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Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

kalkis-research.com

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Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#141

Post by Udik »

nostrademons wrote: post #135
Udik wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google ads in search will always be valuable because you can advertise nail varnish to people who have just searched for "buy nail varnish" Yes, how dumb is that? A few weeks ago I googled for a company I was going to interview with. Since then the ad spaces in my web pages have been filled with ads of this company, which sells IT services for logistics. I'm a sort of atypical consumer - not very willing to spend m…

When a random person searches for a company, it's probably > 100:1 odds that they're interested in the company's product, not in a job at the company. That's why companies put their products on the landing page and not their job openings. You have to understand that whenever you do anything as a consumer in modern corporatism, you are part of a numbers game. The company does not care about you , they care about the a…

> When a random person searches for a company, it's probably > 100:1 odds that they're interested in the company's product, not in a job at the company

Really? There are companies that have very few customers that pay lots of money for very specific machinery or services. Customers which might be banks, large businesses or large manufacturing companies. How many among the visitors of their websites are the decision makers that are evaluating their products and those of the competition in view of a purchase? You say 99%.I say 1 out of 1000.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#142

Post by atourgates »

red_admiral wrote: post #15

"Facebook on the other hand, has a better control of who is actually seeing its ads, and will benefit from the turmoil by gaining market share." Did they pay you to write this? Google ads in search will always be valuable because you can advertise nail varnish to people who have just searched for "buy nail varnish". This is also about the millionth post I've read which assumes that companies simply throw money at adv…

> This is also about the millionth post I've read which assumes that companies simply throw money at advertising and don't run any statistics of their own.

Well, anecdotally, they do.

We just took over PPC advertising for a chain of regional businesses. When we got access to their existing PPC accounts, I found that they'd spent about $75,000 over the last year on PPC, and nearly all of it was wasted.

The only conversion path on their site was phone calls, and they didn't have any sort of conversion tracking in place.

Initially, I expect they got some real clicks and calls. But then over time, without any focus on conversions, they just kept optimizing for the cost per click. That meant leaving the search network for the display network, and focusing in on poorer and poorer sources of clicks. Until over the past several months, nearly 100% of their clicks have come from what look like very shady websites and mobile apps.

They cut their CPC by about 75%, but in the process, I expect nearly eliminated any ROI. $75,000 down the drain.

To be fair, I do think Google's AdWords Express tool is a good antidote to this behavior. Someone with very little PPC experience could setup an account, and run a successful campaign. And once you're spending enough, you typically get a call from a Google employee offering you tips on your campaign, and I've found Google's reps to be generally helpful.

But people who don't take understand the AdWords platform, or can't be bothered to learn, can throw away tons of money on spammy or outright scammy clicks in AdWords.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#143

Post by Xyik »

red_admiral wrote: post #15

"Facebook on the other hand, has a better control of who is actually seeing its ads, and will benefit from the turmoil by gaining market share." Did they pay you to write this? Google ads in search will always be valuable because you can advertise nail varnish to people who have just searched for "buy nail varnish". This is also about the millionth post I've read which assumes that companies simply throw money at adv…

Facebook Ads are much more targeted than Adwords. When it comes to targeting, Adwords is actually really bad bad. Outside of Search they can't compete, and even for Search ads you can't do proper gender and age targeting with your ads. Don't even get me started on Mobile.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#144

Post by taurath »

greenspot wrote: post #27

Now, I understand why Apple allowed and encouraged ad blockers on iOS, they are hurting Google, of course.

Its not directly to hurt google, but it is a play to make themselves a consumer electronics company rather than an ad company, and as a consumer I'm much more likely to stick with a company that has those incentives rather than google who's bottom line would improve if all privacy would be destroyed.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#145

Post by TrevorJ »

I wonder if Amazon ends up being the biggest existential threat to Ad-driven revenue for FB and Google. One could certainly picture a world where Amazon is so efficient at hovering up a large enough market share of the online retail world to dry up the mom and pop end of the market who buy cpc ads.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#146

Post by dajohnson89 »

Yhippa wrote: post #98
austinsharp wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been rumors that Google is planning a new, entirely separate messaging service, with bot integrations etc. http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/22/google-is-reportedly-devel...

