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The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

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Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#41
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s simple. You use a URL with the campaign id, and store that when the customer clicks through, then when a sale is made you count that towards the campaign. In offline advertising people would achieve this using campaign-specific phone numbers or discount code given in the ad. Online advertising math is not rocket science. If ROAS is positive you continue the campaign, if not you abandon it or try other methods.

Direct conversion to sale via clickthroughs are an almost invisibly small part of online ads . No advertiser uses only that metric for determining ROAS.

Which metrics are you referring to?

I can’t speak for ad agencies, but every company I’ve worked with to do advertising measured ROAS using customer attribution (which ad campaign brought which customer, and how much did that customer spend).

Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#42
post #13

I remember reading this article back in 2019 when it was originally written. Unclear why it is being dusted off now when it is still just as wrong as it was then. Yes, it is probably hard for a large, well-known brand like eBay or Procter & Gamble or Coca-Cola to measure their return from online advertising. If Coca-Cola stopped all advertising for 1 week, would anything really change? Probably not. And it’s not as i…

I think with a company like Coca-cola, it is a little bit of a different approach. Taking Coca-cola as the example. My money is their ads are not placed there to get you to buy a 6-pack online. It is so when you see it, you go, 'damn a coke actually sounds really good right now.' And then you proceed to walk tot he fridge for one or next time your out and about buy one. However I would say that a product such as coke…

For commodity products, It’s all about creating a subconscious association so eg when you’re at the store you choose coke because you’re heard/seen it so many times it seems “familiar”.

Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#43
"Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, Google’s founder and its CEO respectively, were already seated in the conference room when co-founder Sergey Brin came in, out of breath. He was wearing shorts. And roller skates."

Why do tech guys always try and act like they don't care when they obviously do?

Why would Google tell Karmazin how they made money?

Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#44
post #13

I remember reading this article back in 2019 when it was originally written. Unclear why it is being dusted off now when it is still just as wrong as it was then. Yes, it is probably hard for a large, well-known brand like eBay or Procter & Gamble or Coca-Cola to measure their return from online advertising. If Coca-Cola stopped all advertising for 1 week, would anything really change? Probably not. And it’s not as i…

What's the concept called when something persists even as it scales?

Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#45

I've always wanted to inquire the significance of advertising from the standpoint of the business, and yet its failure to please users. Advertising sucks from the standpoint of the user, and some say that if you want to scale any online business from 0 customers to N, advertising is pivotal and word of mouth won't do. Whether it comes in the flavor of give $10 to sign up a Paypal account, banner ads, search engine ad…

We haven’t “solved” user hostility because the industry still relies on user data collection and tracking on a massive scale with default opt in rather than opt out. Consumers are spooked by that and the industry has (by and large) failed to convince them of the utility of targeted advertising.

It’s the original sin of online ads that nobody really wants to address. Because of that, we have a lot of rather shady players in the industry making the problem even worse.

Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doesn’t mean that the advertising is money wasted. Coke spends that money to remain the go to brand, and surely values being the cultural default very highly. Saying “Coke would still sell without ads” really misses the point for why Coke advertises. It reminds of car ads. Apparently (correct me if I’m wrong), but OEM ads aren’t about converting new customers, but they’re about trying to convert recent buyers…

I don't disagree with you. My point wasn't that Coke-style brand advertising was worthless, just that it's extremely difficult to measure without much longer experiments - specifically because it's been so successful.

I remember an experiment about coparing cola and psi, they found advertisement of cola was so successful that people saw a cola bottle will let them feel it more delicious. I assume they want to keep this advantage in internet era

Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#48
post #13

I remember reading this article back in 2019 when it was originally written. Unclear why it is being dusted off now when it is still just as wrong as it was then. Yes, it is probably hard for a large, well-known brand like eBay or Procter & Gamble or Coca-Cola to measure their return from online advertising. If Coca-Cola stopped all advertising for 1 week, would anything really change? Probably not. And it’s not as i…

This rings true completely from my experience.

I run an eBay store that has pretty decent revenues but no brand recognition, and we make pretty heavy use of their Promoted Listings function.

We've generally found for competitive items that sacrificing 5% to ad spend allows us to increase the price of the item by 20% without experiencing any reduction in sales. There is no way to fake that.

For my other business, though, (Low-cost USB Oscilloscopes) I found Google, Facebook and Amazon ads to be completely useless. Even then, though, it didn't cost a lot of money or take a whole lot of time to get a definitive answer and cancel the campaign.

Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#49

This sounds great and I want to believe it, but it feels like another case of someone saying the sky is falling when it clearly hasn't. What will it take for this advertising bubble to pop? Is it even a bubble?

> What will it take for this advertising bubble to pop?

Browsers shipping with uBlock Origin included.

Re: The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

#50
post #9

It's an idea that just won't die ... If we concatenate enough garbage: (subprime loans, training inputs, consumer information) then the result: (MBS tranches, AI, targeted ads) is somehow not garbage . This appears to be a wonderful model for separating gullible investors from their money so I suspect we'll keep seeing new incarnations of it ...

I think you are right, but the process you describe is so similar to the way we actually create value. Transforming or changing something from less into more. Normally we might call it work, or a patent. Making garbage can look similar to doing work and making something of value in the right circumstances.

> Transforming or changing something from less into more.

"Less" rarely means garbage, and usually it takes more work than acquiring more more more.

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