curator? Google is not in that business. They are interested in showing you the highest value ad that they can, and obviously that's nail polish.
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hard to infer you want to buy books from a search about nail polish, mixed with whatever else is in your history. There is also the question of who's willing to pay for ads, and for much are they willing to pay. They have to pick from what's available. I see a lot more ads about stuff that is costly and profitable, i.e. photography gear, car rental, insurance.
Google knows where I live, what job I do, where is my office, at what time I go to work in the morning, and almost every page I visit on Wikipedia. It even knows where I parked the car the last time. Is it possible that with all this information it can still mistake me for a potential buyer of that company's product? I think that ads tend to be about costly stuff (if that is true) because they have to discount their…
How is Google figuring out which Wikipedia pages you visit? I just checked with Firefox's Network Monitor and the only connections are to Wikipedia or Wikimedia domains.
Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Of all the things that might happen, users going directly to websites rather than through google/facebook is by far the least likely. Whats more likely to happen is that someone will come along with better search with less advertising (just like Google did), or someone might build a better social network with less advertising (just like facebook did). There's as much precidence for these things reoccurring as there i…
Rather than using the URL bar, I think it's more likely that people will just open their Uber app, flight booking app, shopping app, etc. I don't think that is an unlikely development.
Android is a great asset to Google in this case.