I've been down on Hangouts due to it's bugginess but pretty much have to use it due to Project Fi. I they came out with something as rock solid as WhatsApp but with bots I would be on board again.

Same here. I'm forced to use hangouts, due to having Project FI. But google hangouts drops calls, and also does annoying little things like compressing images sent via SMS.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#147

Post by nostrademons »

Udik wrote: post #141
nostrademons wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a random person searches for a company, it's probably > 100:1 odds that they're interested in the company's product, not in a job at the company. That's why companies put their products on the landing page and not their job openings. You have to understand that whenever you do anything as a consumer in modern corporatism, you are part of a numbers game. The company does not care about you , they care about the a…

> When a random person searches for a company, it's probably > 100:1 odds that they're interested in the company's product, not in a job at the company Really? There are companies that have very few customers that pay lots of money for very specific machinery or services. Customers which might be banks, large businesses or large manufacturing companies. How many among the visitors of their websites are the decision m…

There are, but again, we're talking in averages, and we're looking only at transactions where Google makes money. If a VP at a bank buys some financial software for $10M, it's great for the vendor, but Google still only makes about $10-20. If an engineer at the bank searches for software to make their job easier and clicks on the link, Google still makes that $10-20, but no sale happens (immediately). The financial software vendor has folded the costs of those clicks by non-decision makers into the lead-gen cost of their product, and I would bet that there are 100x more clicks from engineers, managers, and salespeople interested in the product than there are from VP decision makers (or people interested in working at that firm, for that matter).

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#148

Post by nakodari »

Ads won't die, the way they are served will change. You can look at Instagram who are serving ads natively in their feed and they perform well. Lots of other products are doing the same. Ad Blockers can only block traditional ads in web browsers, they won't affect the native ads in apps.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#149

Post by adwf »

fullshark wrote: post #130
adwf wrote: post #121

I've always been a bit baffled by why it's called ad-fraud online, but nowhere else. You don't call it fraud if your TV ad is aired and I miss it because I'm making a cup of tea. No matter how many viewers you were told the show has. It's not fraud if I don't notice your roadside billboard because I'm focusing on driving. No matter how many cars you were told drive by. Advertising has always been a crapshoot with a l…

What they describe is arguably fraud beyond what you describe. Ads placed on ineligible websites and fake views/clicks. This is comparable to a TV station selling ads for 8 PM and showing it instead at 11 PM, or selling ads based on fradulent Nielsen ratings.

Perhaps, although an alternative analogy for ineligible would be to compare an advertiser going after an adult market by airing the ad at 9 PM, but finding out there were still some kids watching at that time. It's all wasted views as far as an advertiser is concerned. The only difference is that offline they couldn't track it. (I'd also point out the computational absurdity of perfectly monitoring eligible websites for their content type - nigh on impossible).

As for fake views, they're already factored into the price as far as I'm concerned. If say 90% of views were fake and I'm paying £1 per click, all that would happen if you could magically crack down on fakes would be that my cost per click goes up to £10 as it's a far more valuable ad service.

As I mentioned above, the real equation is whether my ad generates more profit than it costs. The only difference between online and offline is that advertisers can finally track the percentage of viewers who are not actually looking at their ad at all. That % has always been there, offline or on. As long as your ad is profitable, keep running it.

Re: Google: End of the Online Advertising Bubble

#150

Post by Animats »

YC realized this a few years ago. Very few of the newer YC companies are ad-supported.

Twitter is in trouble. Their stock hit an all-time low yesterday.[1] Twitter has a fundamental problem - all their ads get in the way of what you wanted to read, and they're small-screen oriented.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/03/investing/twitter-stock-all-...

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