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After Facebook fails

blogs.law.harvard.edu

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Re: After Facebook fails

#151

Post by silverlake »

guelo wrote: post #23
hkmurakami wrote: post #6

Every time I read about how online targeted ads have poor returns for advertisers, I think to myself: "These advertisers know that the ads have low ROI because things are measureable online. How (in)effective would traditional advertisements prove to be, if they were as measurable as their online counterparts? How (in)effective would traditional advertisements prove to be, if they didn't interject themselves into the…

But advertisers aren't stupid. There must be a rational reason why they keep paying higher prices for traditional ads.

I'm just guessing here... If ad agencies earn a % of ad spend, it's in their interest to spend more. It's easier to spend more on TV, plus it's difficult to prove it's ineffective. Targeted ads on the 'net may someday be really good, but it would cost less and undermine ad agencies' fat fees.

Re: After Facebook fails

#152

Post by joering2 »

truncate wrote: post #150
gulbrandr wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AdBlockPlus and Ghostery are always the two plugins I install first on my Firefox. http://adblockplus.org/en/ http://www.ghostery.com/

Also Adveristy and Anti Social subscription for AdBlock. http://code.google.com/p/adversity/

i upvoted you both. no idea how my web worked before installing those two (chrome). on pages like yahoo, msn, cnn, turning off adblock slows displaying web 2-5 seconds. nightmare!

Re: After Facebook fails

#153

Post by joering2 »

brudgers wrote: post #139
cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

"A common misconception from fearmongers is that your data is being sold. It is not. " I'm calling "Srawman" on this. The correct conception is that it could be sold and the Market Economics Fairy has predicted that it will be sold as soon as a willing buyer and willing seller agree on a price. Indeed, if Facebook fails, all their data will almost certainly be sold along with the rest of their assets. Likewise, Googl…

> The correct conception is that it could be sold and the Market Economics Fairy has predicted that it will be sold as soon as a willing buyer and willing seller agree on a price. Indeed, if Facebook fails, all their data will almost certainly be sold along with the rest of their assets.

Amen to that. At this point its pointless for FB to sell their raw data, because they want advertisers to be coming back and use FB platform to pay them for access/ads. But don't hold you breath if you think that on firesale the majority of value in FB won't be its only value -- all the connections and interests data.

Re: After Facebook fails

#154

Post by DugFin »

brudgers wrote: post #139
cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

"A common misconception from fearmongers is that your data is being sold. It is not. " I'm calling "Srawman" on this. The correct conception is that it could be sold and the Market Economics Fairy has predicted that it will be sold as soon as a willing buyer and willing seller agree on a price. Indeed, if Facebook fails, all their data will almost certainly be sold along with the rest of their assets. Likewise, Googl…

>The correct conception is that it could be sold and the Market Economics Fairy has predicted that it will be sold as soon as a willing buyer and willing seller agree on a price.

Mmmmm... unfortunately, I think YOU'RE the one with the strawman argument here. The misconception that he's talking about is the notion that "the purpose of collecting your personal data is to sell it to the highest bidder". That IS a misconception. The purpose of collecting user data is to rent out the aggregate value of it to advertisers. The fact that the collector might someday be forced into receivership and the user data may end up on the auction block as part of their assets is not actually relevant, because a purchaser of such is ALSO not interested in selling the data for profit, but rather collecting rent on the aggregate value of the data from advertisers.

Re: After Facebook fails

#155

Post by Retric »

Swannie wrote: post #115
a3d6g2f7 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine an apartment. Google is like the copy of the yellow pages by the telephone. FB is like the photo-album in the closet. People generally do not open these two books for similar reasons. They have very different usage. One is recreational, the other is not[1]. But FB believers do not want to accept this difference. And it's this difference that makes FB a dud compared to Google. The question I have is what is go…

I'd say Facebook is more like the front of your fridge (cool pictures of your friends/kids), plus your kitchen notice board (that wedding invitation from last year, that save the date card for next year etc) - the shoebox that you put all that stuff in, and never really sort, plus the photo album ;-)

I know plenty of people with really interesting things pinned to their fridge. It often takes them a while to remember anything about pictures that have been staring them in the face for years. Why? Because, you go the the fridge to get food. People are terrible multitasking which is why Facebook advertising has such a low click-though rate and a high accidental click rate.

