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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

#831

Post by pc86 »

iamacyborg wrote: post #805
V_9 wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but marketers don't really care about math. Only about the numbers! You would expect a few hiccups and a steep learning curve when the product they are trying to buy is a bid for visibility on insanely complex networks of platforms using said rocket science to guess where one's mind is at. Disclaimer: worked years in the space on the topic of performance, only one time ever have i seen an AB test correctly run a…

Hah, exactly what I was writing about here https://www.jacquescorbytuech.com/writing/marketers-addicted...

Hi, please don't do this. If the comments become just replies saying "I wrote about this on my blog!" with a link, they're unreadable. If you summarized your thoughts and posted it as its own comment, without a self-promotional link, I'm sure it would be very well received.

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

#832

Post by pc86 »

MisterTea wrote: post #803
diarrhea wrote: post #745

This is now at 700 comments, and no one is talking about the math in the Twitter "thread". Found no mention in the Twitter replies either. Is it just me or is the math hilariously off? [0]: "10% of $150M is $15M". Correct, but do we need a screenshot of a calculator for that, let alone Google? (why do people rely on an internet connection and Google for this?) [1]: Talking about "2/3", but putting in "0.75". So which…

>(why do people rely on an internet connection and Google for this?) Because most computers lack a copy of bc in /bin.

You think if every computer had bc in /bin, or the equivalent, most people wouldn't still be using Google for math?

It's not the lack of tooling, it's the lack of knowing how to quickly get to the tooling. For most people, especially non-technical, Win+"calc"+enter is not intuitive. Ctrl+T+$formula+enter is. That's the difference.

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

#833

Post by diarrhea »

smnscu wrote: post #826
Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use google for maths because it's the fastest thing I can get to and TYPE my maths in without having to open a new application. You can even just type it in the search bar of Chrome/Edge and see the result immediately

Both Windows and macOS support calculations in their respective system-wide search bars (Win key on Windows vs Cmd-Space for Spotlight on macOS). They both support pretty cool stuff like sqrt(9), 13^37, but Spotlight edges it slightly by also support bit shifting like 1 << 10 == 1024.

Is this a Cortana feature? Nothing pops up for me (WIN key), and a search online reveals it seems liked to Cortana, which I seemed to have disabled.

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

#835

Post by Mauricebranagh »

mathw wrote: post #749
edgyquant wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon enjoy that kind of thing too. Look at a product page, Amazon ads become for that product or similar ones. Buy it, and... they still want me to buy another one. And they wonder why people use ad blockers...

And the emails! I keep getting suggestions I just brought a copy of a book why on earth might I want to buy another copy the next week.

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

#836

Post by Mauricebranagh »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #695
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…

That's at least something related being offered :) When I searched for a very specific pillow type (and added country name to the search to get local results) I get this as first result on Google https://i.imgur.com/Fxx9b80.png . It's a mattress/pillow start-up/brand in India. The ad shows the exact thing I am looking for. But when I click, and I am redirected to the actual product page https://i.imgur.com/eI6sNtJ.pn…

SEO isn't Paid its a different channel

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

#837

Post by tstrimple »

diarrhea wrote: post #745

This is now at 700 comments, and no one is talking about the math in the Twitter "thread". Found no mention in the Twitter replies either. Is it just me or is the math hilariously off? [0]: "10% of $150M is $15M". Correct, but do we need a screenshot of a calculator for that, let alone Google? (why do people rely on an internet connection and Google for this?) [1]: Talking about "2/3", but putting in "0.75". So which…

> why do people rely on an internet connection and Google for this?

It's faster than opening a dedicated calculator program. If you're in a browser already, just ctrl-t and type your equation.

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

#838

Post by choward »

specialist wrote: post #324
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 get downvoted whenever I propose digital advertising bubble will pop once people wise up to the fraud.

I think the next major recession is going to be triggered by this bubble popping.

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

#840

Post by rtkwe »

modin wrote: post #748
edgyquant wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same thing with kitchen appliances, but not limited to Facebook. I'm not going to buy another refrigerator for at least 10 years, but still I'm treated as Mr Fridge.

Honestly this might be a good thing, it seems to show that ad networks don't have or at least don't provide your actual purchase history to the ad space buyers because given that info they probably wouldn't be spamming someone who just bought a $thing with ads for $thing_but_from_us. As annoying as it is it's probably better than the alternative of ubiquitous access to your purchase history.
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