Brands need to fire adtech • Hacker News Board

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#71

Post by wtvanhest » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:02 PM UTC

gregw134 wrote: post #58

busterarm wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Companies want to know that their advertising dollars are actually producing results, and traditional advertising completely sucks at this. If you've never run a traditional ad campaign, I suggest giving it a try and then decide how much value you think you got out of it. You can spend thousands to millions of dollars and have absolutely no idea if your money impacted sales even the smallest amount. Compare that to…

What kind of tool do you have to monitor traditional ad spend? According to op this should be impossible.

Most large companies use a quantitative model with various inputs and outputs. For example, if you know you spend X in market Y, but not market Z you can measure lift within some confidence level between the markets. Imagine a model with every market, and sku, plus the inputs also know where you spent ad dollars and on what product.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#72

Post by dagw » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:07 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #25

mdorazio wrote: post #17

I feel like the author of this article is missing the reasons behind the rise of adtech in the first place, and doesn't really address how traditional advertising can compensate. There are at least three forces at work here: 1) People straight up don't want to see ads. Ad blockers, Netflix, etc. are a natural response to this. If your medium relies on traditional ads, there's an increasingly large chance that your au…

I see ads on facebook so that I can laugh at how badly targeted they are. I don't believe this ad'tech' hype for a second, because there isn't any actual intelligence it it. Right now Facebook suggests I like some furniture store - it should know by now that I don't give a shit about furniture or shoes or womens clothing, just because I am friends with people who do (mostly, funny enough, women). Really facebook know…

Funny. Facebook is scarily good at targeting me, to the point of it sometimes being almost unnerving. All this despite the fact that I'm on facebook maybe a couple of times a week and post stuff maybe a couple of times a year.

Facebook is probably one of the only sites where I've seen an ad and gone "wow, I was actually looking for one of those"

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#73

Post by kermittd » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:07 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #65

elsewhen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the is another space where ads are going to appear: in content... I am not talking about being blended into the content itself. Think paid placements in movies. podcast/youtube sponsorships etc.

How is that unfortunate? One of my favorite Youtube channels recently picked up a meal-prep-delivery-thing sponsorship, and they work it into the content well - it's obvious that they're jamming it into the program, but they manage to remain funny while doing it. Much better than rolling my eyes for 15 seconds during an unskippable pre-roll.

FunHaus?!

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#74

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:07 PM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #65

elsewhen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, the is another space where ads are going to appear: in content... I am not talking about being blended into the content itself. Think paid placements in movies. podcast/youtube sponsorships etc.

How is that unfortunate? One of my favorite Youtube channels recently picked up a meal-prep-delivery-thing sponsorship, and they work it into the content well - it's obvious that they're jamming it into the program, but they manage to remain funny while doing it. Much better than rolling my eyes for 15 seconds during an unskippable pre-roll.

Because being obvious and funny about it is so rare that it's practically unique. What most advertisers want and pay for is "native advertising," i.e. ads masquerading as normal content. When native advertising is done "properly" you have no way of knowing if your favorite YouTuber actually likes the product or is just being paid to shill it. That's unfortunate as hell.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#75

Post by robertlagrant » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:17 PM UTC

wtvanhest wrote: post #71

gregw134 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of tool do you have to monitor traditional ad spend? According to op this should be impossible.

Most large companies use a quantitative model with various inputs and outputs. For example, if you know you spend X in market Y, but not market Z you can measure lift within some confidence level between the markets. Imagine a model with every market, and sku, plus the inputs also know where you spent ad dollars and on what product.

The "some confidence level" is the problem - how do you come close to quantifying and removing all the other effects that are involved? This stuff always just becomes something that can be debated away if the advertising lead is popular, or otherwise used as an excuse to fire him/her.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#76

Post by idunno246 » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #25

mdorazio wrote: post #17

I feel like the author of this article is missing the reasons behind the rise of adtech in the first place, and doesn't really address how traditional advertising can compensate. There are at least three forces at work here: 1) People straight up don't want to see ads. Ad blockers, Netflix, etc. are a natural response to this. If your medium relies on traditional ads, there's an increasingly large chance that your au…

I see ads on facebook so that I can laugh at how badly targeted they are. I don't believe this ad'tech' hype for a second, because there isn't any actual intelligence it it. Right now Facebook suggests I like some furniture store - it should know by now that I don't give a shit about furniture or shoes or womens clothing, just because I am friends with people who do (mostly, funny enough, women). Really facebook know…

they know, they just dont care. ads on fb are ridiculously cheap. They have soooo many impressions relative to the number of advertisers. So your furniture company says 'target everyone over 21 cause why the hell not, it costs barely more than doing an intelligent campaign'. Also, their click through rates are terrible, so you end up needing to spam as many impressions as possible.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#77

Post by pavel_lishin » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:32 PM UTC

kermittd wrote: post #73

pavel_lishin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that unfortunate? One of my favorite Youtube channels recently picked up a meal-prep-delivery-thing sponsorship, and they work it into the content well - it's obvious that they're jamming it into the program, but they manage to remain funny while doing it. Much better than rolling my eyes for 15 seconds during an unskippable pre-roll.

FunHaus?!

The one and only!

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#78

Post by baddox » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

brongondwana wrote: post #49

tomjen3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see ads on facebook so that I can laugh at how badly targeted they are. I don't believe this ad'tech' hype for a second, because there isn't any actual intelligence it it. Right now Facebook suggests I like some furniture store - it should know by now that I don't give a shit about furniture or shoes or womens clothing, just because I am friends with people who do (mostly, funny enough, women). Really facebook know…

My Facebook and every other site with adtech tends to spend most of its time filled with ads for the last major purchase that I researched online and then bought something for, often advertising the exact thing that I just got one of and won't need to replace for years.

It took about six months for the online mattress ads to settle down after I quickly (within a day or two) researched and purchased one. I recently purchased an expensive pair of headphones and I suspect to see those for the next several months.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#79

Post by baddox » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:40 PM UTC

kbos87 wrote: post #26

Adtech is partly the result of CMOs over-optimizing for measurability. Marketing & advertising has had a long standing reputation as an unmeasurable activity, half of which was a total waste. As the tools to quantify the impact of some marketing activities have gotten better, a new obsession with measurement has been born. Now we're in a place where the top insecurity of most marketers is the accusation that they are…

I think you're using the term "marketing" to refer to promotion, which is just one of the traditional "four P's" of marketing. This is pretty common usage, but it's important to point out that there's a lot more to marketing than promotion, and most of it isn't as questionably valuable or ethical as advertising.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#80

Post by khedoros1 » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 9:43 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #72

tomjen3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see ads on facebook so that I can laugh at how badly targeted they are. I don't believe this ad'tech' hype for a second, because there isn't any actual intelligence it it. Right now Facebook suggests I like some furniture store - it should know by now that I don't give a shit about furniture or shoes or womens clothing, just because I am friends with people who do (mostly, funny enough, women). Really facebook know…

Funny. Facebook is scarily good at targeting me, to the point of it sometimes being almost unnerving. All this despite the fact that I'm on facebook maybe a couple of times a week and post stuff maybe a couple of times a year. Facebook is probably one of the only sites where I've seen an ad and gone "wow, I was actually looking for one of those"

I sometimes get that, if I was looking something up on a shopping site earlier in the day, from that same computer. It's almost always the thing that I was looking up for someone else, or the thing that I bought the week before. There's rarely something that seems particularly thoughtfully targeted.

Then again, I have a policy of not "liking" any kind of brand, group, or anything, don't post links to outside sites, and I randomly mark ads as offensive.