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The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

zdnet.com

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Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#41

Post by dhnsmakala »

baddox wrote: post #39
privateSFacct wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is this product? When people cold call me to sell me investment advice I hang up. When I get a betterment / personal capital / fidelity advert in my feed talking about their new whatever, I'm at least mildly interested and sometimes click through. Do people really fall for the boiler room stuff still - it's VERY hard to believe that beats google / facebook / instagram (for product sales) etc

At least as of 10 years ago, national (USA) TV networks have a ton of commercials about investing and “wealth management” from massive financial institutions. It must be a massive market with plenty of uncommitted customers to claim.

It's about the expected value of a customer. It's probably thousands recurring per year for the wealth management stuff, and people don't switch often.

So the customer acquisition cost can be super high -> lots of commercials even with small market compared to other products/services.

Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#42

Post by perl4ever »

JohnFen wrote: post #23
DevKoala wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing. People still buy online marketed products a magnitude times more than non-marketed products. In fact, advertisement techniques are now so advanced that consumers believe they were not "influenced" in their purchasing decisions. "Hahaha, my ad-blocker and 7 proxies make me un-trackable"

> advertisement techniques are now so advanced that consumers believe they were not "influenced" in their purchasing decisions. This isn't a new thing. People have believed that for the entire existence of advertising, and it has never been true.

I just checked, and Facebook is advertising "The Uber of Snow Plows" to me. I can't be influenced because I don't have a clue what it is. Next ad is "Liberty Tax Service", which is guaranteed not to sell me anything because I do my own taxes and am unwilling to pay anything since the Intuit scandal. Next one is trolling for victims of "clergy abuse"; I've gone to church maybe 2-3 times in my life and don't know any clergy. Next is sildenafil, next is State Farm, next is Taco Bell, all of which I am extremely aware of existing and do not plan to ever purchase.

There are a bunch of things relative to my interests as a consumer, because I follow some local businesses. But they aren't strictly speaking ads. The ads are complete garbage.

Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#43

Post by vgeek »

Scoundreller wrote: post #30

Ugh, one of the graphs is for YoY decline in CPC rates, but it it shows 2015 at the right and 2019 at the far left . Who does that? And it shows it by quarter, so is this a rolling window? Then: > As long as Google can keep growing the blue line -- growth of paid clicks faster than the red line its ad click deflation -- then it is golden. > Every three months Google has to find faster ways of expanding the total numb…

Growth in Asian/South American countries with less advertisers and lower CPCs.

There may also be disproportionate growth in branded CPCs, which have a significantly lower CPC (but higher CPM due to high CTRs) than commodity terms.

Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#44

Post by rurp »

busterarm wrote: post #7
zenincognito wrote: post #3

After 10 years of spending 100k on average per month, we stopped spending in 2019 and put money into cold calling. Conversions tripled and we could only spend half our yearly budget in our call campaign. Google is expensive and returns now suck even more than they did in 2017.

Not accusing, but it's still worth considering - could it just have been that your targeting was bad? I worked in a heavily regulated industry with some of the Top 10 most expensive keywords and we spent about $150 million a year on advertising with a solid 1/4 of it going to digital (almost exclusively Google) and it was worth it. Digital spend got customer acquisition costs way way down and we spent significant eff…

This might be a silly question but how did you measure the effectiveness of the TV ads?

Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#45

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

RandallBrown wrote: post #31
busterarm wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same Facebook that inflated view numbers? We ran Facebook ads when I was there and they just didn't convert at all. It was pissing money away. We got better engagement from posting on Twitter for free.

Just a little anecdote. I've never purchased anything I've seen in an online ad except Facebook and Instagram. Their targeting is so good that I almost don't mind seeing the ads.

Interesting. For me it's almost the opposite: if I see it on FB/Instagram, my first thought is it's a scam (and I'm often right).

Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#46

Post by Thorman »

If these graphs were segmented by device, network (search vs. display/youtube) and the country it would tell the story. Users are doing more searches and clicking more as a result of the convenience of mobile devices. Desktop users were and are more intent-driven (worth more to advertisers), but now comprise a much smaller percentage of the total. Display and Youtube impression inventory may be becoming a larger percentage of total, but has lower value than search thereby bringing down the average. As stated by another user international expansion into lower income regions would lead to lower average CPC as well.

Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#47

Post by londons_explore »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #45
RandallBrown wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a little anecdote. I've never purchased anything I've seen in an online ad except Facebook and Instagram. Their targeting is so good that I almost don't mind seeing the ads.

Interesting. For me it's almost the opposite: if I see it on FB/Instagram, my first thought is it's a scam (and I'm often right).

If you click those scammy ads to see if they're a scam, Facebooks AI will see you are interested in them, and show you more scammy ads.

Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#48

Post by summerlight »

fogetti wrote: post #20
DevKoala wrote: post #4

I am not rejecting the author's analysis, but the industry is moving towards cost per conversion. Even marketers for small time ad agencies have gotten savvy and realized that the click is nothing but a proxy. Also, I never realized Google actually posted CPC numbers, I don't track B2C in depth, but considering the amount of synthetic traffic, CPC numbers can be meaningless.

I think you are conflating the seller and buyer side. In Google's case the CPC is actually a revenue and they do not see it as cost as the marketers you described. So from marketers' POV, yes, conversion makes more sense. From Google's POV they couldn't care less I think. And the important thing is the trend, not the actually quarterly numbers anyway. Which I assume would be the same even if we took a look at the con…

For the target CPA products (which is now the major driver), CPC depends on conversions volume generated by ads. So Google won't make more money even if some changes lead to more clicks but not conversions since the actual bid on clicks will be generally lower on low value clicks.

Re: The mysterious disappearance of Google's click metric

#49

Post by 6nf »

busterarm wrote: post #29
6nf wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is killing it. It's harder than ever to justify spending a lot of money on Google.

This is the same Facebook that inflated view numbers? We ran Facebook ads when I was there and they just didn't convert at all. It was pissing money away. We got better engagement from posting on Twitter for free.

>This is the same Facebook that inflated view numbers?

You can't inflate conversions. View numbers are not that important if you're getting real sales results. Facebook is much better bang for buck in general. We run the same ads on both platforms all the time and it's not even close.

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