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Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

kalkis-research.com

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Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#121

Post by adwf »

I've always been a bit baffled by why it's called ad-fraud online, but nowhere else.

You don't call it fraud if your TV ad is aired and I miss it because I'm making a cup of tea. No matter how many viewers you were told the show has.

It's not fraud if I don't notice your roadside billboard because I'm focusing on driving. No matter how many cars you were told drive by.

Advertising has always been a crapshoot with a lot of supposed "TV viewers, magazine readers, eyeballs, etc.", but those figures have always had an assumption of "nobody knows which advert works". That's why an advert's success is generally measured solely by the increase in sales after it has been displayed (ignoring brand ads for the mo, although arguably they're the same).

It's the same when I've placed internet ads with Google myself. I place the ad, if I get more profit than the ad costs, it's a success. The % of ad clicks that are actually real does not matter. If the ad costs more than I make back, I stop the campaign. As Google run an auction system, if enough people stop bidding, then the ad price will go down and my campaign might become viable again. Either way, I'm not being defrauded anymore than I am by people making cups of tea during an ad break...

I think the only reason why people like to call it fraud is because the internet has given advertisers for the very first time, some hard(-ish) data on how many users are being influenced by their ads. In reality, it's just the old crapshoot, but with a little more accuracy than before.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#122

Post by yardie »

TheCapn wrote: post #114
Udik wrote: post #43

Earlier 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" Yes, how dumb is that? A few weeks ago I googled for a company I was going to interview with. Since then the ad spaces in my web pages have been filled with ads of this company, which sells IT services for logistics. I'm a sort of atypical consumer - not very willing to spend m…

My biggest gripe is when I explicitly search for a product instead of using their URL and the first ad is the same as the first result. If I go to Google and type in "TeamViewer" the first ad is for TeamViewer, the first result is for TeamViewer... I hope they're not paying for that.

They have to. If they didn't then Teamviewer's competitors could purchase that placement and the next time you search for TV you'll get Citrix or someone else. It might not lead you to click on it but now you'll know you have 2 choices.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#123

Post by qaq »

geocar wrote: post #115
qaq wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no intention of confusing you. I mean 20 "sales" out of 100 visitors. I was a tech lead for the partner network so have no skin in trying to impress anyone by results of external partners. To me a 20 year old dude making 50-60K per week is pretty impressive, I can't speak globally of what was the cost of traffic acquisition for all of them but for the guys I knew that was their net profit on +- 100K payouts.

Right, so as far as the advertiser is concern, this is still in the "may or may not be working" space. The fact that a company working in digital advertising can get hundreds of thousands of dollars in "payout" without having to actually justify their value to the brand's bottom line, alludes to exactly what this article is about: Google is offering a diminishing opportunity for brand exposure, and as those "payouts"…

They are not working for a company they are working for themselves, they place ads that drive traffic to gaming properties and receive a share of profits. They put their own money at risk for traffic acquisition, if they are wrong they will loose money. So basically they generated enough sales to receive a 100K profit share payment from partner network to them for a given week and spent 40K on ad inventory netting 60K profit.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#124

Post by brandmeyer »

red_admiral wrote: post #20
chii wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you're saying facebook couldn't scan the pictures people post up, see that a user's finger is not painted properly, and thus start displaying the appropriate ads?

If I walk into a store, the assistant asks "Can I help you?" and I reply "I'm looking for a crimson-coloured nail varnish" and then she says "Sure! We have a new line in this week, can I show you?" then I'm more than happy to let her show me. That's what google search ads feel like. If I'm sitting in a restaurant having a conversation with a friend and a person from the next table leans over and interrupts to say "I…

> That's what targeted facebook ads feel like.

I call these adds "stalker ads" to convey this very feeling, and it certainly isn't limited to just Facebook.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#125

Post by novaleaf »

red_admiral wrote: post #15

"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…

This article may be hype, but the Google Adwords monopoly is very real and I wish it died.

I run a SaaS startup (PhantomJsCloud) and tried adwords. No advertising competition, and targeted very specific actionable search queries. Google charges upward of $5.00/click. I can understand they want to cut spammers saturating every random search query, but how am I going to get a positive RoI on that kind of cost?

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#126

Post by fireworks10 »

novaleaf wrote: post #125
red_admiral wrote: post #15

"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…

This article may be hype, but the Google Adwords monopoly is very real and I wish it died. I run a SaaS startup (PhantomJsCloud) and tried adwords. No advertising competition, and targeted very specific actionable search queries. Google charges upward of $5.00/click. I can understand they want to cut spammers saturating every random search query, but how am I going to get a positive RoI on that kind of cost?

AdWords determines your ad's AdRank by its Quality Score (expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience) in addition to your cpc bid.

Perhaps you had a low quality score (below 8), so Google requested a higher CPC to compensate?

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#127

Post by karambahh »

red_admiral wrote: post #15

"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…

I can tell from first hand experience interacting with most of the top 100 e-commerce european players show that statistical knowledge is sparse at best.

Many players only pilot their activity through basic indicators such as CPM, "our sales are up".

Many marketing teams still operate their business with "gut feelings" rather cold, hard facts & statistics that "us" tech types tend to use...

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#128

Post by bikamonki »

While I agree with most comments and I think the "prediction" on this article is rather exaggerated, I do think the whole industry needs adjusting, is ripe for disruption if you wish. Companies will figure there is a better way to spend ad dollars. Coincidentally, take a look at this retargeting error on my local newspaper today, does SendGrind knows it just paid for printing the same ad 3 times? Did it on purpose? There is nothing else to put (space was not sold) so might as well put 3 of the same?

Take a look: http://postimg.org/image/58dmkvjkx/

(BTW, this is not the first time I see repeated retarget ads)

(Same site on incognito gives the same repeat ads error: http://postimg.org/image/b89qoca8x/)

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#129

Post by nunez »

I can't say much about whether the claims in this article are valid or not, but the day that Google publicly cuts a huge percentage of their workforce will be a very sad day.

There are a LOT of teams at Google that do cool things that contribute absolutely nothing to their bottom line.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#130

Post by fullshark »

adwf wrote: post #121

I've always been a bit baffled by why it's called ad-fraud online, but nowhere else. You don't call it fraud if your TV ad is aired and I miss it because I'm making a cup of tea. No matter how many viewers you were told the show has. It's not fraud if I don't notice your roadside billboard because I'm focusing on driving. No matter how many cars you were told drive by. Advertising has always been a crapshoot with a l…

What they describe is arguably fraud beyond what you describe. Ads placed on ineligible websites and fake views/clicks. This is comparable to a TV station selling ads for 8 PM and showing it instead at 11 PM, or selling ads based on fradulent Nielsen ratings.
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