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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

#241

Post by m-j-fox »

detaro wrote: post #220
m-j-fox wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote guidelines! (But still the only way to find out about them is to violate a few. Ex post facto.)

They are linked in the footer appearing on nearly every page of HN (and have been for years). Comments about downvotes are explicitly addressed in them, so not much room for interpretation there either.

I see that now, but, 58 days ago, dang said:

> It's impossible to write everything down, it would be boring to try, and the reward for such foolishness would be even worse behavior. The commenters who most poison internet forums are experts in adapting to rules so they're technically not violating them.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14455714

So maybe tell dang about the guidelines.

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

#242

Post by Xyik »

I work on an engineering growth team that focuses on large-scale digital advertising and can say it does work, for the right business, in the right context. You need a proper analytics team, engineering team, and experience to do it right. Most people who buy online ads have no idea what they are doing.

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

#243

Post by m-j-fox »

dang wrote: post #227
m-j-fox wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wrote guidelines! (But still the only way to find out about them is to violate a few. Ex post facto.)

If you continue to post uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments, we will ban you.

Do what you gotta do, dang, according to you're taste. According to my taste, flagging on a polite and irrefutable comment is what's uncivil and/or unsusbstantive. There's no recourse other than to say something so that's what I gotta do. Thanks.

The controversial statement that started this was:

> 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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14879917

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

#244

Post by bryananderson »

chokma wrote: post #224
bryananderson wrote: post #165

I formerly worked as a digital influencer across the usual list of content platforms. One of my last influencer marketing gigs was for a major multinational company. You've heard of them and they are not amateurs when it comes to marketing. I asked one of their top marketing people how they measure the impact of digital influencer campaigns like ours. The short answer is that they don't. They have no idea how to. Whe…

Do you mean digital influencer in the sense of social influencer? The latter can be measured quite well, depending on the method. Using affiliate-like CPC click-through links on their social media accounts allows the ad network to observe exactly what is working. The problem is that social influencer status probably only really works for stars with a huge following of real life fans. One example (@work) was a celebri…

Yes, that is what I mean. It can be measured in that way if the product being advertised is something that's meant to be bought right now, online. But many products don't really work like that.

For example, we did multiple campaigns for major sports teams. How are they supposed to measure the impact on sales of tickets and memorabilia? The idea isn't to generate sales of product X right now, it's to energize and grow your team's fan base, which will hopefully lead to more people buying more things over time.

Another example: we did many campaigns for food and beverage brands. People don't tend to order those things right now, online. You're just trying to grow your brand in hopes that more people will buy that snack or drink the next time they're at the store.

So I amend my previous statement to agree with you that semi-precise metrics are possible if you're trying to get someone to buy a specific product online right now. That description covers a lot of companies, and they probably have good metrics.

But a big consumer-goods company like P&G probably isn't doing that kind of marketing. They're trying to get you to think of brand X the next time you're getting groceries. That makes impact of ads devilishly hard to measure, regardless of whether the ads are online or on TV.

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

#245

Post by bryananderson »

mattzito wrote: post #230
chokma wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean digital influencer in the sense of social influencer? The latter can be measured quite well, depending on the method. Using affiliate-like CPC click-through links on their social media accounts allows the ad network to observe exactly what is working. The problem is that social influencer status probably only really works for stars with a huge following of real life fans. One example (@work) was a celebri…

I think you're overestimating how well social influencers can be measured. It's true, you can measure clicks to a landing page, one per influencer - but that's relatively annoying administratively, and only measures clicks, not sales. Plus, that counts on your influencer actually following instructions and using the custom landing page URL, which is harder than you might think. If you're a consumer lifestyle or luxur…

This is exactly how it's done - the amount you get paid is relative to your engagement. How this correlates with sales is speculative at best.

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

#247

Post by ameister14 »

virtuabhi wrote: post #234
ameister14 wrote: post #159

I've worked in and around marketing/advertising for the last 6 years in different capacities and have found that the emphasis on audience hyper-segmentation and retargeting to the exclusion of other methods is the single biggest piece of bullshit out there. Targeting people based on what they are apparently interested in vs. places they go that reflect those interests doesn't give better results and can turn off your…

"If I buy a mattress, advertising more mattresses to me doesn't make me more likely to buy them; I bought the thing already." Actually, it is possible that you might want to buy a mattress again. Consider that you found the new mattress to be more/less firm and are looking to return it and get a different one. I think it is reasonable to show ads for the same thing at least till the end of return window.

