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P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

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Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#81

Post by amptorn »

riffraff wrote: post #75
elorant wrote: post #66

I have to admit that at a deeper lever I'd love if advertisers get the fuck off of the web. I don't have a problem with advertising per se but the way it's used today hurts the medium in so many ways. Sites are bloated with ads, journalism is riffled with native advertising articles, malware is mainly spread through infected ads and on top of that we have a legion of companies out there which are collecting every kin…

The trouble is: given how much of the web relies on advertising, how would things fare once ads are gone?

The web will be for people who are willing to pay to say something, I guess.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#83

Post by pbhjpbhj »

sgt101 wrote: post #73
red_admiral wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't even really pretend to measure the effectiveness of campaigns there. I disagree - for something at the scale of P&G, you can bet that they're doing a LOT of measuring for every campaign they run. The article reads to me as if they're applying the same metrics to their online ads that they use already for traditional campaigns, and finding little impact.

Agree that they are measuring, but determining the cause and effect of each campaign is very hard. Sometimes ads have a clear impact, but those are cases that no one argues with. Mostly advertisers simply say (in effect) we got your message out, and there was an impact. If the low/high uptake was due to the ad or to the quality of the product or to the weakness of competitors - well no one can say.

>well no one can say. //

P&G must have the most and best data on the planet. By now they can probably say with a pretty high confidence interval.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#84

Post by raverbashing »

It seems the issue is "overtargeting" of ads

P&G ads don't work like that. Their products appeal to a broad range of people, same as their ads. Specialized targeting literally does nothing to improve conversion (and keeping their product in mind)

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#85

Post by ssharp »

bkj123 wrote: post #14

Not sure what we can get from this article as there are so many variables... What "digital" spend was cut: paid search? online video? paid social media? brand vs. product oriented? What was the impact of non-marketing drivers like distribution, price, promo, competition, and the economy? What was the impact of (new) ad creative? Maybe take it as they are under pressure to cut expenses and cutting marketing, digital a…

Talking about fraud, bad websites, etc. means that it's largely display advertising.

As a user, good-riddance. As a marketer, good-riddance. It's an awful platform with WAY too much money in it right now. The rise of improved algorithms for targeting promised new paths to customer acquisition but has largely been a way to bring in lots of money without delivering true results.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#86

Post by pbhjpbhj »

nikanj wrote: post #58
simooooo wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would it have any clue if it's below another div? Pretty much impossible

Because this is running on the customer's browser, CPU efficiency doesn't matter at all. They can do all sorts of stupid things, like grab the DOM from the browser, lay it out in a JS rendering engine and see if their div ends up being visible. I haven't had the time to look through the ad javascripts on your typical fat webpage, but when there's tens of megabytes of code and it pegs my CPU at 100%, I know it's doing…

Could you just pick a couple of pixels from the actual page display and check they're the right color?

Not sure either of these work without access at the top page level, ie you can't get the data from scripts in an iframe? Been a while since i did any JS dev.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#87

Post by saimiam »

Jach wrote: post #60
michaelvoz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps rather anecdotal, but this is why I joined Uber, and did not take my Facebook or Google offers. It feels nice to work on tech that directly impacts lives and how a persons day flows. As opposed to, as you correctly put it, optimizing click bait.

Both Google and Facebook work on "tech that directly impacts lives and how a person's day flows". So far producing more value than Uber has, but Uber provides a valuable service too. And while Google & Facebook's revenue is primarily from their ad business, they're not ad companies, like, say, Rubicon Project.

How are they not ad companies? Together, FB and GOOGL receive a massive proportion of online ad spend.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#88

Post by taurath »

riffraff wrote: post #75
elorant wrote: post #66

I have to admit that at a deeper lever I'd love if advertisers get the fuck off of the web. I don't have a problem with advertising per se but the way it's used today hurts the medium in so many ways. Sites are bloated with ads, journalism is riffled with native advertising articles, malware is mainly spread through infected ads and on top of that we have a legion of companies out there which are collecting every kin…

The trouble is: given how much of the web relies on advertising, how would things fare once ads are gone?

If people built more things instead of sold them to people maybe there'd be less need for advertising (or politicians). When the value is actually clear there is far less need to convince people.

Make things that work, sell your vision not the product. People will buy into your vision, and accept more product shortcomings and cheer you on as you improve.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#89

Post by flohofwoe »

riffraff wrote: post #75
elorant wrote: post #66

I have to admit that at a deeper lever I'd love if advertisers get the fuck off of the web. I don't have a problem with advertising per se but the way it's used today hurts the medium in so many ways. Sites are bloated with ads, journalism is riffled with native advertising articles, malware is mainly spread through infected ads and on top of that we have a legion of companies out there which are collecting every kin…

The trouble is: given how much of the web relies on advertising, how would things fare once ads are gone?

Since ads on the web are mostly produced by bots for bots, and distributed through shady borderline-criminal ad-networks I think we've already reached rock bottom years ago and it can only get better.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#90

Post by _ol »

nikanj wrote: post #63
csomar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. I think my reasoning goes "if they didn't care about the packaging, why would they care about what it is inside?"

Oh they care about the packaging, they care very much. They're doing price discrimination in stages: The fancy toothpaste with the beautiful box comes from the same conglomerate as the cheaper one does. If you consider yourself hot stuff, you pick the fancy brand with the shiniest box. The middle class, humble folk pick the same product sans color whirl and foil insets on the box, but it's still Colgate brand shaving…

As a control system engineer, I can confirm you're correct that store brand items are often made in the same factory, using the same equipment as brand items.

However in every factory I've worked in, there have always been differences in quality.

Active or expensive ingredients are reduced or replaced. Soaps concentration is lowered, butter and cocoa is reduced/replaced, less pulses(beans) or fruit in the tin, drained weights are lowered, quality control is not as strict, etc.

Regarding quality control - often factories would clean the line prior to running the high end product. Switching over to the cheaper product usually consists of switching the packaging out and topping up the supply with the cheaper product - no clean or flushing of the line. The first couple of items produced would be different quality to the rest of the batch.

You have to cut some corners to compete with big companies like p&g and Unilever. They're buying and producing much larger quantities of products than any generic brand.

Regarding cheap packaging - you pay per colour when printing. Printing materials can also be swapped out. Thinner plastic or card. Matt instead of high gloss.

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