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P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

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Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#121

Post by Spooky23 »

nikanj wrote: post #63
csomar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me too. I think my reasoning goes "if they didn't care about the packaging, why would they care about what it is inside?"

Oh they care about the packaging, they care very much. They're doing price discrimination in stages: The fancy toothpaste with the beautiful box comes from the same conglomerate as the cheaper one does. If you consider yourself hot stuff, you pick the fancy brand with the shiniest box. The middle class, humble folk pick the same product sans color whirl and foil insets on the box, but it's still Colgate brand shaving…

It all depends on the product. Safeway shampoo might be great now, but next quarter may be watery crap. They just bid out for the cheapest commodity.

My local grocer is selling generic pasta that is actually the premium brand right now, around Christmas it was nasty junk.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#122

Post by emn13 »

jpttsn wrote: post #113
emn13 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a pipe dream; but advertising/lobbying deserves regulatory hurdles much like other public health threats (e.g. tobacco). And before anyone shouts "freedom of speech" - we already do that extensively for stuff like fraud, libel, and incitement to violence/terrorism, so this isn't really anything particularly new. It's simply detrimental to the overall ability for us to think .

> And before anyone shouts "freedom of speech" - we already do that extensively for stuff like fraud, libel, and incitement to violence/terrorism, so this isn't really anything particularly new. So the slippery slope people were right after all.

Yeah. You clearly intend for this newfangled freedom of speech thing to protect critical commentary, avoid repression and promote the exchange of valuable ideas; and all of the sudden people apply it in all kinds of nonsensical counterproductive ways.

Slippery slope and all...

Unless of course you really think that protecting the rich & powerful's ability to mislead and trick others is really a societal benefit.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#123

Post by dhimes »

oliwarner wrote: post #95
elorant wrote: post #66

I have to admit that at a deeper lever I'd love if advertisers get the fuck off of the web. I don't have a problem with advertising per se but the way it's used today hurts the medium in so many ways. Sites are bloated with ads, journalism is riffled with native advertising articles, malware is mainly spread through infected ads and on top of that we have a legion of companies out there which are collecting every kin…

The good thing about Google's cost-combative platforms like Adwords and DoubleClick is it prices the lowest rung of spammers out of the market. Multinationals leaving these platforms means the price drops down. This not only means more illegitimate entities can afford to compete, but that publishers need more of them, in more places, just to stay afloat on the same income. You could argue that this is falling apart b…

It's really too bad that they got away from being an equalizer in the advertising space. Pricing the spammers out of the market isn't the best way. Keeping the advertising from becoming so in-your-face is the right way to fight this. And quit trying to get ahead of my thinking in what I want to purchase. I never recall them ever getting it right. I've never searched for something, seen an ad, then purchased. EVER.

And I'm ready to make a several-hundred-dollar purchase tomorrow and I see ZERO ads around these products. I see plenty of crap.

In my view, the founding hypothesis of the company- that people will be amenable to ads connected to what they are searching for- is incorrect. So we're seeing a pretty clumsy pivot.

I keep hoping Duck Duck Go takes it elsewhere. It could be very easy, maybe as simple as a little button I click that says "I am looking to purchase" and now let the advertisers make their pitches.

The point is, I would like to see if they got better results by letting me drive.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#124

Post by Filligree »

majewsky wrote: post #117
kuschku wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can ask ourselves what could exist without ads. Most newspapers could make old-style ad deals, like they do for print. A few newspapers also still finance their sites almost entirely through subscriptions, and those would continue to exist (e.g. Süddeutsche, SPIEGEL). As would obviously publicly financed sites (BBC, ARD, ZDF, NPR). Also products financed via paying customers, such as imgur used to be, or possibly…

If Google were to ask for a monthly fee for the search engine (and hopefully cut down on the data collection a not), I'd totally pay them.

You might, but not very many people would. Realistically we'd lose Google.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#125

Post by gaius »

petra wrote: post #80
riffraff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is: given how much of the web relies on advertising, how would things fare once ads are gone?

When i use Google news , there's so much waste in web journalism: a million journalists rewriting the same article, and often a useless and low quality article, at that. So maybe there's a better way.

So maybe there's a better way.

There's a reason those articles are so bad https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/06/robo_journalism_goo...

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#126

Post by jon-wood »

madetech wrote: post #43

Some of the responsibility for the failure of this should fall on the marketing managers and their lack of knowledge on what decent online advertising looks like. I worked in AdLand for a while and remember the agencies impressing clients with bullshit results and pure vanity metrics. Nothing about actual business results, just another thing marketing managers were seen to need to do.

When I worked for an ad agency I was specifically told not to add event level tracking to campaign sites because we knew engagement was awful. We could easily give the client some great vanity metrics on things like number of visits but the moment you dug into conversion rates it all went to shit.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#127

Post by dhimes »

inimino wrote: post #79
disiplus wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

inside google adwords you have a invalid click rate, right now i have cca 13% per search campaign and 70% display from the start of this month till now, im sure thats not everything because for some time i tracked those invalid clicks from my side and those where bigger then what google reported. its frustrating but i can hardly do anything.

How did you identify the invalid clicks?

In some cases you'll see that they leave your page immediately- too fast for a human to process that it's not what they want if they've actually clicked on an ad. Like, one or two seconds.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#128

Post by kuschku »

majewsky wrote: post #117
kuschku wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can ask ourselves what could exist without ads. Most newspapers could make old-style ad deals, like they do for print. A few newspapers also still finance their sites almost entirely through subscriptions, and those would continue to exist (e.g. Süddeutsche, SPIEGEL). As would obviously publicly financed sites (BBC, ARD, ZDF, NPR). Also products financed via paying customers, such as imgur used to be, or possibly…

If Google were to ask for a monthly fee for the search engine (and hopefully cut down on the data collection a not), I'd totally pay them.

You are worth ~26€ to Google. On average, only ~5% of users are willing to pay, so each paying user would have to subsidize ~19 non-paying users for such a model to be profitable.

This would result in you paying around 600€ to use Google.

Alternatively, in a paid-only scenario (where you just pay the 26€), Google would become such a niche product that it'd become irrelevant.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#129

Post by tyingq »

laser wrote: post #107
oliwarner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good thing about Google's cost-combative platforms like Adwords and DoubleClick is it prices the lowest rung of spammers out of the market. Multinationals leaving these platforms means the price drops down. This not only means more illegitimate entities can afford to compete, but that publishers need more of them, in more places, just to stay afloat on the same income. You could argue that this is falling apart b…

50-68%? You mean 32%-49%? https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en

Interesting...they specifically say that the Rev share for mobile ads and video is undisclosed.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#130

Post by Andrenid »

toyg wrote: post #78
riffraff wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is: given how much of the web relies on advertising, how would things fare once ads are gone?

Well, the Internet existed before web ads were a thing, and it was a better place in many ways. I wouldn't mind losing a lot of the current noise (twitter, facebook...) to end up with a network of public services, subscription-supported businesses, and fan/volunteer-powered resources.

I've always loved the idea of a back-to-basics www2 project. Not enough people care about this stuff for it to ever work though. 99% of people are perfectly happy with the FB/Google/etc world.
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