What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 9:37 PM UTC

NikolaNovak wrote: post #107

simonsarris wrote: post #2

> Technically, when someone does a Google search for “Williams Sonoma Cast Iron Skillet,” they probably would have clicked on one of the first 10 organic results, EVERY ONE OF WHICH leads to their website. But, y’know what ol’ Billy Ma’s performance marketers couldn’t then do: prove their value to their bosses. > [picture of that search term and williams sonoma ads with shopping links] The main problem here is that i…

As an end-user, the results are insane. Opening google in incognito mode: If I search for "Toyota RAV4", the first (ad) result is "Hyundai Tuscon". If I search for "AWS Cert", my first (ad) result is "Microsoft Learn". Et cetera et cetera :|

Post by z3rgl1ng » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 9:44 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #18

simonsarris wrote: post #2

> Technically, when someone does a Google search for “Williams Sonoma Cast Iron Skillet,” they probably would have clicked on one of the first 10 organic results, EVERY ONE OF WHICH leads to their website. But, y’know what ol’ Billy Ma’s performance marketers couldn’t then do: prove their value to their bosses. > [picture of that search term and williams sonoma ads with shopping links] The main problem here is that i…

> The main problem here is that if Williams Sonoma was not advertising on that search term, Lodge and Food52 etc etc would, and then those companies would be above the Williams Sonoma organic placements. This is what is known as "on brand" Search ads. I like to call these effectively the "Google Tax" because publishers/retailers are forced to pay Google for the traffic they would have already received had the ad not…

Post by vasco » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

citizenpaul wrote: post #109

I've been beating this drum for a decade. I once even had a marketing department shut down with analytical proof. I got tired of the marketing department with probably 50x the IT department budget constantly jumping down our throats about how "IF ONLY IT HAD DELIVERED X BY X we could have had 100,000,000,000x /s sales this month" I made a dynamic report dashboard in my first react project to analyze market spending a…

Post by bombcar » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

colinmhayes wrote: post #36

bombcar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will work for someone like eBay (people searching eBay want eBay) but for other "brand-name" terms it may NOT work - people searching for Travelocity or whoever is the hotness there may be perfectly happy with the first "similar enough" link.

There's no way to know until they do an A/B test like eBay did I guess. EBay was certain that they needed to do the on brand ads before this economist showed up too.

Post by desmosxxx » Wed, Oct 13, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

pradn wrote: post #85

dublinben wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defensive spending to protect otherwise organic traffic could also be called extortion.

This should be allowed, because this means smaller competitors have a shot at the customer base of a more established competitor. If we ban it, it's just shoring up established players.