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How can we know if paid search advertising works?

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Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#11

Post by xenomachina »

austincheney wrote: post #3

Google does make money from ads, but that is not their primary business. Yes they have AdWords and they bought DoubleClick around 2007. They also have YouTube that took them forever to figure out how to monetize. They bought Urchin (Google Analytics) specifically to monetize AdWords. Google’s primary business is search. They monetize search in a couple different ways. The primary revenue model for search is micro auc…

> The primary revenue model for search is micro auctions to determine ranking of product placement on search results.

Google monetizes search with ads. The micro auctions are for those ads. They even say "Ad" on each of them.

If you have evidence that they're doing paid placement in the actual search results, I'd love to see it.

FWIW, I do wish Google's ads were more obviously visually distinct from search results (and fewer in number).

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#12

Post by toast0 »

austincheney wrote: post #3

Google does make money from ads, but that is not their primary business. Yes they have AdWords and they bought DoubleClick around 2007. They also have YouTube that took them forever to figure out how to monetize. They bought Urchin (Google Analytics) specifically to monetize AdWords. Google’s primary business is search. They monetize search in a couple different ways. The primary revenue model for search is micro auc…

> Google’s primary business is search. They monetize search in a couple different ways. The primary revenue model for search is micro auctions to determine ranking of product placement on search results.

You're going to have to explain how product placement in search isn't ads.

I worked at Yahoo! Travel in the before times, so hello from a fellow Travel industry person, I've got a Travelocity gnome in my stuff from work area. :) We had lots of advertising on our pages too, but it was always clearly marked (for some value of clearly); Yahoo! had done some pay for search ranking deals long before I joined, but they were clearly frowned upon by the time I was there; organic results had to be organic, although certainly if an advertiser is pushing a hotel that's going to get traffic which could boost rankings (I don't think Y! Travel included traffic in hotel rankings, but we didn't have a super thorough data pipeline)

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#13

Post by hollasch »

noasaservice wrote: post #7

eBay did me a whole different dirty: I went to sell a few things 2mo ago. Sold them. And when the buyers paid, it went to an ebay escrow. Only after I sold them, and money was sent, ebay DEMANDED unfettered access to my checking/savings account. They would not cut a check, pay to paypal, or any other method. One of their managers said the only way I could get my money was to wait 1-3 years and would send the money to…

Can you explain what you mean by "unfettered access"?

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#14

Post by austincheney »

xenomachina wrote: post #11
austincheney wrote: post #3

Google does make money from ads, but that is not their primary business. Yes they have AdWords and they bought DoubleClick around 2007. They also have YouTube that took them forever to figure out how to monetize. They bought Urchin (Google Analytics) specifically to monetize AdWords. Google’s primary business is search. They monetize search in a couple different ways. The primary revenue model for search is micro auc…

> The primary revenue model for search is micro auctions to determine ranking of product placement on search results. Google monetizes search with ads. The micro auctions are for those ads. They even say "Ad" on each of them. If you have evidence that they're doing paid placement in the actual search results, I'd love to see it. FWIW, I do wish Google's ads were more obviously visually distinct from search results (a…

> Google monetizes search with ads.

Google monetizes search but not with Google ads. This is the primary distinguisher. Its an auction selling space on page for a supplier to provide their own textual content. Google's online advertisement businesses don't sell space on Google pages, but online ad products for other peoples' pages.

Google considers all of this as ad revenue, but distinguishes search from their advertisement products in their revenue filings.

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#15

Post by BizarroLand »

hollasch wrote: post #13
noasaservice wrote: post #7

eBay did me a whole different dirty: I went to sell a few things 2mo ago. Sold them. And when the buyers paid, it went to an ebay escrow. Only after I sold them, and money was sent, ebay DEMANDED unfettered access to my checking/savings account. They would not cut a check, pay to paypal, or any other method. One of their managers said the only way I could get my money was to wait 1-3 years and would send the money to…

Can you explain what you mean by "unfettered access"?

They were uncomfortable giving ebay the ability to wire their money into their checking account out of fear that ebay would then later take money directly from their bank account, not even considering that if ebay did anything fraudulent their banks and the federal government (assuming they are American) would have their backs in reclaiming the money.

