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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

#181

Post by zamalek »

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-…

> there was no change in buying behavior.

I suspect that if our browser isn't blocking ads then our brain is. It's complete conjecture, but I assume that adblockers eliminate this cognitive load explaining a portion of why they became successful before they were necessary for security/malvertising.

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

#183

Post by Balgair »

doopy1 wrote: post #158
htwyford wrote: post #151

Tim Hwang wrote an excellent short book that deals with this, Subprime Attention Crisis: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50403486-subprime-attent... . He addresses that most interactive advertising is never seen and prices are massively inflated. The attention is subprime, like subprime mortgages. One companies realize most of their ad money is being wasted, we might see massive recognizing in Google/Facebook val…

This book is the laughing stock of ad tech right now, it's got some good ideas, but it's 90% sensationalized and half-baked. The mortgage analogy is weak as well. This book is a money grab more than anything. It's an attempt at stirring the pot.

What 10% of the book is good?

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

#184

Post by indymike »

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-…

Beware extremes like "no one can actually prove". One difference between internet ads and their more ethereal tv and radio predecessors is that adviews, clicks and purchases can be tracked. Also, there are techniques that can make even TV, radio, print and even digital to physical world ad performance more visible: coupons, response codes and campaign-specific phone numbers and URLS. That Uber was buying hundreds of millions in ads and could not attribute performance (sales, for example) speaks more to poorly designed campaigns and potentially very bad actors in the supply chain.

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

#185

Post by doopy1 »

Balgair wrote: post #183
doopy1 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book is the laughing stock of ad tech right now, it's got some good ideas, but it's 90% sensationalized and half-baked. The mortgage analogy is weak as well. This book is a money grab more than anything. It's an attempt at stirring the pot.

What 10% of the book is good?

I think calling attention to issues with ad tech is good, that's where my 1/10 score comes from.

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

#186

Post by joaodlf »

tqi wrote: post #122
joaodlf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If I search "Kleenex", am I specifically looking for the Kimberly Clark product or should Procter & Gamble be allowed to bid on ads for that search?

Certain types of product have become directly linked to a product name, yes. Google is smart enough to know this, though. If I google for my non VC funded product name, which is unique, why should the first result be for a direct competitor with deep pockets in advertising?

This would be fine if Google embraced their dependance on ads, but Google still labels itself as a “search engine”.

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

#187

Post by johnrgrace »

I work at a fortune 50 company, a top 10 advertizer. We have a universal holdout poplation that NEVER recieves any directed/targeted marketing that serves as a control group for many marketing programs. Further in more mass areas there are direct A/B tests that go on. There is a very strong awareness of campaigns that are measurable with ROI's and other programs that are general branding that you can see the impacts in gneral customer awareness surveys', favorability ratings etc.

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

#188

Post by 2sk21 »

cm2012 wrote: post #101
chrisdinn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya for sure. I was a Googler so my examples were biased, these aren't the only ad formats that work but there are fewer than most people (even in ad tech) realize.

Yep, even FB "audience network" ads suck and are fraud ridden. Newsfeed is a fundamentally great format for ads.

However I have not logged into FB in six months because the actual content in my newsfeed is so toxic. I wonder if this will cause things to change, although it seems unlikely.

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

#189

Post by panda888888 »

josefx wrote: post #74
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.

> Yeah I think Google and other advertisers are great at predicting what people will buy and then shows them ads for it. Seems to be entirely subjective. I bought a new blade for a bread cutting machine on amazon, the last one lasted ~25 years. My current recommendations: blades for bread cutting machines. I also checked some Christmas decorations on Amazon, but didn't buy any. So next to the blades I get Christmas d…

Agreed. Companies often don't understand the "directionality" of purchasing behavior.

For instance, I recently bought a new iPhone directly from Apple, and I bought a case for it on Amazon. Now two months later, Amazon is recommending that I buy an iPhone (...which I bought two months ago from Apple).

Buying a case an then waiting two months to buy the actual phone would be a very strange thing to do, but Amazon seems to think I should do this.

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

#190

Post by adrianmonk »

addicted wrote: post #46

Playing devils advocate, couldn’t this just be reflective of the fact that Ubers brand reach us strong enough that there is very little advertising that gives them a marginal benefit? Uber owns taxi services as a brand as much as Google does search.

I guess there are 3 reasons why reducing ad spend might not show a negative effect:

(1) Due to fraud, the money wasn't actually going to ads.

(2) You didn't need the ads. You were over some saturation threshold and the law of diminishing returns kicked in hard.

(3) The ads were valuable to you but not in an easily measured way. Maybe you could coast on brand awareness inertia for 6 months or a year before it affects sales.

This case seems to have decent evidence for at least part of it being #1, but not necessarily all of it.

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