31–40 of 156 posts
it's only been a few days though, I think this fact alone invalidates the data.
Exactly! Who in their right mind would deliver a report to their boss and say, "Its only been a couple days, but this drastic change has been successful!" But someone instead went to the NYT and said that same thing.
The bigger the sites; the more leverage they have over middlemen. The lower the fees exchanges/ssps can collect - for big sites (ones people have actually heard of) the fee is effectively zero, and are needed by exchanges as loss leaders to attract any demand. Little sites with no leverage will expect to pay around ~70% to the middlemen (although not all of that will be disclosed).
True story: about 250 domains will get you above 98% of online population in most countries. This is plenty large enough for dvertisers to do all kinds of fancy targeting and optimisation within this pool.
It's crazy how many apologists there are for Big Web Advertising! So many commenters are giving the customer a hard time for realizing, "99% of my budget is spent on zero value, i.e. fraud." The biggest lie the online advertising industry has sold is aggregate statistics. Of course a handful of traffic sources convert massively while the supermajority (99%) don't convert at all. Advertising intermediaries rely on the…
What makes you think that they reduced their spend by 99%? They simply limited their campaigns' targeting to a whitelist of 400 sites, there's not any indication that they were spending equal $ per placement.
I'm not sure why you believe that aggregating statistics is some sort of lie -- in AdWords, advertisers are able to easily see the placement for each one of their clicks. It's not some big secret hidden from advertisers.
You are also confusing why and how much advertisers care about the content of the sites. The site's content is only one signal as to the quality of an impression. It's a proxy for quality, because it's a good indication that a particular user might find the ad interesting and relevant. It's not as good of a signal as the characteristics of the user. Why would Chase be interested in only advertising on "banking" sites anyway? It's pretty silly to think that it's somehow a big scandal if the website content isn't directly connected to the business of the advertiser. Advertisers definitely don't want that. What they want is a quality user -- Chase wants someone who is actively shopping for banking services to see their ad everywhere, but they don't want to waste an impression on someone who isn't. If I were guessing, they were likely aggressively remarketing on the entire network, and now they're restricting to sites. In other words, they were following users across the entire internet, wherever they could find inventory, and now they'll just follow them to the most popular sites.
You're conflating two issues -- brand safety and ad spam. The first is the relevant issue: "I don't care how good the user is, I can't have the NYT printing that my brand name showed up next to a terrorist recruitment video."
You're talking about ad spam, or "you charged me for this click but it was fraud from the publisher." That's not at all what the story is about. You're jumping to a conclusion that the now excluded websites were fradulent to begin with. Do you find it unbelievable that there might be 400,000 legitimate websites in the set of available placements for Chase's ads, without spam? Why?
You are mixing terms, Adwords isn't an exchange -- AdWords has inventory from owned-and-operated sites (Google, YouTube) and network partners (AdSense, AdMob, Google Display Network, etc.) AdWords doesn't sell any inventory from ad exchanges, it has its own network, particularly because it wants to maintain the quality of the placements. Spam is actively and aggressively policed.
Again, that's not what the article is about -- none of the big tech co's have been doing much to prevent ads from showing against certain types of offensive content -- especially content like hate speech, fake news, etc., because it's really difficult to identify correctly at scale. The media and advertisers have started caring because it's the cultural moment we're in right now, I guess.
Finally, it's not the case that "garbage inventory" is spread around, subsidized by the good stuff, in a money making scheme. Such a scheme wouldn't make sense anyway. High-spending, sophisticated advertisers know the conversion rate of the advertising, and they have a sense of the return on ad spend that they'd like. Cost-per-click is just a shallow metric in the market, if the real value wasn't there then demand would decrease.
Does the industry advertise until they break even? Of course, that's the market dynamics, and it's economically rational. Advertisers should, and do, spend up to the breakeven point (or the discounted lifetime value of the new customer acquisition). They do so because one should accept growing one's business by a marginal customer even if it's a breakeven proposition.
That's not to say that advertisers don't reap value from advertising, of course they do in reality (or at least, they always try to). I'm just pointing out that click auctions are expensive because the competition is willing to spend -- not because you're subsidizing spam.
