Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough' • Hacker News Board

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#141

Post by spootze » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

shoguning wrote: post #5

My interpretation of what's going on: CEOs finally have leverage against their marketing departments to do black-out testing on social media ad spend. It's difficult to actually measure impact of ad spending, and marketing teams spin results to their advantage. They will observe what happens and re-introduce spending where it actually works.

Facebook is actually one of the few platforms (if not the only platform?) that allows running self-serve RCTs (conversion lift tests in their lingo): https://www.facebook.com/business/help/688346554927374

Conditional on them honestly reporting numbers, it's a pretty credible way to measure effectiveness in terms of incremental conversions you get by showing ads on FB/IG

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#142

Post by asdff » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:25 PM UTC

philg_jr wrote: post #135

someluccc wrote: post #108

The cool thing about facebook’s highly targeted advertising is that it balances the ad market in favor of niche players vs. generalists, which also means they have a long long tail of millions of small buyers vs. a few huge ones who used to dominate traditional media. Old marketing was carpetbombing, which meant only those with B-52 sized budgets could dominate. It was also deeply entwined with centralized high-volum…

Unfortunately, this model invites a lot of the "fly-by-night" type of companies offering products that may or may not have been thoroughly tested, but they know their target market may be easily manipulated through professional looking ads (eg young/naive people or people who don't know the wealth of data they give to FB to allow precision targeting). Just one example: Molekule

Another example: Allbirds. $90 for a shoe with the build quality of something $25 from the Target store brand, but since it has hip, minimalist adverts on instagram it's seen as a great product and very popular.

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#143

Post by lalos » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #33

shoguning wrote: post #5

My interpretation of what's going on: CEOs finally have leverage against their marketing departments to do black-out testing on social media ad spend. It's difficult to actually measure impact of ad spending, and marketing teams spin results to their advantage. They will observe what happens and re-introduce spending where it actually works.

2020 is very atypical and not a good time to run a "marketing off" test. Even if you did an A/B or multivariate test across different markets, you'd probably be measuring local responses to Covid more than you'd be measuring Facebook marketing effectiveness.

With that same argument you can conclude that since 2020 is very atypical then it's not a good time to run the usual strategy of last year. Might as well switch it up, cut costs or react (in case they saw that ad clicks went up, but not the actual sales).

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#144

Post by linuxftw » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

sharkmerry wrote: post #113

ankit219 wrote: post #59

Facebook has a long tail of 8 million advertisers (according to their earnings report).Some of the big ones leaving would mean that the relatively smaller ones would get better returns on spend (due to fewer bidders and lower top bid) and in turn spend more. This does help the brands get a bit of free PR at Facebook's expense, given that many of them would have been planning to reduce the spend anyway due to Covid.

By that same token, how big are the companies at the end of the tail? If large corporations are cutting marketing budgets, small shops on tighter budgets probably are as well

If you have a positive ROI on marketing, and prices go down, you increase spend.

Big brands cutting spend on positive ROI is probably foolish, especially if it lets your competitors increase their ROI. For brands like pepsi that don't sell online, then it's just a cost center.

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#145

Post by esoterica » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:26 PM UTC

devalgo wrote: post #127

zelphirkalt wrote: post #107

Such a statement shows, that he still has learned nothing, specifically not responsibility. For Zuckerberg it needs to financially hurt, in order to cause ethical decisions. Well, such kind of statement will hopefully also prolong the boykott, because no one will want to seem like the beaten dog, beaten. ack into line. Hopefully the boykott will even increase.

>For Zuckerberg it needs to financially hurt, in order to cause ethical decisions. Hasn't he lost ~$6B in net worth because of this?

He did when FB's stock fell from $242 to $216 a couple days ago. Now it's back up to $234, so you do the math.

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#146

Post by sheeshkebab » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:27 PM UTC

jjohansson wrote: post #124

Aperocky wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a recession happen the first to go is marketing. As a test, you would need to control other variables, the present economic uncertainty basically rendered that impossible. It's just the CEOs finding a convenient excuse to cut costs.

> When a recession happen the first to go is marketing. As a marketer, I have found the opposite to be true for some industries. For example, during 2007/2008 my digital marketing agency saw a big surge in business from companies who saw marketing as a way to grow lagging demand.

Everything “non-core” usually gets cut... it depends I guess whether someone views marketing “core” or not.

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#147

Post by bennettfeely » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:28 PM UTC

wnevets wrote: post #3

He is 100% correct. These advertisers have gotten millions of dollars in free PR for the "boycott" but that last won't long for most of them.

I really have a hard time believing consumer behavior is affected by these boycotts. Is the average person running to spend more at Starbucks or Hershey or Honda because they temporarily "stood up to Facebook"?

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#148

Post by matthewfelgate » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

I'm not sure why people are hating on Facebook more than any other platform. Justified or not? Explanations pleasse.

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#149

Post by wnevets » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

bennettfeely wrote: post #147

wnevets wrote: post #3

He is 100% correct. These advertisers have gotten millions of dollars in free PR for the "boycott" but that last won't long for most of them.

I really have a hard time believing consumer behavior is affected by these boycotts. Is the average person running to spend more at Starbucks or Hershey or Honda because they temporarily "stood up to Facebook"?

if there is enough news about it, why not? There is a segment of the population upset at starbucks over their holiday cups.

Re: Zuckerberg: advertisers will be back to Facebook 'soon enough'

#150

Post by MrManatee » Thu, Jul 02, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

doopy-loopy2 wrote: post #82

the_unknown wrote: post #32

And yes, he's absolutely correct. Some advertisers such as the big Canadian banks aren't even hiding it now switching from announcing a boycott to a limited-time withdrawal: "Participating brands will suspend all advertising on the platform for the month of July." https://globalnews.ca/news/7129688/facebook-boycott-canada-b...

FB should offer a "limited-time" discount for advertisers, subsidized by rate hike when those boycotting return.

In a way, they _do_ have a limited-time discount. Facebook's ad prices are set by an auction. If there are less advertisers competing during the boycott, the prices will be lower.