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What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

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Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#31

Post by notelonmusk »

moltensodium wrote: post #3

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

Annoyance is one thing.

Weaponization is another.

Can Ads Read My Password?: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20638662 for example. Malvertising for another. Fingerprinting...

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#32

Post by colechristensen »

moltensodium wrote: post #3

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

I have clicked on ads.

I wish ads were better or more relevant, I find myself spending unreasonable amounts of time looking for things which should be more easily found - a problem which could be solved with better advertising.

You could advertise books/shows/movies to me (based on your current search, your wish list, your past purchases, you might be interested in ...) because I'm certain there are plenty of books I would be interested in which I don't know exist ... but you would have to actually have a good model for what I would like and not just some NYT best seller / top 40 / whatever crap is popular and overpromoted.

The problem there is I'm generally only going to be interested in long tail items, and those are much harder to target and often nobody is interested in promoting them.

If I'm searching for restaurants or coffee shops, likewise I would be happy to see paid advertisements along with organic search results.

If I'm reading an electronics design blog, I would be happy to see ads for electronics tools, new components, suppliers, etc.

There are lots of potential ads I would click, many I wouldn't mind seeing at all. The problem I have with advertising is that what I get exposed to most is either completely irrelevant (become a member of AARP today!), promoting obvious products (drink Coke!), or promoting shoddy products or outright scams.

Here's an example of a site with sidebar ads I appreciate: https://www.eevblog.com/

>Who are all these people that subverted technology and turned it into advertising-tech?

Microsoft who started bundling "free" things with Windows to squash their competition. Everyone else who had to find a way to compete with them (and in turn everyone who wanted to compete with those companies, etc). Every customer who expects things to be "free".

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#33

Post by shantly »

itronitron wrote: post #22
dageshi wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon more or less won didn't it? It doesn't have total domination of ecommerce but frankly it'd run into anti-trust issues if it did. No company is going to do ecommerce bigger than amazon without getting broken up so yeah... amazon.

Amazon is definitely the clear leader but both major brands and small companies could do better with a site focused to their own goods. In a lot of ways, most tech companies already do this but retail just hasn't caught on yet.

Discovery (if it's not on Amazon it doesn't exist, to many online shoppers—no, seriously) convenience (I already have an Amazon account) and confidence (yes Amazon is a shitty flea market at this point, but they're a shitty flea market with a known and fairly reliable return policy) matter a lot. Not sure how to solve those issues with a bunch of brand-specific sites.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#34

Post by ACow_Adonis »

stvswn wrote: post #16
moltensodium wrote: post #3

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

But, you like accessing content for free, correct? That content doesn't exist and then ads are layered on, the context exists BECAUSE of ads. Like, no one would produce the content without the plan to make their money back via ads. This is how mass media has worked from the get-go. Radio stations were built by advertisers for the purpose of advertising. Entire genres of popular music wouldn't have happened otherwise.…

Your post is literally the content I'm reading that you claim no one would produce without ads, and it's unsupported by ads.

And again (I feel like a broken record on this site), that's a totally inaccurate history of the internet.

Content arrived first, THEN the advertising companies arrived.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#35

Post by jasode »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #21
jasode wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. I like ads -- but only if they're relevant to my interests . There lies the problem: 99% of all ads are not relevant to my interests. For online ads, 99.99% of ads are not relevant to me. So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads.

> So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads. If everybody used a DNS blocker to filter out ads, would online advertising exist as a business?

>If everybody used a DNS blocker to filter out ads, would online advertising exist as a business?

Absolutely. Companies would get more clever about cloaking advertising with inscrutable domain names that's hard to filter with regex. Youtube is a good example of ads that are hard to block using pure DNS. (But that doesn't stop people from trying new variations of regexes for pihole that youtube eventually breaks.[0])

The other technique is native advertising. (But native ads are actually more "relevant" so somewhat more tolerable and more people would actually pay attention to them.) E.g. I just saw a Linus Tech Tips (the computer tech channel) and the pre-roll ad is for D-CON mouse traps (not relevant to me since I don't have a mouse infestation that requires rodent traps) or girls dolls[1] -- but the native ad is Linus acting as spokesperson for the Ring Doorbell Camera Kit[2]. That's more relevant since it's a techie gadget. I won't buy the Ring kit but it's more relevant than the mouse trap ad.