You may get extreme edge cases, but you're going to pay more to get them because the conversion rate will be low. You'd get more out of targeting placements directly because you would hit all people looking for a new mattress there, not just people that have already purchased one.

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

#248

Post by lsc »

zippergz wrote: post #189
jshelly wrote: post #167

In my own personal experience, I can honestly say I've never "intentionally" clicked on an ad in the past 20+ years I've been on the internet. I will say I've certainly looked at ads in magazines, billboards, tv commercials (before tivo) and even those small planes pulling banners at the beach. I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective. What does surprise me is why its taken this long to figure…

I almost feel like there are two factions. I'm pretty similar to you. I have clicked on ads a handful of times, but it's very rare. However, I have worked in jobs where I had visibility into the metrics, and I have seen internet ads be EXTREMELY effective. Not in terms of clicks (which could easily be accidental or fraudulent), but in terms of people clicking and then purchasing. People aren't going to "accidentally"…

>I've seen many campaigns where we were getting huge ROI in terms of actual dollars. So there are clearly lots of people out there who do click on ads and take action.

That's the problem, though. You can tell me that the user clicked on the ad and then bought my product; but was the user going to scroll down to my organic search result, click on that and buy anyhow? The advertising sellers claim that they should be credited with the sale, when all they are providing is moving the last link up; at least in the industry I was in, a user, generally speaking, isn't going to sign up with a VPS provider they haven't heard of. Sure, sure, putting a special in front of them can move you from second or third place to first place, and there's value in that, but really some brand advertising needs to be done before you can sell at all, and as you pointed out, measuring the effectiveness of brand advertising is super hard.

I suppose there are some products where the user really is going to buy the product first linked; but I think there are a lot of products where the user doesn't make a buying decision for some time, and the last click... may not have a lot to do with what order the links are in.

I think this is the real problem with online advertising; tracking that last click into a purchase is fairly easy (though, as you point out, some people don't even do that) but figuring out how much of that purchase was because the link was first, and how much of that purchase was because the user had previous knowledge of you? that's hard - I understand that a lot of research is being expended in this direction, and that this is the value proposition that Facebook claims, but... it's a hard problem, and depending on the product, you could reasonably argue that the state of the art isn't as good as the people selling advertising say it is.

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

#249

Post by wdr1 »

jshelly wrote: post #167

In my own personal experience, I can honestly say I've never "intentionally" clicked on an ad in the past 20+ years I've been on the internet. I will say I've certainly looked at ads in magazines, billboards, tv commercials (before tivo) and even those small planes pulling banners at the beach. I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective. What does surprise me is why its taken this long to figure…

> I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective.

To be clear, that isn't what the article is about.

P&G still spends massive amounts on digital advertising. The point they are making is they were able to identify & eliminate $100M of advertising that was ineffectual.

The other part is that P&G is largely into consumer products & I highly doubt they are measuring online advertising by clicks.

Clicks are a decent measure for performance advertising but pretty poor for brand advertising. And when it comes to consumer products & digital products, it's mostly brand. (Consider, when a typical person needs tooth paste, do they hop online, type it into Google, look at results & then buy it? Or, you know, do they just grab whatever brand they've always gotten on a trip to the grocery store.)

Digital advertising is largely held to the same standard where most of that brand spend is: television. And there are no clicks in television.

With television, they first data point they're looking for is how many people did they reach & what was the demographic composition. They may later follow on with surveys to see if they achieved the change in awareness/purchase intent/whatever, as well as try to analyze for lift in sales.

So does P&G care if you click ads? Probably not. What P&G cares about is shaping how you think about laundry detergent, making you aware of their brand, creating a positive association with the right attributes, and ultimately in you buying their brand at the store.

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

#250

Post by tomcam »

mschuster91 wrote: post #184
jshelly wrote: post #167

In my own personal experience, I can honestly say I've never "intentionally" clicked on an ad in the past 20+ years I've been on the internet. I will say I've certainly looked at ads in magazines, billboards, tv commercials (before tivo) and even those small planes pulling banners at the beach. I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective. What does surprise me is why its taken this long to figure…

> I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective. What does surprise me is why its taken this long to figure that out. It is effective, and cheap at that. I run a small-ish left wing FB site and Twitter account, and regularly do small scale advertising - either to rally people up for a demonstration, or to annoy right-wingers. Proper targetting makes this incredibly easy, and judging by the numbers i…

Right-winger here. I like your tactics.
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