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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

#651

Post by srtjstjsj »

johnrgrace wrote: post #420
TeMPOraL wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you determine a reputable agency though? I worked next desk to people running a small ad agency. Because we shared office (and I found them an intern), I got a very good look at how they're working. What I've seen can be summarized as: people who have zero clue or interest in statistics writing "reports", with "graphs" they don't even understand beyond "pointing up = good", proving positive ROI to customers -…

Have you ever engaged with the large advertizing holding companies? They have teams of HIGHLY acomplished data scientists, boutique vendors for specific niches etc. Even if you don't pay for it there will be some people skilled at statistics looking at reports. If you pay for it, there will be data scientists doing analysis. The large ad firms deliver a very good product but it usually isn't cheap.

It would be fascinating if true if the big "brand name" companies whose entire business is based on charging more for the same commodity product as a generic store brand, but using advertising to justify the higher price in the customers' mind, weren't buying ads from people doing the same thing to them...

The question isn't are the scientists good, the question is if the vendor is honest.

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

#652

Post by xiphias2 »

cortesoft wrote: post #60
kmeisthax wrote: post #43

I think a lot of this was already obvious to slightly-savvy mobile app users. Look at pretty much any free-with-ads app; a majority of the ads are going to be ads for other free-with-ads apps, many of which you already have installed. The thing is, outside of the Internet most ad spend is for marketing ubiquity, not direct response. You don't really buy, say, TV advertising with the expectation of getting so many cli…

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.

This was true in the past, but nowdays it’s much easier to try out a product and see reviews.

With Uber it would be so easy to penalize drivers who cancel because they don’t like where I’m going, but I’m still wasting 30 minutes quite often, because Uber spends that money on ads and UI rewrites instead of improving the core experience.

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

#653

Post by skinkestek »

thu2111 wrote: post #372
skinkestek wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yep, but it is mostly those parts I want back. I can almldt live fine with: - programming blogs that doesn't have ads - Wikipedia - three or four online newspapers/websites that I pay for anyway. - HN - all the old stuff: web rings and enthusiast web sites - I'd probably miss stackoverflow but I use that site less and less these days anyways. Most of the rest can burn and we'd maybe be better off. At least search res…

Wikipedia is constantly running ads. They're just "charity" donation ads so you don't think of them as such, but turn on the TV and you'll notice that charities advertise themselves to get donations all the time. It doesn't make it not advertising. As for HN, how long have you been using it? Are you aware it's ad supported? Some stories are ads, usually for hiring.

We were talking about adtech.

You are allowed to think differently, but personally I'm fine with the banners on Wikipedia (except IIRC and AFAIK they pretended they were short on money while in reality they were expanding).

I'm also fine with YC running job ads on YC.

I'm however not fine with 100 - 1000 [1] ad and tracking networks pretending they have reason to log my browsing habits on a typical site.

[1]: based on copying the list from "cookie banners" to Libre Office Calc and checking how many lines I got.

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

#654

Post by eropple »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #641
porknubbins wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a practical matter, search is how 99% of everyone gets to everything. Even if the browser fills in http:// for me so I can just type a name to get a complete URL why would I risk misspelling or mis-domaining a URL and possibly getting a fake or time wasting similarly named site? It doesn’t really matter whether the apple wiki or apple.com comes first because there is no chance I will confuse the two (unlike, say c…

If you trust Google more than your browser and your own self, surely they deserve to make money off the hard work they put in to earn your trust.

1) Not if that goes to a place that isn't the best answer for it, as expected by a normal person not paid by Google or purchasing Google advertisements. Might this threaten the ability of Google to screw with smaller companies for money? Darn, that's a shame. They'll have to make only a transcendental amount of money instead of all of the money.

2) Related to the above: Google has decided they want to be a critical cog in the body politic. We as citizens get to have a say in how critical cogs in the body politic function. If Google doesn't like that, Google should not put themselves in that spot. We can help them with that if needed.

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

#655

Post by KingOfCoders »

nutanc wrote: 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…

Luckily bidding on your competitors name is illegal in Germany. We did get our competitors to not do that with some letters from lawyers.

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

#656

Post by nutanc »

joeblau wrote: post #632
nuclearnice1 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

Hah, I saw Ozonetel Alternative - Dialpad® Official Site... So Dialpad. Pretty sneaky Dialpad lol

We recently launched in the US. Nice that Dialpad has noticed us. All the best to them :)

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

#657

Post by mark-r »

srtjstjsj wrote: post #638
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I think should be made illegal is that Google (and others) is essentially collecting another toll even when users enter in the brand name of the target business in the first place. That is: 1. User types CompanyFoo (whose real URL is www.companyfoo.com) into their address bar, which lands them on Google (because Google owns Chrome and pays billions for the privilege on other browsers). 2. Since Google will sell…

You are under no obligation to use Google's browser or search engine if you believe it doesn't provide you with a valuable search experience.

You have no control over the browser or search engine your potential customers use.

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

#658

Post by skinkestek »

nkrisc wrote: post #347
skinkestek wrote: post #253

Tell this to the poor scammy-dating-site-slash-mail-order-bride-site operator who has been sold 10+ years of impressions on me: - an extremely happily married man - with multiple small children - in a rather conservative church Sometime during the last two years they finally stopped advertising to me. I've always blamed their marketers - or Google for being so utterly incompetent as to not pick up any of the availabl…

If you take a look at people who have been caught in extra-marital affairs I think you'll find those three qualities are not immediate disqualifiers. Maybe the "happily" part, but how does Google know that?

> Maybe the "happily" part, but how does Google know that?

3 hints for Google:

1. I newer showed any interest in those ads.

2. I never sought out anything related.

3. I repeatedly put in the effort to mark these ads as irrelevant.

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

#659

Post by mr_toad »

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.

Because advertising is like military spending. It takes a lot of money to maintain the status quo.

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

#660

Post by riverdroid »

nutanc wrote: 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…

From my limited experience, resources are better spent to SEO to boost ranking. Also, you can request review on google ads keywords to prevent competitors from using your name, especially if you have a trademark.
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