Brands need to fire adtech • Hacker News Board

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#111

Post by njharman » Sun, Apr 02, 2017, 11:56 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…

The unique thing ad tech does over traditional is provide info on if you clicked the ad, visited the site, etc. marketing to specific demographic is nothing new.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#112

Post by ryandrake » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 12:02 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #29

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.

> Think paid placements in movies. podcast/youtube sponsorships etc. Well, product placement in movies is well known. Nearly everyone should know that companies pay millions of dollars to e.g. have James Bond drive their car. What is way more evil is that what is called "influencer marketing", which you are addressing in your last part. It's especially evil because the target group for "influencers" is usually little…

It should be well understood by now that when you hear or read anything good about a brand or product online, 99% of the time it is a paid advertisement. Paid content is the norm. You are right though, it sucks when kids are the target because they can’t understand.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#113

Post by mschuster91 » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 12:06 AM UTC

abeyer wrote: post #106

mschuster91 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think paid placements in movies. podcast/youtube sponsorships etc. Well, product placement in movies is well known. Nearly everyone should know that companies pay millions of dollars to e.g. have James Bond drive their car. What is way more evil is that what is called "influencer marketing", which you are addressing in your last part. It's especially evil because the target group for "influencers" is usually little…

I'm curious how effective this law is. What is the threshold for "not hiding commercial purpose"? It doesn't seem like a very high one from that translation (though that could just be a language thing.) Especially when you consider targeting kids, is the result of this law actually effective in making it clear to them that something is an advertisement?

Quite effectively in the "classic media space", it kept "Schleichwerbung" (paid, but unmarked as such, content, and the mentioned evil forms of product placement) at bay in the major media (newspapers, TV, radio and their respective online sites). There have been some scandals when someone did try to fool the system, but you always get these. Mostly these cases additionally involved corruption.

Regarding the "new form of media" aka clickbait youtube junk, weird blogs etc., however, it has not held up, for a couple of reasons:

- these participants often don't have imprints so it makes filing a lawsuit pretty difficult

- filing a lawsuit according to UWG is allowed only for competing companies (and they have to be competing with the advertiser, in the same areas of business!) and consumer protection agencies. No one likes an internet shitstorm for "going with the lawhammer after 16 year old youtube kids".

- there are just too many small-scale offenders, it's not worth the effort to go after them

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#114

Post by throwaway91111 » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 12:09 AM UTC

phaed wrote: post #100

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…

> 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 audience won't ever see those ads in the first place. If Netflix was free but with ads (with ad-less subscriptions optional) their viewership and subscriptions would skyrocket, and end up supporting traditional advertising on…

You're just describing why a) YouTube or Hulu is so popular, b) why they suck, but somehow c) they haven't brought down the internet yet.

In fact, Netflix and HBO are virtually the only people who actually allow you to reliably avoid ads. Even Hulu finds ways to force them down your throat when you pay.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#115

Post by intrasight » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 12:35 AM UTC

I assume that there are ad firms between the brands and this adtech. Isn't that typically the case? Shouldn't we be blaming the ad firms and not Google?

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#116

Post by camgunz » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:13 AM UTC

Advertising is a race to the bottom. The way I shop is I figure out what my needs are, I survey the state of the art, I narrow down some options, compare them (price, stats, reviews, company rep, etc.) and then buy.

Advertising, on the other hand, exists to subtly influence an emotional, impulsive, subconscious choice, and it's far more effective in the macro. The problem is that when your brain is engaged, you resent advertising and it has the opposite effect on you. Once you're wise to it, it just sours you on the whole thing.

Advertisers could cultivate a lot more loyalty with me (and I assume most people) if they made honest pitches. You know, "hey you're looking for an x86 NUC with 2 ethernet ports, here's what we got, also here's some other socially responsible things we do". Anything past that ought to be banned.

You can see the effect this has. Look at ever increasing ad budgets by large corporations, or small businesses wasting precious resources trying to compete with the huge ad budgets, people's general cynicism about businesses and endorsements, etc. It has an undermining effect culturally and an entrenchment effect economically. It's honestly just all bad.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#117

Post by maroonblazer » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 1:46 AM UTC

tomlock wrote: post #97

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…

>2) 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…

But how do you know if they were exposed to the advertising? You don't. Even if you did, how do you know they actually saw it/were paying attention? You don't. And even if you knew that, how do you know that it was because of that particular ad that they ventured to your location?

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#118

Post by guitarbill » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 2:20 AM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #89

guitarbill wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 audience won't ever see those ads in the first place. I think this is spot on. And some people are willing to pay. Another example of this is Youtubers and Patreon. Now, you can finally block ads without guilt and support tho…

"some people are willing to pay" Isn't it a little perverse that the willingness of people to pay to block annoying ads provides an incentive to make ads ever more prevalent and annoying?

Depends on your threshold for annoying. While there are terrible ads, I think Youtube is okay. And I don't see it as an arms race at all. It could be a win/win situation.

For companies, getting people to watch video ads is a win. For content creators, it's a win cause they get paid. For Youtube, it's a win cause they have a revenue stream. For viewers, it's a win because they don't have to pay anything.

The problem is in many cases, if you did want to pay, either to get rid of ads or to support content creators in a greater way, there's not much choice. (Which is puzzling as for a walled garden like Youtube the solution is much, much simpler than for the web.)

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#119

Post by snarf21 » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 2:48 AM UTC

Tistel wrote: post #9

I used to work at a AdTech company. At the start of a campaign, we would put a lot of work into getting the ad campaign to show up on a highly curated set of apps that had desirable user for the campaign (men like sports score apps, women like whatever). But, near the end of the campaign, if we were getting paid for X clicks (or horror of horrors, paid per conversion) and the campaign was not projected to pull off th…

I think this is the real issue. Companies would rather reach 100 real, interested potential customers than 100K "users" that are all fraud and views on click farm pages. At the end of the day, it is about how many people come out of the bottom of the funnel and become customers, not simply the number dropped in the top. At this point, it is hard for ad tech to take this approach because customers have come to view clicks as almost worthless so they hope a few real people fall down through all the fraud.

There is a huge opportunity for someone to disrupt this space but it will take a new approach. It is hard to evaluate context when a lot of the web is just crap and screen scrapes of other sites and they all look the same. I think companies would actually pay more for the right system if it really moved the bottom line.

Re: Brands need to fire adtech

#120

Post by manigandham » Mon, Apr 03, 2017, 2:57 AM UTC

camgunz wrote: post #116

Advertising is a race to the bottom. The way I shop is I figure out what my needs are, I survey the state of the art, I narrow down some options, compare them (price, stats, reviews, company rep, etc.) and then buy. Advertising, on the other hand, exists to subtly influence an emotional, impulsive, subconscious choice, and it's far more effective in the macro. The problem is that when your brain is engaged, you resen…

You are never as rational as you think you might be when it comes to shopping or anything else.

And advertising drives the economy and is quite literally the reason the company you work for is in business - so it's just not that simple to say "it's all bad" because it isn't. In fact it's quite the opposite.