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Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

hilarymason.com

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Re: Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

#11

Post by mattmaroon »

debacle wrote: post #9
webwright wrote: post #8

Things get tense when ad-supported companies have to make money. When I ask my mom or dad to click the first Google search result, they click on an ad. When I ask them if they realized that it was an ad, the response is "no". A good portion of the ad business is confused clicks/taps (it's worse on mobile).

As someone who has worked on all three sides of the equation (selling ad space, brokering ad space, and buying ad space), I can tell you wholeheartedly that ad purchasing companies do not want these clicks. They're paying for something of no value. I don't know how companies can be convinced to do ad placements like these, or if they simply rely on getting enough conversions from accidental clicks from unknowing user…

Ads like this are typically bid on on a CPC basis. Shaky grandpas who click ads on accident and don't convert drive down the cost of the clicks. If you assume shaky grandpas account for 50% of the clicks, and 0 convert, then they'll make the CPC worth half what it would have been without shaky grandpas. As a result advertisers will bid half as much and pay half as much as CPCs. Just like click fraud, unless it's an orchestrated attack on one specific company, it comes out in the wash.

In the end, the advertisers don't really care (at least if they understand the math, which many don't). They care only about their ROI. If they pay 20 cents a click and make 40 they're happy, if not they aren't. Sure you could perhaps get rid of all the shaky grandpas, pay 40 cents a click, and make 80, but it's the same ROI.

What you really end up with is a cottage industry of people making websites that can convert shaky grandpas better than real advertisers because just like spam, some non-zero percentage do convert. That's why you see some stupid ID fraud ad there. Shaky grandpas are terrified of the evil hacker who wants to steal their identity.

Re: Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

#12

Post by aresant »

The ad is well placed to ensure most users will see it - check out the average horizontal attention graph below to understand the necessity of that placement in the UI vs further right or lower on the page:

http://www.conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/04/test-your-horiz...

That ad unit is available only through Yahoo's CPM program - not self serve and I know for a fact that ad unit sells out months in advance with huge CPM volume commitments.

Modern ad platforms optimize media with backend ROI tracking via pixel-fires / cookies and Yahoo optimizes their inventory to that metric with their advertisers

Pain for users in this units placement? Maybe yes. Could do better? Always.

But pressing first priority problem for a business that can't afford to screw with their profit centers, no.

Re: Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

#13

Post by wpietri »

hooande wrote: post #2

Hilary Mason is brilliant. But Yahoo knows what they're doing when it comes to their advertising. YahooMail is one of the most valuable properties on the web in terms of CPM. Their ad display makes for a crappy UI experience, but it also makes them a lot of money.

I'm amazed that you can look at the wreck Yahoo has become by blind optimization and say they know what they're doing.

In the particular case of Yahoo Mail, their crappiness has driven off large numbers of high-end users. They also lost a lot of great staff who were tired of working on crappy things for managers who didn't give a shit about the users or the workers as long as the numbers were good and their political power increased.

Yahoo's a classic example of what happens when you know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Re: Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

#16

Post by recoiledsnake »

webwright wrote: post #8

Things get tense when ad-supported companies have to make money. When I ask my mom or dad to click the first Google search result, they click on an ad. When I ask them if they realized that it was an ad, the response is "no". A good portion of the ad business is confused clicks/taps (it's worse on mobile).

Google and other ads are specifically designed to look like search results and exploit the fact that older people cannot see contrast of the background as well as younger people.

The contrast on the background is much lower than the federal 508 standard for contrast and I think has changed to over the years to a lighter shade as Google "optimizes" it.

http://i.imgur.com/Wmdd0.png

One is an ad and one is a search result, is there much difference? Given the average quality of monitors, I think those are designed to fool even otherwise sharp eyes.

Re: Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

#17

Post by debacle »

mattmaroon wrote: post #11
debacle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has worked on all three sides of the equation (selling ad space, brokering ad space, and buying ad space), I can tell you wholeheartedly that ad purchasing companies do not want these clicks. They're paying for something of no value. I don't know how companies can be convinced to do ad placements like these, or if they simply rely on getting enough conversions from accidental clicks from unknowing user…

Ads like this are typically bid on on a CPC basis. Shaky grandpas who click ads on accident and don't convert drive down the cost of the clicks. If you assume shaky grandpas account for 50% of the clicks, and 0 convert, then they'll make the CPC worth half what it would have been without shaky grandpas. As a result advertisers will bid half as much and pay half as much as CPCs. Just like click fraud, unless it's an o…

But then you get into the business conundrums - would you rather sell 10k impressions at .40 cpc or 20k impressions at .20 cpc?

Re: Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

#18

Post by mbesto »

hooande wrote: post #2

Hilary Mason is brilliant. But Yahoo knows what they're doing when it comes to their advertising. YahooMail is one of the most valuable properties on the web in terms of CPM. Their ad display makes for a crappy UI experience, but it also makes them a lot of money.

As someone already pointed out, these types of CPM offer NO value to the customer. Does it help Yahoo in the short term? Probably. Long term? Probably not.

Re: Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

#19

Post by verisimilidude »

smacktoward wrote: post #7
ceslami wrote: post #5

This piece confused me for several reasons. First, if anything, this seems like an accessibility problem that would be hard to solve. Shakiness affects many of us as we get older, but it is hard to design a website around this constraint. Second, there is an implication that this ad placement is somehow "surely wrong," and a step further, is likely only successful due to pseudo-fraudulent interactions. I want to rebu…

Shakiness affects many of us as we get older, but it is hard to design a website around this constraint. Is it? Large link targets surrounded by empty negative space seem like an easy way to solve this problem. The issue is only an issue because Yahoo puts the links in tinytext and crowds the ad link right up next to the "Inbox" link, so a twitch can send the cursor scooting past the link you want to click on to the…

Large link targets surrounded by empty negative space seem like an easy way to solve this problem.

That's correct. Adding a tasteful mouse-over effect also serves as a nice additional visual cue.

(Speaking from experience: I have a very shaky hand due to an old injury.)

Re: Hey Yahoo, You’re Optimizing the Wrong Thing

#20

Post by dkarl »

debacle wrote: post #9
webwright wrote: post #8

Things get tense when ad-supported companies have to make money. When I ask my mom or dad to click the first Google search result, they click on an ad. When I ask them if they realized that it was an ad, the response is "no". A good portion of the ad business is confused clicks/taps (it's worse on mobile).

As someone who has worked on all three sides of the equation (selling ad space, brokering ad space, and buying ad space), I can tell you wholeheartedly that ad purchasing companies do not want these clicks. They're paying for something of no value. I don't know how companies can be convinced to do ad placements like these, or if they simply rely on getting enough conversions from accidental clicks from unknowing user…

A lot of products are targeted at confused and befuddled people. The "Protect Your Identity" ad could be an ad for one of those, in which case Yahoo's optimization process has placed it very well.
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