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Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

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Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#311

Post by rchaud »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #284
rchaud wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then it was never a viable business model to begin with. I think there's much more evidence to the contrary than there is for your position. Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable. Uber and WeWork by comparison are the BS business models, needing to break local laws and requiring nation-state levels of VC backing and still nowhere near profitability.

>"Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable." Because it is stealing - the transactions were not voluntary and informed. most users are only now catching on to what they've been robbed of.

Ad account managers do not care about impressions that the FB application reports (unless they're Coca-Cola or J&J). They care about the actual conversions, i.e. sales. Those are happening on their internal ecommerce platform, so those aren't stats FB can juice. You can see where the converting traffic is coming from.

If FB's targeting wasn't working, then nobody would have a reason to move away from paying Google and Bing to post ads on search results. FB and Google now own the online ads market, and FB got there in well under a decade.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#312

Post by [deleted] »

jensensbutton wrote: post #45
danbruc wrote: post #3

That sense of entitlement makes me sick. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we would have to spend way too much on ads. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise my small business can not survive. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not understand who our customers are. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not identify new customers. Tracking users is necessary, otherwise we can not evaluate the e…

There's an argument to be made that "tracking" has had less real world harm to humanity than the push to get rid of it. Real harm will come to people/business through loss of income due to the clamp down on tracking. Not to mention that ads are the foundation of all the content we get for "free" that we've come to rely on.

[deleted]

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#313

Post by alkonaut »

rchaud wrote: post #235
alkonaut wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If sites can’t fund their content with ads based information I’m willing to give up, then they can beg me for money, or charge for the content, or beg me to look at ads or whatever. But I want that transaction to be transparent and deliberate. And I don’t care if 90% of content online just disappears because we click the privacy button. Then it was never a viable business model to begin with.

> Then it was never a viable business model to begin with. I think there's much more evidence to the contrary than there is for your position. Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable. Uber and WeWork by comparison are the BS business models, needing to break local laws and requiring nation-state levels of VC backing and still nowhere near profitability.

I didn’t mean “it doesn’t work” I mean it only works because one end of the transaction doesn’t really understand what they are paying, and if they did - they wouldn’t. That’s not viable. It’s similar to a business model that relies on people mistyping a search term or forgetting to cancel a subscription. It only “works” (is profitable) because of the lack of transparency

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#314

Post by melomal »

frabcus wrote: post #136
melomal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But 1000 HN readers paying $X per month for a web browsing service is not going to pay for the R&D needed to overcome Google's amazing ability to search the web. ex. $5 per month from 1000 HN readers is only $5000. This is petty money if you want and all swinging, all dancing product, profit and work/life balance. You should check out Indie Hackers which is essentially a graveyard of products, ideas and people asking…

If advertising wasn't a viable business, all of these pay for services would suddenly get much more popular. That said, advertising without tracking across multiple sites/apps is perfectly viable - The New York times does it ( https://stuntbox.com/blog/2020/05/new-york-times-third-party... ).

Youtube Premium is a perfect example IMO. I know a lot of people who flat out refuse to do a trial, me included.

So clearly people are happy to be advertised to so why not show them things they might be interested in via tracking?

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#315

Post by masswerk »

aerosmile wrote: post #297
masswerk wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, if I'm not on FB, I probably miss those vendors of suspension components all together. Advertising "in the bubble", as opposed to "in the world", comes with its disadvantages. With content based advertising (media analysis), you'll probably catch me at the related watering holes and communities. Also, excluding non-targeted audiences doesn't exactly benefit a shared world view. P.S.: The general id…

> Advertising "in the bubble", as opposed to "in the world" Is this an argument for the open web, or is this an argument for Google being more popular than Facebook? If the former, I am with you. If the latter, the gap is not as big as you might think - 4 billion worldwide users of Google Search vs 2.85 for Facebook [1]. Slight advantage to Google, but how many US advertisers really care about international buyers? W…

I wouldn't pose this as FB vs Google. Google is dealing intrinsic conversion metrics, as well, which are highly problematic regarding the total impact. (So, Google is yet another, while maybe broader bubble.)

