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Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

nytimes.com

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Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#151

Post by RaceWon »

ikeboy wrote: post #138
RaceWon wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with Amazon is that it is a race to the Absolute lowest possible price point. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that boatloads of vendors don't make money advertising there (and people on Amazon are for Sure in the market), but wouldn't you rather get people to your own website via say YouTube, which is only going to get more and more popular, and then convince them to buy from you Now... I would if…

Problem is it's much harder to get sales elsewhere. On Amazon, you can sell a $25 item and maybe spend $5-10 in ads per sale. On your own site, you might pay $25 per sale, which means you need a compelling offer at $70+ or so. This is because conversion is worse and bids are only going up as people get better funnels and can afford to throw a ton of cash on ads.

I have to say your comment sounds like an opinion, that may or may not be true; furthermore you are assuming there is $5-10 profit margin on a $25 item on Amazon... this does not seem very likely or rather an exception not the norm in the cutthroat and competitive selling arena that is Amazon.

How about AdWords; can Amazon get 50 bucks a click on a search? Nope they can't, but Google does. I don't see Amazon dethroning Google anytime soon for ad revenue. They could, but I think they'd need a high end site that caters to quality and not peeps looking to save $1.96 on a set of Tupperware.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#152

Post by ethbro »

scoggs wrote: post #96
AznHisoka wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“which is not as accurate as people telling them about themselves.” I’d argue Google’s data is 100x more accurate of who I am as a person than the data I provide FB. As a theoretical example, based on my search history, Google knows I have hemorrhoids, am paranoid about pancreatic cancer, looking for a SMS API provider, am a borderline gambler (because i check betting odds every day), and pondering the benefits of a…

I'm not sure how important it is but I think it's also important to note that even if people are telling Facebook lots of things about themselves that there is no guarantee that info is 100% accurate.

Fair, but on the whole I'd be more willing to bet based on a willfull Facebook action than infer from an indirect Google Search action.

Data mining is incredibly insightful in aggregate, but my searching for "Cheetos" is a difficult path to (a) my being hungry for snacks, (b) my wanting to see the mascot, (c) seeing if they have a new flavor, etc. etc.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#153

Post by justicezyx »

manigandham wrote: post #46
scarface74 wrote: post #2

This is my bear case for Google. Google offers the least precise targeting compared to Facebook and Amazon. Facebook knows more about its users because users tell it about themselves and Amazon knows more about purchasing habits of its users because of thier purchase and search history. If I’m searching for something with the intention on buying it, I am going to go to the specific site - like Priceline, hotels.com,…

Absolutely not the case. The Google machine includes: Google Analytics, Adwords/Adsense, Doubleclick network, Android and store, Chrome Browser, Chrome OS, Maps/Streetview, Gmail, G-Suite, Youtube, Google Play, Google Fiber, Google Fi, Public DNS, all the various websites with 1st party cookies, connections to Salesforce CRM, and the recently announced Mastercard purchase data. Facebook and Amazon are nowhere close t…

Google Fiber, Google Fi, these data hardly makes any sense, there are around x MM scale.

G-Suite sure isn't used for ads, otherwise the enterprise customers will be mad.

> Facebook and Amazon are nowhere close this level of exposure from hardware devices to internet protocols to the biggest websites around

FB might be, not for Amazon.

Hardware wise, Amazon has kindle (not so useful) Fire, and Alexa powered smart home devices.

Amazon own siganificant share of Internet through AWS.

Amazon owns big wesites as well.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#154

Post by mrep »

confounded wrote: post #145
mrep wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google doesn't read your email for ads anymore so that is moot for them.

Source?

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6603?hl=en

https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/google-gmail-ads-email...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#156

Post by ikeboy »

RaceWon wrote: post #151
ikeboy wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem is it's much harder to get sales elsewhere. On Amazon, you can sell a $25 item and maybe spend $5-10 in ads per sale. On your own site, you might pay $25 per sale, which means you need a compelling offer at $70+ or so. This is because conversion is worse and bids are only going up as people get better funnels and can afford to throw a ton of cash on ads.

I have to say your comment sounds like an opinion, that may or may not be true; furthermore you are assuming there is $5-10 profit margin on a $25 item on Amazon... this does not seem very likely or rather an exception not the norm in the cutthroat and competitive selling arena that is Amazon. How about AdWords; can Amazon get 50 bucks a click on a search? Nope they can't, but Google does. I don't see Amazon dethroni…

I'm in the industry, I hear people talk about ads all the time. The $25 per action is from a talk I was at 2 weeks ago from someone doing 8 figures a year on shopify and a ton on amazon as well who made this point specifically.

Generally private label on Amazon has high margins but high competition, in the good niches at least. Everything eventually dies and gets commoditized. People spend 10-30% ACoS all day long, people give away hundreds or thousands of units. Typically people will buy amazon ads at breakeven or worse in order to gain sales rank to get more organic sales.

>can Amazon get 50 bucks a click on a search?

Google is only getting that on cars or enterprise software or other things with high purchase prices. If Amazon sold cars, I'm sure they'd be able to get people to pay 50 bucks a click.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#158

Post by throwawayperson »

manigandham wrote: post #121
scarface74 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of that data is still just based on Google trying to “infer” interests which is not as accurate as people telling them about themselves. For instance, Facebook knows your relationship status as soon as it changes because most people tell them . Facebook knows where people like to eat because people check in. They know which events you are going to that are advertised on FB because you tell them “that you are inte…

What's Google known for? Search. This means people tell it exactly what they want. Who cares what your relationship status is when I can see you type in "wedding ring" into a search box? Who cares where you like to eat in the past when you searched for "chinese food" on maps, and potentially even clicked on an ad for a restaurant? This is called "intent" and it's incredibly powerful because you can advertise for exac…

Why users will stick to Google forever for those queries? they can search those on shopping/review apps.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#159

Post by nandreev »

propogandist wrote: post #140
noer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook has a display network similar to DoubleClick, called Audience Network. In my experience it pays publishers a lot better than DoubleClick. For advertisers, they're able to target on more demographic categories (for now, the CA scandal has done a lot to reduce targeting options).

in my experience FB's audience network was junk

The first thing I look at when optimizing a Facebook ad campaign is to look at performance by placement.

In many cases, turning off the Audience Network will do wonders for your CPA.

Re: Amazon Sets Its Sights on the $88B Online Ad Market

#160

Post by sib »

cm2012 wrote: post #50
tomrod wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about your experience here. In my experience Digital folks come with a lot of smoke and mirrors that crumble under standard statistical analysis.

I mean, you don't need too many stat techniques for basic tracking: 1) Set up Facebook pixel on your checkout thank you page + collect referral into into a database. 2) Spend $1,000 3) See how many purchases Facebook reports came from Facebook, check out how many sales you get recently have the Facebook referrer. 4) Repeat if sales revenue > $1,000. This is obviously the simplest use case possible, but there you are.…

I guess for (4) you mean, "repeat if [attributable] _profit_ increase [vs control] > $1,000"?

Not much point in driving $1,000 in _revenue_ with $1,000 in marketing spend unless your margins are 100%.

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