Live data from Hacker News

The new dot com bubble is online advertising (2019)

thecorrespondent.com

91–100 of 176 posts

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

#91
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…

To be fair, the point of the article is that ROAS is not a very good metric, and while most of the article is wrong in that it effectively calls all advertising worthless as a result, it's not wrong about that one methodological point. What matters is incremental ROAS - not the conversions following exposure, but rather the conversions that would not have happened but for the exposure. For small companies that have n…

Whenever I buy woodstain I buy ronseals quick drying woodstain because it does exactly what it says on the tin. This is because I watched tv in the 90s as a teenager and it was ingrained.

The benefits of brainwashing can pay dividend over a lifetime.

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

#92

I have had the thought that there is something wrong, that I can access nearly any song of my choice on YouTube, with the small penalty of skipping an advert after 5 seconds. Many of the adverts aren't even for products I'm interested in. They're either get-rich-quick schemes, or repeat-ad-nauseum ads for software like Grammerly, which I will never use. If Google has some sort of complex picture about me, by invading…

> skipping an advert after 5 seconds YT ads are not shown on Firefox with a plugin such as uBlock Origin. Just in case you're one of today's lucky 10,000.

[deleted]

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point you're talking about ROAS/incremental ROAS is quite moot actually. Every online ad tracks the user from the moment they click the ad to whatever events they make (e.g. add to cart, purchase, etc). So the measured ROAS is exactly for the users who'd come via the ad and not any others. I don't want to be offending but this is honestly a very basic point, of course one would only measure the Return On Ad Spend…

You are not understanding the point. You cannot actually measure incremental ROAS with basic statistics and easy Google/FB tools, because you would need to know how much they would have spent WITHOUT being exposed to the ads.

Well, if we are talking about a recently formed company who (1) doesn't do any offline advertisment and (2) only does fully tracked online ads, you can calculate ROAS fully right? (The only exception would be word of mouth sales)

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

#94

I have had the thought that there is something wrong, that I can access nearly any song of my choice on YouTube, with the small penalty of skipping an advert after 5 seconds. Many of the adverts aren't even for products I'm interested in. They're either get-rich-quick schemes, or repeat-ad-nauseum ads for software like Grammerly, which I will never use. If Google has some sort of complex picture about me, by invading…

> choice on YouTube, with the small penalty of skipping an advert after 5 seconds. YouTube is now in the last stage, cashing out their popularity. Now it's 20 seconds unskippable ad, then ad skippable after 5 seconds, then video interrupted with an another ad. I basically download the video and watch it on my computer or shutdown the browser tab with youtube.

If using iPhone, iOS 15 extensions let’s you block those video ads. If using android, use Firefox browser with both an adblocker like uBlock and an addon to allow video playback in background along with another addon for auto skipping the “continue playing” Popup. Both have made my life so much easier!

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

#95
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…

Even for seemingly obvious things this article is wrong.

Maybe in 2009, when the market was playing ball, was it okay not to buy your own brand (eBay) as a keyword, as this is an audience that already want to go to your site. Now all your competitors are buying your brand and you'll end up in fourth or fifth position with your own audience if you don't buy it.

And while most will still scroll it through, you will end up losing a small but consistent share of clicks to competitors time to time. And if they manage to make their service slightly more sticky than yours, you'll end up losing small market shares over time.

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

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not understanding the point. You cannot actually measure incremental ROAS with basic statistics and easy Google/FB tools, because you would need to know how much they would have spent WITHOUT being exposed to the ads.

Well, if we are talking about a recently formed company who (1) doesn't do any offline advertisment and (2) only does fully tracked online ads, you can calculate ROAS fully right? (The only exception would be word of mouth sales)

It's a big exception; otherwise you are just assuming that the only way people can get to your product is through ads. But this is equivalent to assuming "incremental ROAS = ROAS". So you propose to solve the problem by ignoring it. ;-)

PS: Of course that works if the difference is indeed small enough in your case so that it CAN be ignored.

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

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

90%+ of relevant traffic is mobile 95%+ of mobile traffic is native Don’t delude yourself

Yeah, for now. I'm doing my part to change that. People love the fact uBlock Origin blocks the idiotic YouTube ads. There's always Brave if for some reason they can't stand Firefox. And hey, if Apple will crack down on Facebook's espionage over privacy concerns, who says they won't do the same to these advertisers and their abusive surveillance capitalism? Maybe they'll realize that advertising is pure noise nobody c…

Apple's privacy stance is questionable (see the recent content scanning debacle).

Plus, I would say they profit more when the web experience on their devices is inferior to apps, which means annoying ads and popups help drive people to use apps, which Apple profits from... (and some companies, like Reddit, actively participate in annoying their own users to get the app).

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

#98
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've worked with and for brands with multi million dollar budgets.

My general advice, which I borrwed from somewhere...

Advertising is like an Aircraft. You power up, use a lot fuel(budget) and you get airborn!

Then you cut the engines (reduce budget) and you start gliding and you think, well OK, everthing seems fine! I dont need to keep burning fuel!

And then all of sudden you either smash into the ground or you have to use that rapid fuel burn all over again to get back on top!

YMMV!

On the flip side, I've cut Google Ad spend for a large tourism brand and traffic to the website continued to grow even 24 months later.

Traffic is one metric of course....

Marketing and Advertising are complicated and hard! It requires nerves of steal and it really helps when it's someone else's budget! :-)

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

#99
post #89
post #87

Annoyingly I feel like it's true. Personally I never had anything strongly against online advertising - there are tons of website and blogs where you can see that people have poured their hearts and souls into their work and the only thing they get in return are a few peanuts from ads. There's the case for trackers and cookies and whatnot but let's be realistic-the analysis and processing is done by a server in the d…

I pay for google music, or whatever the name is today, and I see no ads. Bandwidth, servers, the employees, etc. have a cost, so it is only natural that companies make money somehow, either through ads or by subscription. EDIT: it is YouTube Premium.

Music is a different thing(I'm also a subscriber), I'm talking videos specifically. I'm sorry but the fact that I have to go through a minute of ads for every 4 minutes of videos watched is absurd. The worst thing I've had to endure was Antena 3 in Spain in terms of content-to-ads ratio. At this point if we include sponsored messages in videos, I'm willing to bet the ratio is worse on youtube.

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

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the point of the article is that ROAS is not a very good metric, and while most of the article is wrong in that it effectively calls all advertising worthless as a result, it's not wrong about that one methodological point. What matters is incremental ROAS - not the conversions following exposure, but rather the conversions that would not have happened but for the exposure. For small companies that have n…

Whenever I buy woodstain I buy ronseals quick drying woodstain because it does exactly what it says on the tin. This is because I watched tv in the 90s as a teenager and it was ingrained. The benefits of brainwashing can pay dividend over a lifetime.

Your point actually proves that, advertising gets the customer through the door, but, your product needs to be actually decent to keep the customer.You saw the advertisement, you bought the product and it worked as described, and continued to work in that way in the future.

The product is successful not because of advertising, because it is actually good. I find it weird that, most people spend huge on advertising, but sometimes neglect the product.

Post reply on HN