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After Facebook fails

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: After Facebook fails

#111

Post by rvkennedy »

brandnewlow wrote: post #59
ajessup wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

It is clearly their plan to do this, and in line with their stated intent to form the "identity layer" for the web. It's unlikely to work though, because the web has a great tendency to upset the plans of those who want to basically control the whole thing. It's sure that some kind of identity layer will come into use, but an open system (maybe a descendant of OpenID, maybe not) will always have the advantage of allowing myriad people and (importantly) companies to do different things with it. And that's the kind of evolutionary openness that saw off AOL in the 90's in favour of the web.

Re: After Facebook fails

#112

Post by fpgeek »

ssx wrote: post #62
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…

Agree with everything BUT if you screen "does anybody want ice cream" down Venice beach in the middle of the summer, I'm sure you'll get some customers. lol But in all seriousness, great post.

Will you get enough customers to compensate for the people irritated (or worse) by your screaming?

Re: After Facebook fails

#113

Post by bad_user »

polemic wrote: post #46
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…

Agree with just about all of that. > "Their mobile presence is at the behest of Apple, Google and (arguably) Microsoft." A majority of non-techy types I know bought smart phones because they "do facebook". There is a deeply symbiotic relationship there, and woe is the mobile maker that couldn't provide a Facebook app.

I also use the Facebook app on my Android, as I like to get real time notifications from really important people (my wife, my godson, my best friend).

However, they have a lot of improvements to do, starting with being freaking slow compared to going to facebook.com in the browser.

Re: After Facebook fails

#114

Post by dgudkov »

klapinat0r wrote: post #106
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…

> "Facebook has no search engine. Whatever you say about the size of display ads, search advertising is still far bigger. With search you have intent. People want to find things by their actions. On Facebook ads are an annoyance." Exactly this. I don't have any feedback on your post, but I'd like to thank you for writing this. Very insightful.

I like Chris Dixon's blog on this topic http://cdixon.org/2012/05/15/facebooks-business-model/

Re: After Facebook fails

#115

Post by Swannie »

a3d6g2f7 wrote: post #54
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 go…

I'd say Facebook is more like the front of your fridge (cool pictures of your friends/kids), plus your kitchen notice board (that wedding invitation from last year, that save the date card for next year etc) - the shoebox that you put all that stuff in, and never really sort, plus the photo album ;-)

Re: After Facebook fails

#116

Post by nl »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #7
fleitz wrote: post #5

If internet advertising is a bubble that's going to pop they might as well retitle this article: After Google, Yahoo and most web properties fail. I guess all we're going to be left with is craigslist and basecamp, also there won't be any newspapers because they're dead because of the internet, and all their replacements are dead too because internet advertising doesn't work. (according to the OP)

Cue someone responding "But Google targets intent." It's the same discussion, over and over and over.

10, even 5 years ago the same people who are now saying "Facebook ads are ineffective, and I never vist Facebook anyway" were saying "Google ads are ineffective, and I've never clicked on one anyway".

Re: After Facebook fails

#117

Post by jacquesm »

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…

> Whether or not you "Like" things is irrelevant. The main purpose of that "Like" button is (IMHO) as a tracking cookie.

Exactly. Ditto google's 'free' analytics, every adsense impression and the +1 button.

Nice to see someone working at google establish this in such a straightforward way, such candor is pretty rare.

Most of the time all you get is some marketing bull about how you're being enabled to share your favorite things with your friends.

Re: After Facebook fails

#118

Post by jacquesm »

Smerity wrote: post #3

He points out some of the terribly targeted ads that Facebook pushes on users. I think this is a huge issue that's not discussed enough. Facebook has all the data but no real targeting. This stems from two core issues: 1) they don't seem to use their immense datasets as effectively as Google does and most importantly 2) they rely on the advertisers to target their ads. Advertisers, even when handed the best demograph…

The problem is much simpler than that. Facebook simply does not have enough advertisers to do a proper match-up between user and ad.

Re: After Facebook fails

#119

Post by tytso »

revorad wrote: post #82
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…

1. Your social games argument is really weak. People may play some social games with random people, but they mostly like, comment, have common friends, appear in photos together, go to weddings with real friends. 2. Your second argument is contradictory to your observation that Like buttons across the web are mainly cookie carriers. And as far as lying is concerned, people don't just lie virtually with Like buttons a…

1) Facebook might be able to distinguish real friends from social gaming faux friends, but advertisers aren't given that information today. They can target "friends of friends" of people who appear to have a particular target interest (for example), but that's going to have a lot of noise because of the social noise.

2) When people lie by spending real dollars, at least their spending real money. And they are actually saying something. Maybe it's not "I'm a race car driver", but "I'm interested in race cars". The trick is understanding what it is they are saying.

Re: After Facebook fails

#120

Post by gulbrandr »

jacquesm wrote: post #117
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…

> Whether or not you "Like" things is irrelevant. The main purpose of that "Like" button is (IMHO) as a tracking cookie. Exactly. Ditto google's 'free' analytics, every adsense impression and the +1 button. Nice to see someone working at google establish this in such a straightforward way, such candor is pretty rare. Most of the time all you get is some marketing bull about how you're being enabled to share your favo…

AdBlockPlus and Ghostery are always the two plugins I install first on my Firefox.

http://adblockplus.org/en/

http://www.ghostery.com/

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