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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

#731
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.

Google ads are just links to sites, there’s absolutely no malware.

While Google does admittedly do a much better job preventing malware-ridden sites from running ads (for very long) than most platforms, to say there's "absolutely no malware" is a bit disingenuous when there do exist some sites with exploits and/or malware that manage to get ads in search results. The ad itself might not have malware, but the site it links to sometimes does.

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

#732
post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prefacing this with an acceptance both that HN culturally has US management principles and that I've got no idea how to run a business... Why is it an initial assumption that customer acquisition and ad spend are linked short or even medium term? That doesn't seem right. When I see an ad for washing machines it doesn't make me run out and buy a washing machine. It gets me familiar with Samsung the brand so in 6-12 mo…

Don't know how much of that is true as I am not a practitioner but when I was studying marketing we were taught this (continuous brand awareness reinforcement) only works for FMCG.

So this is arguing against GP's point since a washing machine should last for several years and is not fast-moving, right?

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

#733
post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prefacing this with an acceptance both that HN culturally has US management principles and that I've got no idea how to run a business... Why is it an initial assumption that customer acquisition and ad spend are linked short or even medium term? That doesn't seem right. When I see an ad for washing machines it doesn't make me run out and buy a washing machine. It gets me familiar with Samsung the brand so in 6-12 mo…

Don't know how much of that is true as I am not a practitioner but when I was studying marketing we were taught this (continuous brand awareness reinforcement) only works for FMCG.

Uber is about as fast-moving a consumer good as it gets. Up to the local speed limit.

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

#735
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

Strangely enough my ad blocker had been disabled and I didn't get any ads for Ozonetel. Perhaps it's because I'm searching from Philippines.

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

#736
When Google replaced mobile app install campaigns with machine learning based "universal app campaigns" (https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6167162?hl=en) that give you very little control over the placement of the ads I always wondered if they were simply showing ads to Play Store users who were searching for the name of our app and charging us for installs we would have gotten for free anyway. Does anyone have here have experience with UAC or know how to prevent this type of thing from happening?

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

#737
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…

> For ex, one ad network launched “battery saver” style apps in Google Play, giving them root access to your phone. > When you type the word “Uber” into your Google Play, it auto-fires a click to make it look like you clicked on an Uber ad and attribute the install to themselves. Isn't above an example of a criminal intent of deliberate fraud?

Yes, and? How on earth are you going to even explain it to the police, let alone find which jurisdiction to use?

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

#738
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…

If anything, FB ads were worse than useless for my business, all they attracted was 90% fraud. Looking at what business Ozonetel is in (i.e. sales are directed towards business owners), I'm not suprised FB ads were also worthless for you. I get the sense FB ads are really only good for things a consumer might impulse buy (e.g. clothing, games, small gifts, etc.) but anything where the user is probably going to do som…

Facebook ads are the worst from a users perspective. I bought a floor mat through them once and for the next week all the ads were for floor mats. I just bought one I’m not interested in buying another. I bought a PC chair recently with my credit card, now I see a bunch of ads for PC chairs, again, I don’t need another one.

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

#740
Here's a nice article the correspondent did about the online advertising bubble. Not a lot of evidence of the efficacy of advertising, and few dare to run the one experiment that counts (pull all ads for a quarter and see what happens):

https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

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