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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)

#71

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." If you've collected marketing data that tells you your conversion rate among pet owners is 2% when your conversion rate among the general public is 1%, then you…

Unless it cost your more than twice as much for that advertizing or your showing the same add to the same person several times (ex: hulu). But, the real problem with facebook users is you are far less intrested in adds while on a social website and a lot of clicks are simple mistakes.

Buying a sponsored AdWords ad on Google results in people viewing it while they are actively looking to solve a problem or buy a product.

Buying an ad on Facebook that happens to be related to something they once had interest in, and may still do, will result in it being shown while they are not always looking to solve a problem or buy a product, but to entertain themselves, and most importantly may not care about that subject at that moment.

Online advertising is not a cut and dry field. You can get great results from either place, but you won't get the same results from both, at least in my experience.

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

#72
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it cost your more than twice as much for that advertizing or your showing the same add to the same person several times (ex: hulu). But, the real problem with facebook users is you are far less intrested in adds while on a social website and a lot of clicks are simple mistakes.

Buying a sponsored AdWords ad on Google results in people viewing it while they are actively looking to solve a problem or buy a product. Buying an ad on Facebook that happens to be related to something they once had interest in, and may still do, will result in it being shown while they are not always looking to solve a problem or buy a product, but to entertain themselves, and most importantly may not care about th…

The thing is that Google dont kneed to place ads on Google+, but they will know your personal information and place better targeted AdWords for each person.

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

#73

G+ is about moving everything into the Google "cloud". In a same way Facebook (and VKontakte, and whatever else) is about moving everything into their "cloud". Cloud is a buzzword, it doesn't really mean anything here. G+ is just a Buzz (thus, GMail) + GTalk + Picasa + Latitude + Google Profiles, covered under one convenient interface. You can't peer with it, you have to actually use it itself (i.e., have and maintai…

YES! I stopped reading when I hit that slide. It's a bunch of bullshit and handwaving that people do when they don't know what the hell they're talking about.

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

#74
post #67

I remember reading somewhere that Google's overarching policy is really a "scorched earth" policy where due to the "fuck you" money afforded them by their search business, they are able to offer services and products from which their competitors (probably anybody in tech) derive their core business from for almost nothing. Effectively this creates a moat around the Google castle with the surrounding land razed, allow…

Here is the "scorched earth" post: http://abovethecrowd.com/2011/03/24/freight-train-that-is-an...

I agree with it regarding Android & Chrome OS, but I'm not sure that it applies to web apps like G+, gmail since those have per user costs.

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

#75

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." If you've collected marketing data that tells you your conversion rate among pet owners is 2% when your conversion rate among the general public is 1%, then you…

Unless it cost your more than twice as much for that advertizing or your showing the same add to the same person several times (ex: hulu). But, the real problem with facebook users is you are far less intrested in adds while on a social website and a lot of clicks are simple mistakes.

From my experience as a Facebook app developer for household brands, Facebook ads are one of the most effective methods of marketing today. Across all of the IP we manage, our company is behind over 800 million fans, likes, and shares, and a significant portion of that was generated from those ads.

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

#76
post #69
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 competi…

It sounds like you're not very familiar with the industry. One of the reasons Google's advertising programs are so successful is that they are measurable. A site can compute return on investment and know that for every $X spent on Google ad clicks they are generating $Y in sales.

I'd love to hear some figures on that, because the ones I've seen from various (large) online retailers were abysmal. Setting up adwords campaigns for these retailers was a fun diversion, in some cases also a good excuse to huff and puff about the future of online marketing, but not at all a significant source of revenue. It was done mostly "to keep an online presence", probably out of fear that if they didn't buy those adwords someone else would.

The retailers I'm talking about may not be representative, however: they already had a strong market presence and strong brand recognition before they went online. Maybe there are businesses that have started from scratch online that did see significant revenue from adwords, but I doubt it.

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

#77
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 am convinced that it is useful. I do it every day :)

Without going into specifics, think of this data as just another signal to use in ad targeting. Maybe users in certain regions are more likely to purchase a product? Maybe men versus women, people who have kids, people in certain income ranges. We ad people use all this info to eek out performance from campaigns.

Google is going for the holy advertising grail with +

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

#78
post #56
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which way? Could you elaborate?

There was a post on here about it recent enough, but I don't think I saved the link. It basically suggested that it shouldn't matter what social network your friends are using - you should be able to seamlessly connect with someone who is using facebook from google plus. I would expect that idea to apply to apps and the sharing of documents as well. If your friend is not using google plus, the document could be sent…

But how does Google+ help accomplish that goal? It's a closed platform just like every other has been; for that you need federation APIs (like those of Appleseed & StatusNet) to enable cross-server communication.

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it cost your more than twice as much for that advertizing or your showing the same add to the same person several times (ex: hulu). But, the real problem with facebook users is you are far less intrested in adds while on a social website and a lot of clicks are simple mistakes.

From my experience as a Facebook app developer for household brands, Facebook ads are one of the most effective methods of marketing today. Across all of the IP we manage, our company is behind over 800 million fans, likes, and shares, and a significant portion of that was generated from those ads.

Have you been able to calculate the value of a like and a fan?
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