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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

#241

Post by soupson »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #218

A lot of comments are rushing to dismiss the entire concept of advertising as ineffective, but they’re missing the point of these Tweets. One of Uber’s advertising partners created numerous apps that did things like auto-click on their ads and install apps in the background, collecting the commission for themselves on customers who didn’t actually click the ad or intentionally install the app. They discovered it when…

Right, it seems like the point isn’t “Targeted ads don’t work,” it’s “There are ways to fake ad targeting that fooled a major company.” Uber could benefit from legitimate ad targeting (assuming they haven’t hit market saturation), we just don’t know.

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

#242

Post by srg0 »

I wish more companies would try to find out the actual value of advertising and targeting. And it probably won't be as good as FB and GOOG would like us to believe.

BTW, there was a recent episode of Freakonomics Radio which talked about this eBay experiment

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/

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

#243

Post by Ma8ee »

cbsmith wrote: post #77
cortesoft wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of traditional advertising IS pretty much to waste money, similar to how the point of a peacock's tail feathers are to waste resources... it is a signal to potential partners (business or romantic) that they are so capable they can waste resources. It is a signal of bonafides.

It's also an important signal to consumers.

That the products are overpriced?

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

#244

Post by jsnell »

jariel wrote: post #219

So Uber has 15B revenue and they only spend 150M globally on acquisition ad spend. It'd seem to me that this is relatively thin, and likely wouldn't have any impact for some time. Uber is already well known - their spend in most cases boils down to brand advertising and nothing else. Marketing is hard, and anyone just throwing money at something isn't going to win hard. For an established brand, user acquisition is g…

> So Uber has 15B revenue and they only spend 150M globally on acquisition ad spend.

The events described here happened right at the start of 2017, so you wouldn't want to look at their current revenue. Their 2016 revenue was $4 billion, 2017 revenue was $8 billion.

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

#245

Post by throwaway201103 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #30
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 The people that would have the power to run this experiment have their entire careers depending on things staying as-is. Running the experiment carries a significant risk of exposing that the advertising operations they're responsible for provide much less ROI than they pretend it does. The unwillingness of anyone to run such an experiment is already an answer. Why…

> Why wouldn't someone jump at an opportunity to prove the thing/service they provide actually works, unless they were unsure about it themselves?

Because advertising in some form certainly works. If you can determine that approach "A" that everybody is doing is actually a waste of money but approach "B" is effective, then you can develop services around approach "B" and market them based on these findings.

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

#246

Post by alibrarydweller »

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-…

I'm a fan of the podcast but one argument they cited seemed to have a pretty glaring error - they looked at the case where eBay was comparing incremental gain on search ads over no ads. It's methodologically hairy because eBay is a very major player with significant brand recognition.

"When Tadelis was working for eBay, the company was in the practice of buying brand-keyword ads. Which meant that if you did an online search for “eBay,” the top result — before all the organic-search results — was a paid ad for eBay."

This doesn't show that advertising doesn't work per se, it shows that eBay didn't hire a competent ad buyer. Whether or not you can prove the efficacy of advertising as a whole, this is not a valid approach.

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

#247

Post by dasil003 »

garciasn wrote: post #125
Nextgrid wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is willing to run the experiments necessary The people that would have the power to run this experiment have their entire careers depending on things staying as-is. Running the experiment carries a significant risk of exposing that the advertising operations they're responsible for provide much less ROI than they pretend it does. The unwillingness of anyone to run such an experiment is already an answer. Why…

I work in the field. Incrementality testing is a big part of marketing measurement at any reputable agency. Any claims to the contrary are FUD. That said, companies like P&G, Airbnb, and Uber, which are oft-cited as examples of digital not being worth it, fail to understand their own brand recognition and organic power, built through prior marketing efforts, as key to their current standing. Sure, TODAY, it doesn’t h…

Brand is a lot more than marketing spend, and not all brands are equal. Google and Facebook have companies that depend primarily on performance marketing spend over a barrel.

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

#248

Post by gregoryl »

oli5679 wrote: post #172
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #50

You can A/B test ads pretty easily, and this is quite common. With some degree of statistical certainty, you can tell how one ad performs to another. You don't have control over your SEO results as well - but you can also measure against SEO traffic with a high degree of certainty. All big companies do this. Sure, you're never going to know exactly how many people you advertised to would have organically, eventually…

> Sure, you're never going to know exactly how many people you advertised to would have organically, eventually found your product and bought it. This is typically an order of magnitude less than the attribution figures stated by digital marketing experts. A/B test is the right method to use, but the crucial thing is you need an earmarked population to see zero adds over your attribution window, since what you care a…

Instagram definitely does this. I'm part of the magic cohort who never see any ads :)

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

#250

Post by schappim »

johnrgrace wrote: post #187

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…

Your Fortune 50 company owns a heap of brands (at least 16+ active) that span multiple demographics, geographies and maybe more importantly self-identities.

Does the "universal holdout population" span across all the brands, or do you have a "universal holdout population" for each brand?

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