[0] last time I tried many of these DNS regex ideas, youtube stopped working: https://www.google.com/search?q=pihole+regex+block+youtube+a...

[1] ads for girls dolls probably ignored by 99% of audience demographic of Linus' video: https://imgur.com/a/gPcxOJ3

[2] https://youtu.be/hiLlNzxDfAg?t=19m12s

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#36

Post by xmprt »

ngngngng wrote: post #8

> a Super Bowl ad cost three million dollars. Why? Because that’s how much it cost. What does it yield? Who knows. This article is awesome. In my free time I'm building an advertising platform that topic matches ads off the content of the web pages. No tracking of users. I'm hoping to allow people to host and run their own all inclusive self contained advertising platform for just a licensing fee. I also have a way t…

The weird thing about websites like YouTube is they do a combination of topic matching and user matching. Why bother with tracking users so extensively if you're going to just go ahead and demonitize videos that are "sensitive" content. Just place the ads in front of the audience regardless of what they're watching. At the end of the day, advertisers and viewers can't possibly care what video it's showing on as long as they're getting the right target audience. The only people that do care are journalists looking to write a sensational hit piece to fan outrage culture.

I hope your method succeeds because it would be a whole lot better than this crappy middle ground that we have right now.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#37

Post by criddell »

jasode wrote: post #12
moltensodium wrote: post #3

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

>I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. I like ads -- but only if they're relevant to my interests . There lies the problem: 99% of all ads are not relevant to my interests. For online ads, 99.99% of ads are not relevant to me. So, I use a DNS blocker to filter out ads.

> For online ads, 99.99% of ads are not relevant to me.

This is what pisses me off about ads based on user tracking and surveillance the most. Google (and others) have been building very detailed profiles of us for two decades now and the ads still suck.

The ads that work are the ones that pop up when you search for a particular topic (e.g. "plumbers in austin"). They don't need a user profile to serve those.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#38

Post by ta-49173 »

I've had the impression that "online advertising" has been rife with fraud since its inception.

Using cloud services to cheaply farm the clicks reported by the ads seems obvious.

That we collectively turn a blind eye to it is the most disheartening part.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#39

Post by slg »

moltensodium wrote: post #3

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

When people say that advertising doesn't work on them they are generally only focused on being immediately motivated to action by the ad. However advertising serves a wide range of functions beyond that. No one sees one Mercedes ad and goes out to purchase a $75k car. That doesn't mean that Mercedes is stupid for still buying TV ads. The ad is instead meant to do things like keep consumers updated on the latest product line, establish the brand of the company, and to keep that brand in the back of consumer's mind when an eventual buy decision does come up potentially years down the road.

Re: What do we really know about the effectiveness of digital advertising?

#40

Post by jermaustin1 »

moltensodium wrote: post #3

Maybe this is just a generational thing, but I still have never clicked on an ad. I hate ads. I don't know anyone who likes them. I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them. I have literally never met anyone who places any value in advertising at all. Everyone hates it with 100% of their being. It is the garbage we all just sort of accept exposure to as some sort of fee for existing online. Who are all…

> I don't know anyone who has intentionally clicked on them.

Hi there! Glad to meet you. My name is Jeremy!

I click on ads when I see something that makes me want to click on it. Could be a retargeting pixel picked me up after I left some random ecomm site after not buying (but still intending to), or more likely a new direct-to-consumer brand that looks appealing (allbirds, freshly, barkbox, etc).

I don't hate ads. I don't like ads. Ads are ads. If I didn't get ads, I would really have no way of knowing that something out there exists that I had no idea I might want.

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