On a historical note, as it turned out G+ was soon scrapped and quite a loss, while we're dealing still with the fallout of Google's uniform platform strategy, which was put in place to provide for G+.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#316

Post by peakaboo »

subsubzero wrote: post #291

It isn't just facebook that will see this decline, they are the bellwether in social media so to speak since they are the largest player. Expect an across the board drop in revenue for social media and any company that uses ads and tracking of users behavior as its primary form of income. Hopefully this will signal a pivot in ad tracking and lead more companies to try subscription based services.

I dont think so. Users already don't want to be tracked. Companies don't care. Nothing will change.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#317

Post by tfehring »

samizdis wrote: post #202

[Eric] Seufert [a mobile analyst who writes the Mobile Dev Memo trade blog] estimated that in the first full quarter users see the prompt, the iOS changes could cut Facebook’s revenue by 7% if roughly 20% of users agree to be tracked. If just 10% of users grant Facebook tracking permission, revenue could be down as much as 13.6%, according to his models. If those figures are even near the ballpark, this would surely…

Here's his model: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14UkIkzBCfcQzYZagC5qo...

It looks like the 7% and 13.6% figures the article quotes are the initial revenue decreases for a single quarter, which the model assumes would recover thereafter. In general, the model is based on some very, um, stylized assumptions. I'm really skeptical that a 12.5% increase in the number of users who block tracking (from 80% to 90%) would result in a 60% increase in the impact of that blocking on revenue.

That said, I don't think the numbers are drastically out of line. Apparently >60% of Facebook's revenue is from iOS, so it wouldn't take that large of a decrease in efficiency for the revenue hit to end up in the 10% ballpark. The main question to me is the extent to which the loss is borne by Facebook or by advertisers. It's possible that advertisers are effectively price-takers and will keep paying basically the same amount despite a decrease in efficiency.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#318

Post by sumtechguy »

fairity wrote: post #260

Be careful what you wish for. If ad publishers like Facebook generate less revenue per ad impression (which is what these tracking changes do), publishers will inevitably end up showing users more ads not less (to make up for the lost revenue).

This is true. Look at the TV landscape. How long is a 'one hour show'? 45 mins these days? At one point it was 55. Toss in some overlays and so on. Crush out the credits in speed and split screen it.

I have been using an adblocker for a long time. But a few weeks ago I turned it off 'just to see'. The internet was a lot more 'noisy' than I remember it. I remember when one simple banner ad at the top of the page was considered 'crazy'. If only we knew.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#319

Post by potatolicious »

subsubzero wrote: post #291

It isn't just facebook that will see this decline, they are the bellwether in social media so to speak since they are the largest player. Expect an across the board drop in revenue for social media and any company that uses ads and tracking of users behavior as its primary form of income. Hopefully this will signal a pivot in ad tracking and lead more companies to try subscription based services.

> Hopefully this will signal a pivot in ad tracking and lead more companies to try subscription based services.

I highly doubt this. I suspect this will instead signal a pivot to products that are intrinsically "trackable".

It's important to remember that ATT doesn't disable tracking in its entirety, it only disables cross-app tracking. It's only harmful to your business if you are reliant on tracking users while they are not using your product.

Lots of products will continue doing fine - think about Google Search, where you directly tell Google what you want. There is not necessarily a huge need to track you while you are not using the product - after all, the product literally revolves around you directly telling Google what you want.

The products that will benefit the most are the ones that a) shows ads, and b) where the product's functionality intrinsically collects information about the user without the need to rely on third-party data.

Oddly enough FB's apps fit decently into this. Your behavior within the FB main app are still "fair game" as far as tracking goes, and FB shows ads directly in the app.

Re: Facebook users said no to tracking, and now advertisers are panicking

#320

Post by saiya-jin »

subsubzero wrote: post #291

It isn't just facebook that will see this decline, they are the bellwether in social media so to speak since they are the largest player. Expect an across the board drop in revenue for social media and any company that uses ads and tracking of users behavior as its primary form of income. Hopefully this will signal a pivot in ad tracking and lead more companies to try subscription based services.

I've read similar comments since around 2010. Stock market doesn't seem to agree. They always find another loophole to work as usual
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