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After Facebook fails

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: After Facebook fails

#51

Post by ryanmerket »

cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

More importantly, they could build off the same Like button JS to drop a Social Adsense-like product on all those publisher sites.

Re: After Facebook fails

#52

Post by aresant »

This essay reads like an advanced lifeform encountering, and misunderstanding, the average human consumer.

Two quotes stick out:

(1) That he goes "on Facebook. . . as infrequently as I possibly can."

This statement disqualifies his entire experience.

Hundreds of millions of average-consumers use Facebook DAILY.

These users update their content, they integrate more of their life. They click the like buttons. They share.

This in turn creates more specific opportunities for advertisers to target more relevant ads vs. the junk broad market ads he uses as examples of their failure (credit cards, dating, classmates known to be JUNK-CPM offers that work everywhere).

(2) That his perfect model is inclusive of "Vendor Relationship Management" that lets people manage their vendors, vs the vendors managing the people.

I might use VRM along with my HN brethren but average consumers won't adopt VRM because it requires them to choose.

Advertising works because people prefer to be told what to do.

This article fits nicely into the "FB is destined to fail" cannon, but I find the author to be grossly misinformed by his own experiences.

Re: After Facebook fails

#53

Post by foxylad »

Marketing used to be about information, letting potential customers know your product exists. Then it morphed into manipulation, but I think that has run it's course - even young children now know when they are being manipulated, and are resistant to it.

Because of this, my company concentrates entirely on providing remarkable services for remarkable prices, so our customers do our marketing for us by telling other potential customers. In our experience, this strategy works magnificently - we're doubling our revenue every year without spending a cent on marketing.

Back to Facebook - I see Google ads as informational marketing, and Facebook's as manipulative marketing. And currently Facebook is horribly bad at it - I think I've "liked" two products ever, because I think most of my "friends" would think I was really lame for endorsing anything that isn't truly exceptional. Having said that, our services have thousands of likes...

Re: After Facebook fails

#54

Post by a3d6g2f7 »

cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

Imagine an apartment. Google is like the copy of the yellow pages by the telephone. FB is like the photo-album in the closet. People generally do not open these two books for similar reasons. They have very different usage. One is recreational, the other is not[1]. But FB believers do not want to accept this difference. And it's this difference that makes FB a dud compared to Google.

The question I have is what is going to come out of Bing's integration of FB?

1. The other is a directory where you look up businesses that offer products and services.

Re: After Facebook fails

#55

Post by ajessup »

cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

I'd be interested to hear any insights as to why Facebook hasn't yet pushed to build a display advertising network for third party publishers (a la DoubleClick). That way it could leverage the assets that it does have (behavioral profiles) against an asset it doesn't (users with direct purchase intent).

On a side note - I'd take issue with your suggestion that the information on Facebook is largely useless to an advertiser.

There doesn't have to be any explicit "truth" to the action being measured (whether it's what a user happens to press Like on, or some abstract measure like their ratio of likes to logins), all that matters is that it's a measurable predicate of some other behavior that advertisers care about - like the language you're likely to respond to, what stage in your life you're at, your self image, what the rest of your peer group is into.

In many ways this a lot like a first date as well, in that the things your partner may embellish or overcompensate for might actually tell you quite a lot about what sort of person they really are.

Re: After Facebook fails

#57

Post by joe_the_user »

glesica wrote: post #29
polemic wrote: post #16

I have no idea if Facebook is valued correctly or not, however I think this misses a vital point. Facebook is not nearly the same as other web ventures. It's ability to target ads seems secondary to this: From http://www.kenburbary.com/2011/03/facebook-demographics-revi... , slightly out of date, but still useful: - Average user visits the site 40 times per month - Average user spends an 23 minutes (23:20 to be preci…

Keep in mind that all those page views and all that time spent on the site costs Facebook money. It's not like outdoor advertising where the cost is set up front (then amortized over the life of the sign, device or property lease) and the marginal cost for additional viewers is zero. Another thing to keep in mind is that there are competitors constantly targeting Facebook. But not just targeting them on price, target…

Excellent point

Also, keep in mind that Facebook has attracted some section of the "best and the brightest". As far as I can tell, they do a really, really good keeping Facebook ahead of the curse; fun and ahead of potential competitors.

The thing is that since these people are the best, one might logically expect that they want compensation in some form, possibly only the form of knowing they're working on the leading edge or possibly in the form of lots of money. So Facebook's ongoing operations to an extent depend on project projections coming true. If they become like Yahoo, they'll bleed people like Yahoo and make horrible missteps like the way Yahoo rolled-out Axis (an idea that appeals to me but which was apparently utterly fumbled).

Re: After Facebook fails

#58

Post by chii »

AngrySkillzz wrote: post #38
polemic wrote: post #16

I have no idea if Facebook is valued correctly or not, however I think this misses a vital point. Facebook is not nearly the same as other web ventures. It's ability to target ads seems secondary to this: From http://www.kenburbary.com/2011/03/facebook-demographics-revi... , slightly out of date, but still useful: - Average user visits the site 40 times per month - Average user spends an 23 minutes (23:20 to be preci…

This is sort of what I'm thinking. Everyone is claiming Facebook ads don't work because they're improperly targeted, people don't look at them, people don't browse Facebook with "intent," etc. This is a the supposed "failure" of advertising on Facebook. But what about traditional ads, say a television commercial or a radio ad? Aren't they more expensive, with a more limited and less targeted audience? Isn't the inten…

There are many kinds of ads - those who tries to sell you something, and those who tries to establish "branding".

The first type is largely ignored by the majority of users, and the 2nd type, can't be ignored, even if the user tries to ignore it (those using adblock notwithstanding, but they are a minority).

The branding type of ads are the most effective, and are the type of ads that would make or break facebook.

Google, on the other hand, seems to excel at the first type - and it makes sense, because when people search, they ususally want to find some product/service, and those ads gets to them at the right time.

Re: After Facebook fails

#59

Post by brandnewlow »

ajessup wrote: post #55
cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

I'd be interested to hear any insights as to why Facebook hasn't yet pushed to build a display advertising network for third party publishers (a la DoubleClick). That way it could leverage the assets that it does have (behavioral profiles) against an asset it doesn't (users with direct purchase intent). On a side note - I'd take issue with your suggestion that the information on Facebook is largely useless to an adve…

FWIW, everytime I ask my friends at Facebook about this they make a weird face and say "no comment."

Re: After Facebook fails

#60

Post by melvinmt »

One thing I've noticed while reading the article is that my banner blindness is so strong, that I even had to force myself to look at the image full of ads being discussed in the article. I guess the author has a point.
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