Re: After Facebook fails

#156

Post by gbrindisi »

cletus wrote: post #44

Here's my take on Facebook (disclaimer: I work for Google, these opinions are purely my own and not representative of the company, yadda yadda yadda). Display advertising works best when you have sufficient, quality inventory (publishers whose sites serve ads) such that you attract advertisers in sufficient quantity and quality. Targeting in display ads works because from the publishers, the intermediary has informat…

> Their mobile presence is at the behest of Apple, Google and (arguably) Microsoft.

I thought Microsoft had a large pie of Facebook. Maybe they can help each other in mobile.

Re: After Facebook fails

#157

Post by marknutter »

AngrySkillzz wrote: post #38
polemic wrote: post #16

I have no idea if Facebook is valued correctly or not, however I think this misses a vital point. Facebook is not nearly the same as other web ventures. It's ability to target ads seems secondary to this: From http://www.kenburbary.com/2011/03/facebook-demographics-revi... , slightly out of date, but still useful: - Average user visits the site 40 times per month - Average user spends an 23 minutes (23:20 to be preci…

This is sort of what I'm thinking. Everyone is claiming Facebook ads don't work because they're improperly targeted, people don't look at them, people don't browse Facebook with "intent," etc. This is a the supposed "failure" of advertising on Facebook. But what about traditional ads, say a television commercial or a radio ad? Aren't they more expensive, with a more limited and less targeted audience? Isn't the inten…

If the ads on facebook took over your screen for 5 minutes and forced you to watch them then, yes, it'd be more like traditional media ads. But people have gotten pretty good at just ignoring their sidebars.

Re: After Facebook fails

#158

Post by loceng »

sparknlaunch12 wrote: post #78

People saw value in Facebook, otherwise they wouldn't have purchases shares last week. Yes, well overvalued but investors are willing to pay a premium for the associated and perceived value. 1) The main value is the sunk cost people have in Facebook. The vast majority of your family and friends are on the platform. You unwittingly have built up a scrap book of your past few years - photos, messages, relationships...…

Anyone buying Facebook at the IPO value are sheep and gamblers.

Re: After Facebook fails

#159

Post by brudgers »

DugFin wrote: post #154
brudgers wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A common misconception from fearmongers is that your data is being sold. It is not. " I'm calling "Srawman" on this. The correct conception is that it could be sold and the Market Economics Fairy has predicted that it will be sold as soon as a willing buyer and willing seller agree on a price. Indeed, if Facebook fails, all their data will almost certainly be sold along with the rest of their assets. Likewise, Googl…

>The correct conception is that it could be sold and the Market Economics Fairy has predicted that it will be sold as soon as a willing buyer and willing seller agree on a price. Mmmmm... unfortunately, I think YOU'RE the one with the strawman argument here. The misconception that he's talking about is the notion that "the purpose of collecting your personal data is to sell it to the highest bidder". That IS a miscon…

My premise is that once Facebook's assessment of the net present value of exclusive use of its data is less than a willing buyer's assessment, the likelihood of a sale is significant (it is also a premise that this also holds for Google).

A second premise is that companies which own data may have that data acquired through dissolution, merger, or acquisition; and that in such circumstances the asset may be monetized differently than it is currently.

This may be pessimistic, but betting on the benevolence of corporations is not supported by history.

Re: After Facebook fails

#160

Post by raquo »

PhrosTT wrote: post #147
jacquesm wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whether or not you "Like" things is irrelevant. The main purpose of that "Like" button is (IMHO) as a tracking cookie. Exactly. Ditto google's 'free' analytics, every adsense impression and the +1 button. Nice to see someone working at google establish this in such a straightforward way, such candor is pretty rare. Most of the time all you get is some marketing bull about how you're being enabled to share your favo…

> Ditto google's 'free' analytics Or being logged into Chrome.

You don't even need to log in – just visiting a URL sends it to google. I'm not sure if you can even disable that despite all the predictive/protective/suggestive checkboxes in config – I couldn't figure out how to stop my dev domains from being leaked to google until I moved to chromium.
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