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#16

Post by bthrn »

noasaservice wrote: post #7

eBay did me a whole different dirty: I went to sell a few things 2mo ago. Sold them. And when the buyers paid, it went to an ebay escrow. Only after I sold them, and money was sent, ebay DEMANDED unfettered access to my checking/savings account. They would not cut a check, pay to paypal, or any other method. One of their managers said the only way I could get my money was to wait 1-3 years and would send the money to…

In my experience, the payment system is pretty reasonable. And I get the funds faster directly from eBay than going eBay -> PayPal -> bank.

PayPal would ultimately require your checking account information too, assuming that you want the funds to end up there. I'm not sure why eBay having that information poses any more of a problem than PayPal having it does.

And this payment delay is likely due to having to wait for credit card payments to process and settle. I don't think eBay is doing anything nefarious, here.

Lastly -- if you are concerned about banking info being disclosed, or eBay maybe messing something up and taking money, you could set up a separate checking account that you only use to hook up to online places like Coinbase, PayPal, Venmo, eBay, etc. that you use as a proxy to transfer into your "real" checking account.

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#17

Post by davchana »

hollasch wrote: post #13
noasaservice wrote: post #7

eBay did me a whole different dirty: I went to sell a few things 2mo ago. Sold them. And when the buyers paid, it went to an ebay escrow. Only after I sold them, and money was sent, ebay DEMANDED unfettered access to my checking/savings account. They would not cut a check, pay to paypal, or any other method. One of their managers said the only way I could get my money was to wait 1-3 years and would send the money to…

Can you explain what you mean by "unfettered access"?

In US that means routing number and account number. Having these two enables anybody to push or pull any amount of money (or at least try to pull, based on availability). Its crazy, companies promise that they will not pull more than asked, but sometimes coding error causes big problems, the one I remember etsy pulling thousands instead of 10s, because of a decimal point error, so pulling like 1486 instead of 14.86.

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#18

Post by runnerup »

hollasch wrote: post #13
noasaservice wrote: post #7

eBay did me a whole different dirty: I went to sell a few things 2mo ago. Sold them. And when the buyers paid, it went to an ebay escrow. Only after I sold them, and money was sent, ebay DEMANDED unfettered access to my checking/savings account. They would not cut a check, pay to paypal, or any other method. One of their managers said the only way I could get my money was to wait 1-3 years and would send the money to…

Can you explain what you mean by "unfettered access"?

He probably means ACH access which can also be used for withdrawals instead of just deposits. Its not like writing and accepting a check or money order, which is generally only one-way. While there are some limits on this for "direct deposit" (can not withdraw more than was deposited, and there's a 5 day limit, so its functionally equivalent to bouncing a check but without the legal penalties), not all access to set to strictly "direct deposit". I don't know what eBay is doing but its possible to get authorization for both "direct deposits" and "withdrawals". ACH withdrawal is useful for things like Coinbase or PayPal where you want to pay electronically and trust is too low to risk credit card chargebacks.

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#19

Post by Zircom »

BizarroLand wrote: post #15
hollasch wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what you mean by "unfettered access"?

They were uncomfortable giving ebay the ability to wire their money into their checking account out of fear that ebay would then later take money directly from their bank account, not even considering that if ebay did anything fraudulent their banks and the federal government (assuming they are American) would have their backs in reclaiming the money.

I think you're being incredibly dismissive and a little condescending for no reason about his concerns, I'm sure they "considered" that while yes there is legal recourse if eBay were to take money out they weren't supposed to, the process isn't a 100% guarantee by any means, and you're still out that money while it's being investigated/resolved. Not everyone is in the privileged position of being able to float a couple thousand dollars while an issue like this is being resolved.

Re: How can we know if paid search advertising works?

#20

Post by serial_dev »

austincheney wrote: post #14
xenomachina wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The primary revenue model for search is micro auctions to determine ranking of product placement on search results. Google monetizes search with ads. The micro auctions are for those ads. They even say "Ad" on each of them. If you have evidence that they're doing paid placement in the actual search results, I'd love to see it. FWIW, I do wish Google's ads were more obviously visually distinct from search results (a…

> Google monetizes search with ads. Google monetizes search but not with Google ads. This is the primary distinguisher. Its an auction selling space on page for a supplier to provide their own textual content. Google's online advertisement businesses don't sell space on Google pages, but online ad products for other peoples' pages. Google considers all of this as ad revenue, but distinguishes search from their advert…

I don't understand what you are getting at. In both your comments, it sounds like you find the most convoluted way to describe "Ads", and then claim that because you didn't use the word "Ad" in your comment, we should pretend that what you described is something completely different (but totally not ads?)
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