"An intern then manually clicked on each of [the 12000] addresses to ensure that the websites were ones the company wanted to advertise on." - true hero of this article
For better results, have that intern gather the email addresses of those 12,000 pre-approved sites, and email them a personal ad placement buy offer, or request a media kit. You'll find all sorts of personalization opportunities and you get to cut out the middle-man.
I mean, just look at the author's latest articles. 5 of the last 6 (including this one) disparage advertising on new channels! [3] Targets include Youtube, Snapchat, Breitbart, and Google (in general).
The legacy media is just not well suited for the current state of the world. Breaking news comes first through Twitter now. Investigative journalism doesn't require a big budget to make high quality content any more. As for political commentary, many people would rather listen to a well-educated everyman craft videos on Youtube than listen to the millionaire personalities on Fox News talk about how the Democratic party doesn't understand the proletariat.
1. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2017/feb/24/zoe-sugg-zoe...
2. https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube...
3. https://www.nytimes.com/by/sapna-maheshwari?action=click&con...
It's crazy how many apologists there are for Big Web Advertising! So many commenters are giving the customer a hard time for realizing, "99% of my budget is spent on zero value, i.e. fraud." The biggest lie the online advertising industry has sold is aggregate statistics. Of course a handful of traffic sources convert massively while the supermajority (99%) don't convert at all. Advertising intermediaries rely on the…
Where to start? What makes you think that they reduced their spend by 99%? They simply limited their campaigns' targeting to a whitelist of 400 sites, there's not any indication that they were spending equal $ per placement. I'm not sure why you believe that aggregating statistics is some sort of lie -- in AdWords, advertisers are able to easily see the placement for each one of their clicks. It's not some big secret…
> Of the 400,000 web addresses JPMorgan’s ads showed up on in a recent 30-day period, said Ms. Lemkau, only 12,000, or 3 percent, led to activity beyond an impression. An intern then manually clicked on each of those addresses to ensure that the websites were ones the company wanted to advertise on. About 7,000 of them were not, winnowing the group to 5,000.
They're pretty plainly saying that 388,000 sites were trash. How else to interpret no "activity beyond an impression?" I could print their ads on toilet paper and have the same result.
> Do you find it unbelievable that there might be 400,000 legitimate websites in the set of available placements for Chase's ads, without spam? Why?
Yes! I do find it unbelievable! The customer did! Everyone should! There just isn't that much valuable content on the Internet. There really isn't. Not valuable for you, not for me, not for Chase, not for anyone with a brain!
It's crazy how many apologists there are for Big Web Advertising! So many commenters are giving the customer a hard time for realizing, "99% of my budget is spent on zero value, i.e. fraud." The biggest lie the online advertising industry has sold is aggregate statistics. Of course a handful of traffic sources convert massively while the supermajority (99%) don't convert at all. Advertising intermediaries rely on the…
Whenever I do a cost comparison, the business that does a lot of advertising is usually pricier.
I fully understand the need for new business to get their name/location out there, but Chase? I see them everywhere.
(If anyone from Chase is listening, drop the monthy fee on checking accounts. Be one of the first one's? Then I might come back to you? Yes--a it off topic, but in the ballpark?)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the same time good content providers will be paid more. So overall it is a good thing for the web. Content farming won't be worth much either.
A good thing for the big players, not the web. Everyone else (like me) me pays for their hosting with a few dollars a month in ad revenue will lose out.
If you are just spamming the same ad everywhere, then I can certainly understand why it does not make difference if it appears on 5000 vs 400.000 sites if the ad display count stays the same.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where to start? What makes you think that they reduced their spend by 99%? They simply limited their campaigns' targeting to a whitelist of 400 sites, there's not any indication that they were spending equal $ per placement. I'm not sure why you believe that aggregating statistics is some sort of lie -- in AdWords, advertisers are able to easily see the placement for each one of their clicks. It's not some big secret…
From the article: > Of the 400,000 web addresses JPMorgan’s ads showed up on in a recent 30-day period, said Ms. Lemkau, only 12,000, or 3 percent, led to activity beyond an impression. An intern then manually clicked on each of those addresses to ensure that the websites were ones the company wanted to advertise on. About 7,000 of them were not, winnowing the group to 5,000. They're pretty plainly saying that 388,00…