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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

#621
post #519
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic any lottery winner could argue that lotteries are a great pension plan.

If they consistently win lotteries year after year with a good ROI, sure. Not sure how that comparison works.

may be this is there trick

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

#622
post #519
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic any lottery winner could argue that lotteries are a great pension plan.

If they consistently win lotteries year after year with a good ROI, sure. Not sure how that comparison works.

what if

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

#623
post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that's legal, since they're literally referencing somebody else's trademark.

There's nothing illegal about referencing somebody else's trademark as long as you're using it to talk about their product. Having a trademark doesn't forbid your competitors from talking about you.

The problem is that a lot of times they act like they are the trademarked brand in the ad to trick the user. This is unethical and should be illegal.

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

#624
post #522

We did a similar kind of experiment some time back and found both FB ads and Google ads were doing jack shit for us. Google was better. FB ads were absolutely useless. So we stopped our ad spend. We observed no change in our customer acquisition. Another way these ad engines extract money out of you is by allowing competitors to bid for your brand name keyword. Try searching for Ozonetel on Google. There will be six…

> searching for Ozonetel on Google. There will be six competitor ads and then our website will show up :) Tried it. One ad. From ozontel.com

I've got two ads: salesforce and weeloy.

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

#625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing illegal about referencing somebody else's trademark as long as you're using it to talk about their product. Having a trademark doesn't forbid your competitors from talking about you.

The problem is that a lot of times they act like they are the trademarked brand in the ad to trick the user. This is unethical and should be illegal.

That not only should be illegal, it is. Using somebody else's trademark in a way that could decieve a customer into thinking your product is theirs is like the definition of infringement.

But from what I've seen, the vast majority of ads that incorporate a competitors trademark are not doing that, and making it very clear they are advertising an alternative to the trademark being referenced.

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

#626
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

Counter-example: I know of at least one consumer goods company that has studied the long-term effects of certain kinds of sponsorship deals on consumer behavior. The study had tracked people for at least 10 years at the time I learned of it. Of course, this company would never publish the results, because they provide a competitive advantage in structuring and bidding on sponsorship deals.

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

#627
post #602
post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're probably not in your target market but most people here probably know anything marked with "ad" is very likely to contain malware and probably won't click it even if they think it goes where they want.

This isn't true. Google search ads are rarely malicious - Google does a pretty good screening them.

I disagree. When searching for crypto related terms, more often than not I see phishing sites as ads than legitimate ads.

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

#628
post #602
post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're probably not in your target market but most people here probably know anything marked with "ad" is very likely to contain malware and probably won't click it even if they think it goes where they want.

This isn't true. Google search ads are rarely malicious - Google does a pretty good screening them.

[deleted]

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

#629
post #522

We did a similar kind of experiment some time back and found both FB ads and Google ads were doing jack shit for us. Google was better. FB ads were absolutely useless. So we stopped our ad spend. We observed no change in our customer acquisition. Another way these ad engines extract money out of you is by allowing competitors to bid for your brand name keyword. Try searching for Ozonetel on Google. There will be six…

> searching for Ozonetel on Google. There will be six competitor ads and then our website will show up :) Tried it. One ad. From ozontel.com

ozontel.com doesn't exist. Is that a typo or did a competitor really buy ads to a nonexistent domain?

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

#630

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…

> 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 everyone is already acting like they know it works, so the only way that experiment can change things is in a way that's bad for the person in question. In that situation, they should (from a local, selfish perspective) be resisting even if they're awfully sure it…

The analysis is often performed by a different team, thus no conflict of interest.
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