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What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

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Re: What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

#21
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If advertisement is paid per click, and not per impression, Google itself is interested in better targeting of what to display to whom, because it frees up inventory without impacting revenue.

if you have less impressions, most likely you will get less clicks

The number of impressions Google has to sell in total is determined by the number of pageviews. They still have to optimize what to show to whom. (And of course, make people view their pages more often.)

Re: What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

#22
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If advertisement is paid per click, and not per impression, Google itself is interested in better targeting of what to display to whom, because it frees up inventory without impacting revenue.

if you have less impressions, most likely you will get less clicks

But you don't have fewer impressions. The number of ads you display doesn't change, you can display just as many targeted ads as you can untargeted ones. If each of the targeted ads has a higher conversion rate, the number of clicks goes up without ever changing the total number of ads you display.

Re: What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

#23
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced it is that useful to have explicitly targeted audiences for advertisement. It may be better to understand and interpret an ad campaign, but generally, what works best when doing statistical prediction is not what is the most intuitive. Also, even though your example is obviously not meant to be taken as is, it shows that targeted demographics quickly don't have a lot of data behind them. Successful…

Who says it's about effectiveness of the ad? It might just be effectiveness of getting money from the advertisers. More data means you can do more hand-waving to say that this ad will be the one that really really reaches people this time.

Because in the end if ads are not effective, you won't be getting money from the advertisers anymore. Marketers can't know in advance which marketing channels will work - so they kinda carpet bomb with their campaigns. However once they start getting data, they sure as hell kill of the channels that don't work.

Unethical behavior does not scale in business, no matter how much your calculations rationalize it. In the end people just go away from sleazy businesses. GM and Ford might tell you a story about it and millions of others short term profit oriented businesses also.

Theres only so much bullshit you can pile up before your reputation catches on to you.

Re: What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

#25

Great usage of the G+ photo viewer for slides, but I don't think G+'s main focus is about moving apps/games into the cloud .. The most convincing argument I have heard is that 'social signals' are (going to be?) a fantastic resource for cutting through the spammy, link-swapping www of today.

Social signals also have a lot of noise. It may be even harder to tell the signal from the noise in social signals.

Re: What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

#26
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced it is that useful to have explicitly targeted audiences for advertisement. It may be better to understand and interpret an ad campaign, but generally, what works best when doing statistical prediction is not what is the most intuitive. Also, even though your example is obviously not meant to be taken as is, it shows that targeted demographics quickly don't have a lot of data behind them. Successful…

Who says it's about effectiveness of the ad? It might just be effectiveness of getting money from the advertisers. More data means you can do more hand-waving to say that this ad will be the one that really really reaches people this time.

Excellent point here. There's a lot of advertising dollars to be spent, in fact too much. Superbowl advertisements certainly didn't help companies like Pets.com during the bubble, but man, did the NFL cash in on that one!

A lot of sales guys sell by telling stories, not necessarily by persuading metrics, and all the contextual data makes for GREAT stories.

Re: What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

#27
FYI, it's really hard to see the blue ocean / red ocean slides on my mobile device, and enlarging them only makes it blurry (samsung galaxy s). It's funny because I got to the punchline and couldn't read it. I still don't know what it says other than guessing that it's all about the apps.

Re: What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who says it's about effectiveness of the ad? It might just be effectiveness of getting money from the advertisers. More data means you can do more hand-waving to say that this ad will be the one that really really reaches people this time.

Because in the end if ads are not effective, you won't be getting money from the advertisers anymore. Marketers can't know in advance which marketing channels will work - so they kinda carpet bomb with their campaigns. However once they start getting data, they sure as hell kill of the channels that don't work. Unethical behavior does not scale in business, no matter how much your calculations rationalize it. In the…

As much as I'd like to think you're right, you're probably wrong. The advertising industry is making very real money, which gives people an incentive to keep it going even though it delivers close to nothing.

Why do people buy Coca Cola? Is it because of the tremendously expensive advertisements they put out or is it because the stuff is ubiquitous, tastes fairly good and is usually not surrounded by a lot of competing products at the places where it's sold?

Don't believe me? What about if you're in a restaurant that sells only Pepsi. Do you leave the restaurant in search of another that sells Coca-Cola? Most people probably don't, thereby proving that all the so-called "positive emotions" advertisements instill in consumers do absolutely nothing when the time comes to make purchase. Theoretically, yes, in a situation where you can choose either Pepsi or Coca-Cola for (roughly) the same price, Coca-Cola's advertising campain may have an effect, but such situations are exceedingly rare. In most purchasing decisions there are variables that have much more significance than the advertising history of the products.

So ads are, probably, not effective. And despite this fact, there has been an industry selling them for over a century and that industry has been getting richer and richer, thereby proving that you can perfectly well build a business on scamming people and keeping it up indefinitely. You do, however, have to keep playing around with some superficial parameters of your business model to keep it convincing. Which is exactly what Google is doing here.

(btw, I use - and love - Google's services, but never in my life have I clicked one of their ads or even looked at one for more than a split second)

Re: What G+ is really about (pst it's not social)

#30
post #12
post #6

On Facebook you buy ads for ~$1+ because you can set target demographic to something as specfic as "women; 42-47 years old; looking for relationships with other women; with a degree in biology or computer science; attened Harvard; Works at IBM; who likes horseback riding or skiing" Imagine if google knew BOTH your search term and your complete personal history. Then the ad price and conversion would increase enormous…

I am not convinced it is that useful to have explicitly targeted audiences for advertisement. It may be better to understand and interpret an ad campaign, but generally, what works best when doing statistical prediction is not what is the most intuitive. Also, even though your example is obviously not meant to be taken as is, it shows that targeted demographics quickly don't have a lot of data behind them. Successful…

"I think the value of the so called social graph for advertising is overestimated."

I disagree, for certain businesses it is more beneficial then Adwords. I have had really good experiences with Facebook Ads.

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