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Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

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Re: Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

#61

Post by earl »

kevinlu310 wrote: post #57
earl wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you seriously believe advertisers waste trillions of dollars? That not a single one has turned off ads in a geo-fenced area to see what happens? Or that adwords advertisers (and all direct response advertisers for that matter) don't fanatically track roas? Also, empirically, users refuse to pay for stuff and want advertising so they're not out of pocket. For the 1e6 + 999th time: " If you are not paying for it, yo…

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." --- John Wanamaker (1838 - 1922) This is why advertising has been such a profitable business. That's because targeting of traditional advertising system is not good. As a result, traditional marketing has to be attention-driven. You have no better choice other than throwing trillions of dollars to attract attentions, and hopefu…

Seriously, are you reading a press release? Also, you're 10-ish years behind, which is how long ad.com has been doing retargeting. Retargeting has widespread since the advent of a global cookie space with exchanges -- rmx in '08 or so. And yet we still have direct response and brand display ads.

Re: Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

#62

Post by ajdecon »

tomelders wrote: post #11

For me, this is the strongest case yet for niche social networks being the future of social media. FB is too broad and demographics tell you little about the people you are speaking too unless you can inject some sort of context. If (via a Distributed Social Networking Protocol) people were subscribed to several social networks focused on their hobbies and interests, then I believe Social Media Advertising would be m…

For me, this is the strongest case yet for niche social networks being the future of social media. FB is too broad and demographics tell you little about the people you are speaking too unless you can inject some sort of context.

If (via a Distributed Social Networking Protocol) people were subscribed to several social networks focused on their hobbies and interests, then I believe Social Media Advertising would be more viable, and more useful to the audience.

You don't need DSNP: niche social networks already exist. Ravelry and GoodReads, as examples, seem to be making a decent go of it. Would love to know how their advertising does.

Re: Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

#64

Post by alain94040 »

kevinlu310 wrote: post #58
alain94040 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you promote events in your non-bubble view of the world? An event can be in person (imagine TechCrunch Disrupt for instance), or a new TV series launching... I can imagine very well how I would target people who like the series 24 if I'm launching a new thriller. Or readers of Hacker News for a tech conference. Etc...

If we have such a system, everybody can input his/her intentions. I would input my intentions of attending startup events, and set the expiration date of this intention to for example 10 years. Then whenever there is an event like TechCrunch Disrupt, I will receive a notice with a short list of such events. All users who have set up similar intentions will receive such notice. Meanwhile, TechCrunch Disrupt organizers…

Your system doesn't sound realistic. Here's a version that works today: once several of your friends sign up for TechCrunch Disrupt, then I'll start showing you ads for the conference. No need to pre-enter any kind of vague intent into some omniscient system.

Re: Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

#65

Post by maxerickson »

earl wrote: post #60
maxerickson wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article doesn't discuss the details of the implementation, but it could very well be the Adsense js that is tagging the cookie with the referral data. Any ad network can implement that.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. Google is hiding referer data, particularly the query string, for a growing number of searchers. Today it's anyone logged into google, or about 60% of traffic to my blog. Tomorrow, they may well do it for anyone. Right now for the logged in users, and potentially in the future for anyone, the only ad network that can still see the search terms in the referer string is adsense, because Google s…

No, you weren't particularly clear. Mostly because if Google is sharing data between search and adsense internally, it doesn't have anything to do with Adsense storing referrer data anymore.

Re: Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

#67

Post by earl »

maxerickson wrote: post #65
earl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps I wasn't clear. Google is hiding referer data, particularly the query string, for a growing number of searchers. Today it's anyone logged into google, or about 60% of traffic to my blog. Tomorrow, they may well do it for anyone. Right now for the logged in users, and potentially in the future for anyone, the only ad network that can still see the search terms in the referer string is adsense, because Google s…

No, you weren't particularly clear. Mostly because if Google is sharing data between search and adsense internally, it doesn't have anything to do with Adsense storing referrer data anymore.

Quoting me:

   Google uses search activity from the past several hours to help match
   ads in adsense for content[1]. Hiding those from other ad networks is,
   imo, one of the best reasons they should be sued for antitrust.
So: Google is a monopoly / near monopoly search engine in the US and Europe. Many ad networks use the query string located in the referer from outgoing search clicks to help target ads. AFC, a Google owned and operated ad network, uses this information as per blog post linked by me somewhere in this thread.

Google has recently started hiding search query strings by stripping them from the referrer for logged in users and has made noise that sounds like this will eventually happen for all users. This hurts ad networks because it removes some of the intent they use to help target ads, and crucially hurts the most when trying to target ads on low information pages. However, Google can certainly internally continue to give this information to adsense in order to target content. This is the sort of thing antitrust law is meant to prevent: using a monopoly in one area (search and sem) to juice your business elsewhere (display ad network).

Re: Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

#68

Post by maxerickson »

earl wrote: post #67
maxerickson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you weren't particularly clear. Mostly because if Google is sharing data between search and adsense internally, it doesn't have anything to do with Adsense storing referrer data anymore.

Quoting me: Google uses search activity from the past several hours to help match ads in adsense for content[1]. Hiding those from other ad networks is, imo, one of the best reasons they should be sued for antitrust. So: Google is a monopoly / near monopoly search engine in the US and Europe. Many ad networks use the query string located in the referer from outgoing search clicks to help target ads. AFC, a Google own…

I understand that you are complaining about https. I'm pointing out that the article you linked doesn't provide any insight into what data Google is sharing internally.

Re: Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

#69

Post by earl »

maxerickson wrote: post #68
earl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting me: Google uses search activity from the past several hours to help match ads in adsense for content[1]. Hiding those from other ad networks is, imo, one of the best reasons they should be sued for antitrust. So: Google is a monopoly / near monopoly search engine in the US and Europe. Many ad networks use the query string located in the referer from outgoing search clicks to help target ads. AFC, a Google own…

I understand that you are complaining about https. I'm pointing out that the article you linked doesn't provide any insight into what data Google is sharing internally.

Google is known -- by their own blog! -- to use this data for ad targeting. Until they say they aren't, it's more than reasonable to assume they continue to use it for ad targeting. They are certainly aware of other ad networks using the search query string: employees have mentioned it in conference talks. If they were using no more information than any other ad network has access to, it would be trivial for them to publicly say so. Until then, I suggest writing the FTC.

Re: Facebook Advertising is Fool's Gold

#70

Post by kevinlu310 »

alain94040 wrote: post #64
kevinlu310 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we have such a system, everybody can input his/her intentions. I would input my intentions of attending startup events, and set the expiration date of this intention to for example 10 years. Then whenever there is an event like TechCrunch Disrupt, I will receive a notice with a short list of such events. All users who have set up similar intentions will receive such notice. Meanwhile, TechCrunch Disrupt organizers…

Your system doesn't sound realistic. Here's a version that works today: once several of your friends sign up for TechCrunch Disrupt, then I'll start showing you ads for the conference. No need to pre-enter any kind of vague intent into some omniscient system.

My system will be very realistic in 5 years. You're still talking about socialized and context-awared ads. It is actually based on very old Attention Economy, which is dominant probably in the past thousand years just because there is no Internet. Now with the help of the Internet, Intention Economy is coming to dominate, because it will optimize the world very much.
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