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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?

#341

Post by jsonne »

mac01021 wrote: post #318
jsonne wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

1. In the grand scheme of advertising it's actually still a fairly small budget. 2. For this advertiser they really only advertise q4 so it isn't quite that much. 3. It's a CPG in a grocery store is all I can really say.

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

#342

Post by djhn »

mac01021 wrote: post #318
jsonne wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The average "target" client on the lead list of your average big name advertising agency in a European country with a population of 50 million will have a yearly spend of 50-100 million across all channels, with 1-10 million going on agency fees excluding 3rd party costs. 10k per day on Facebook is a small consumer start-up levels of adspend.

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

#343

Post by Taesti »

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 think a lot of people still see ads on demonetized videos, the creator just doesn't see a penny of it.

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

#344

Post by pjc50 »

squiggleblaz wrote: post #320
dasil003 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 produ…

> don't you remember micropayments?

No? I don't think I've ever seen a working pay-per-single-article system, rather than a subscription. The amounts involved are too small, doing a payment for anything less than about a dollar isn't viable.

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

#345

Post by mochomocha »

dorgo wrote: post #301
mochomocha wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google removes targeting knobs because despite what marketers think, humans consistently underperform algorithms when it comes to targeting. Typically, the people tweaking the knobs have reverse incentives because they don't want their jobs to be automated so they love these knobs. But they are just constraints on the bidding systems that end up delivering poorer performance of the campaigns. YMMV but for the vast ma…

I think it's not about whether algorithms are better than humans. It's about whose profits these algorithms optimize. Google's algorithms tend to optimize Google's profits. Advertisers utilize algorithms too. But it gets more difficult when Google removes/limits access to information and knobs.

I agree. Third party ad companies bidding on behalf of advertisers for the best inventory have incentives more aligned with advertisers IMO (as opposed to Google and FB who tend to side with publishers since they control inventory). The main caveat is that it comes at a privacy cost (broadcasting cookie information on ad exchanges).

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

#346

Post by JohnFen »

asdff wrote: post #288
JohnFen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I grew up with today know that it’s Miller time, that sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t, or that coke is the real thing. True. I acknowledge here that anecdote is not a synonym for data, but I will offer that despite those phrases having been seared into my brain for most of my life, I don't actually drink Miller, eat Almond Joy or Mounds, or drink Coke.

If you were the kind of person who drank light beer, candy, and soda, I bet that jingle would spark something. Ad quality these days has gone down for sure. Everything is formulaic and established and safe, yet nearly every major ad over the course of advertisement history was major because it was the opposite of these. I guess quantity has gone up to compensate.

I'm not big on beer or soda, but I do have a candy habit!

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

#347

Post by ken »

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?

I'm confused by this, because the websites with the most value to me are those with the fewest ads. Like this one. Or the company website for a tool I bought, where I can now go download the manual as a PDF for free. Or some personal blogs I read. Even Gmail, which used to be the classic "great service in exchange for ads", I only use through IMAP clients and honestly don't even know if they show ads in the web view any more.

If you mean journalism, that's a business that has been going out of business even with ads. Advertising is just a historical implementation detail for them, like "printed on newsprint", or "tossed on my porch every morning". It does not look like a serious contender for how to make journalism profitable in the long term, any more than "teenager bicycle delivery system" will continue to be the ideal distribution mechanism for weather reports and sports scores.

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

#348

Post by mrguyorama »

kortilla wrote: post #276
lkrubner wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the ROI was higher, then they would spend more. Simple as that. But not company has done this, suggesting the ROI is not as good as was thought circa 2010.

Diminishing returns. Once your total addressable market knows about you, slamming it with ads isn’t going to help.

Explain that to the assholes who blast the same three advertisements on most TV channels 24/7

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

#349

Post by alexeichemenda »

lucasverra wrote: post #306
alexeichemenda wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Wouldn't they spend a bigger part of their revenue on ads ? _For context, we've worked with thousands of advertisers worldwide_ They do, up to a certain extent. ROI isn't the only element to look at here, what also matters is at what max scale you can keep this ROI. Let's take e-commerce as an example scenario: A digital channel can deliver a solid ROI (>200%) at $10K-$50K / month. Advertiser is excited, wants to sc…

great insight. any source for that claim ? thks

What claim are you referring to?

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

#350

Post by Balanceinfinity »

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…

Journalists and their readers rarely have the ability to break down these economic principles...and if the marketers themselves don't care, why should anyone (except the stockholders, who make less money from the company).
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