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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?

#311

Post by rhlsthrm »

Iv wrote: post #297
buboard wrote: post #127

Great to see an article like this. This subject is almost suspiciously under-researched by journalists. There 's definitely something rotten in the promises that internet advertising has become somehow more effective. If that were true, wouldn't businesses notice? Wouldn't they spend a bigger part of their revenue on ads ? Wouldn't that return even bigger ROIs? Yet businesses spend roughly the same for over a century…

> because advertising is a huge deal for the health of the internet, despite its vilification [citation needed] I am of the opinion that internet would be a much saner place if advertisement was purely and simply banned.

Then how would we be able to browse for free?

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

#313

Post by dasil003 »

buboard wrote: post #127

Great to see an article like this. This subject is almost suspiciously under-researched by journalists. There 's definitely something rotten in the promises that internet advertising has become somehow more effective. If that were true, wouldn't businesses notice? Wouldn't they spend a bigger part of their revenue on ads ? Wouldn't that return even bigger ROIs? Yet businesses spend roughly the same for over a century…

> advertising is a huge deal for the health of the internet, despite its vilification

This is basically tautological though. Yes, the status quo is that advertising drives the revenue that dominates most of the content and app creation that exist today. Who can say what it would be like if advertising were removed? I don't think this is easy to answer, and I'm default skeptical of research since the conflict of interest seems likely in many funding scenarios.

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

#315

Post by mlang23 »

What I notice is that internet advertisment is pretty selective, I dont know about effective... If your interests happen to diverge from mainstream just that bit enough, you can end up in a pretty much ad-free zone. I happen to watch a lot of conference recordings on YouTube, and most conferences dont monetize their channel (yet). But thats not the end of the story. Stay away from mainstream, and you get complete ad-free shows. Take Joe Rogan for instance. The people he hosts are largely pretty interesting, but the way he does controversial topics pretty much led YouTube to demonetize him. Which, for the consumer, is a blessing. Because you get 3h talkshows without a single bit of advertisment. Or ARTE, which is a german/french coop television provider. They have very interesting content, but a policy of not enoying with ads. Which makes their YouTube channel even more worthwhile subscribing to. I could go on, the pattern seems to be the same. To be honest, the more cheesy a program is, the more likely it is that you will be flooded with ads.

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

#316

Post by onion2k »

josephjrobison wrote: post #170

A very easy way to break this argument is to not look at huge known companies like eBay and Amazon, but brand new companies 1-2 years old that have grown almost entirely by online ads. Eventually word of mouth kicks in, but there are plenty of smart operators that built their entire brand and revenue off of ads. Works best in online direct to consumer brands.

...there are plenty of smart operators that built their entire brand and revenue off of ads.

Can you name one?

I find it very hard to believe there are any companies that have scaled up only using online adverts. Why would the founders of a business do that when they can grow in their local market by talking to people as well as buying online ads for wider reach?

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

#317

Post by belorn »

rhlsthrm wrote: post #311
Iv wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because advertising is a huge deal for the health of the internet, despite its vilification [citation needed] I am of the opinion that internet would be a much saner place if advertisement was purely and simply banned.

Then how would we be able to browse for free?

The free internet can be split into two groups, websites operated for non-commercial reasons and websites operated for commercial reasons.

The group that operate under commercial reasons can also be split into two groups, those whose primary revenue is from advertisement and those whose primary revenue is from non-advertisement sources. Hacker news for example belong to the later and gain revenue from investing.

To answer the question on how would the internet exist without the subgroup of people who operate website for the commercial reasons of advertisement is difficult as each of those groups also compete with each other, but we can be pretty sure that the other groups wound increase in size.

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

#318

Post by mac01021 »

jsonne wrote: post #266
kposehn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reliably someone comes along every few months to question digital ads. I always come back to analyses of incrementality as the real proof. Take an audience of X people. Divide them in two. Show ads to your test group, don't show to control. Watch your business grow and gauge the lift between the two audiences. The companies that know how to advertise at scale do this constantly and can gauge the real effect of their…

I'm running a campaign that spends about $10,000 a day for a brand on Facebook. In fact at that level they will run said brand lift study for you. So yes, despite this articles implication the data does exist and we do know the difference between advertising to an audience and not.

That's millions per year. What general class of industry are you in?

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

#319

Post by elkos »

mlang23 wrote: post #315

What I notice is that internet advertisment is pretty selective, I dont know about effective... If your interests happen to diverge from mainstream just that bit enough, you can end up in a pretty much ad-free zone. I happen to watch a lot of conference recordings on YouTube, and most conferences dont monetize their channel (yet). But thats not the end of the story. Stay away from mainstream, and you get complete ad-…

> I could go on, the pattern seems to be the same.

I think a lot of people would be interested on similar examples

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

#320

Post by squiggleblaz »

dasil003 wrote: post #313
buboard wrote: post #127

Great to see an article like this. This subject is almost suspiciously under-researched by journalists. There 's definitely something rotten in the promises that internet advertising has become somehow more effective. If that were true, wouldn't businesses notice? Wouldn't they spend a bigger part of their revenue on ads ? Wouldn't that return even bigger ROIs? Yet businesses spend roughly the same for over a century…

> advertising is a huge deal for the health of the internet, despite its vilification This is basically tautological though. Yes, the status quo is that advertising drives the revenue that dominates most of the content and app creation that exist today. Who can say what it would be like if advertising were removed? I don't think this is easy to answer, and I'm default skeptical of research since the conflict of inter…

Not a tautology. Just insufficiently creative thinking.

Don't most of us here remember the olden days of the web? When internet advertising was a waste of time and most websites were funded from the pockets of the creators. I mean, even today that's partly common - how many bloggers and podcasters are asking for topup funding.

It's silly and wrong to think the internet would die without advertisers. Big content producers could make fairly priced single article access (don't you remember micropayments? instead we got subscriptions), and generally return commerce to the olden days when people anonymously purchased what they wanted from a shop, instead of signining away access to their bank account and email address (password collection points abound in the modern internet, deliberately or not, and everyone who encourages us to create a password is damaging the personal security).

Amateurs could use such platforms as well as advertising driven tools that are merely less effective at stalking you.

Really it's only the stalkers themselves who would be hurt by such a change.

I am, of course, delusional. But I can dream.

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