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Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

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Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#61

Post by mumblemumble »

jedberg wrote: post #20

There was a freakonomics podcast recently about advertising (online and traditional). No one can actually prove it has any ROI at all. No one is willing to run the experiments necessary. In the few cases of natural experiments, where ads got turned off for some people by accident, there was no change in buying behavior. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-…

> No one is willing to run the experiments necessary.

Not without reason. Even without the conflict of interest that Nextgrid points out in a sibling post, there's still a significant financial barrier to attempting to measure this stuff. According to a former professor of mine who spent a large chunk of his career studying this stuff, the size of study you need to conduct in order to get any kind of statistical power at all on an ROI study is just absurd. See, for example, the treatment starting on page 15 of: http://www.davidreiley.com/papers/OnlineAdsOfflineSales.pdf

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#62

Post by chillacy »

arbuge wrote: post #37
aetherson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, I've worked at several places that engaged in this practice, and they're perfectly clear that they're paying for clicks that they'd likely get for free. The theory is that if they don't do this, their competitors buy this ad space and steal some of their organic traffic, and/or that they're just bidding up the cost of that space to make their competitors less efficient. Now, that theory may not be cost-e…

That theory can easily be tested by turning off the ads in question and seeing what actually happens. Can always turn them on again later if needed.

Ebay did this 7 years ago, not sure how it turned out though https://hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#63

Post by im_down_w_otp »

jedberg wrote: post #20

There was a freakonomics podcast recently about advertising (online and traditional). No one can actually prove it has any ROI at all. No one is willing to run the experiments necessary. In the few cases of natural experiments, where ads got turned off for some people by accident, there was no change in buying behavior. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-…

Gabriel Leydon of Machine Zone spoke to the general topic at Code/Media back in 2016. Basically discussing that they'd gone through the trouble of building internal expertise and tools for optimizing their ad spend to better ensure specific outcomes they desired/required in a way that would inevitably lead to more sophisticated ad buyers and putting a nail in the coffin of traditional media advertising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXBqzpExvrk

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#66

Post by justin_oaks »

janmo wrote: post #12

I think Uber is to blame here, reading the story it is obvious that they bought ads from very shady sources/networks, probably they went for the cheapest CPC. You get what you pay for.

In reality, you get AT MOST what you pay for. There are plenty of cases where you get much less, or nothing at all, for what you pay for.

This story goes to show that.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#67

Post by tiahura »

jedberg wrote: post #20

There was a freakonomics podcast recently about advertising (online and traditional). No one can actually prove it has any ROI at all. No one is willing to run the experiments necessary. In the few cases of natural experiments, where ads got turned off for some people by accident, there was no change in buying behavior. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-…

> No one is willing to run the experiments necessary.

Or, no one is willing to share the results of the experiments.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#68

Post by joaodlf »

aetherson wrote: post #11
SteveGerencser wrote: post #8

I'm not surprised by this a all. I do PPC for a living and I find that a lot of ad spend is totally wasted on paying for clicks that you would have gotten anyway, especially on Google and on Mobile devices. A lot of big brands bid on, and pay for, their brand terms because someone at some point told then that they should. So when a person uses search to find Uber, they get an ad first, then a regular listing second.…

In fairness, I've worked at several places that engaged in this practice, and they're perfectly clear that they're paying for clicks that they'd likely get for free. The theory is that if they don't do this, their competitors buy this ad space and steal some of their organic traffic, and/or that they're just bidding up the cost of that space to make their competitors less efficient. Now, that theory may not be cost-e…

This being allowed shows the sad state Google is in - you search for a brand, get ads for a competitor? Search engine, my ass. You now effectively need to pay Google to keep your product relevant through ads, even when the user is specifically looking for you.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#69

Post by chrisdinn »

staticassertion wrote: post #55
chrisdinn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that the overwhelming majority of digital ad formats just don’t work. Does anyone who works in digital ad tech genuinely believe that these formats work? I have been here for the last ten years and have come to believe they do not, certainly not comparable like traditional linear TV or print in their heydays. There are exceptions. I think Google search ad works so well it’s eating the product.…

Mobile devices tend not to have adblockers, so exposure might be a lot higher. Also, the only ads I've clicked are mobile ads. I've even installed apps via ad before - I've never once purchased an item from an ad online (but I've also run an adblocker for a decade). Ads certainly "work" by some metric, and some definition of "work", but I think the metric and definition is unclear.

I think CTD ads (click-to-download) are one of the exceptions. It's a great format for some cases, eg games. For game devs, trust that yours is addicting enough that you can safely show your users a competitor's game knowing they'll come back to you. For players, you were looking to play a game anyway and maybe you want to try something new. Click, download and play that instead.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#70

Post by carlmr »

birdyrooster wrote: post #23

Yeah I think Google and other advertisers are great at predicting what people will buy and then shows them ads for it. That’s different than showing a person an ad and changing their behavior, but to advertisers they can’t know unless they experiment.

But that would still make their ad spend useful. Even if not in the traditional marketing sense.

But if you can't see any change in business from 2/3 of ad spend at all it must be fraudulent.

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