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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

#171

Post by mathattack »

sah2ed wrote: post #149
mbesto wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tech" is not an industry per say, it's a medium for delivering business value. Straight from the horses mouth: Mark Zuckerberg Finally Admits Facebook Is a Media Company http://fortune.com/2016/12/23/zuckerberg-media-company/

Tech is indeed is an industry. Look at it this way: Big law firms are called that because they hire a lot of lawyers (and lawyer-types); big 4 accounting firms hire a lot of accountants and big 5 tech firms hire a lot of software engineers (or CS majors if you will). They are called that not because they don't hire HR, IT, finance or other professionals, they are called "big X" because specific professions (lawyers,…

Industry is what they sell. The largest division at Goldman Sachs is IT but it's still a bank.

If a bunch of accountants just invested in tech companies they would be a VC fund not an accounting company.

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

#172

Post by droidist2 »

prostoalex wrote: post #41
laythea wrote: post #30

Back in the olden days where ads where more sparse, they would have so much more impact. Nowadays after the awash of ads we have everywhere, companies are collectively loosing their ability to make ads impact. (by logic, the more we are exposed to it, the less effective it it). Therefore they did it to themselves. They abused it, so that now people reject them where they can, and it becomes less profitable. No sympat…

Ads worked differently back in the days. A hiking site would accept sponsorships by outdoor brands, basically copying the magazine model, where the targeted audience gets served targeted ads with publishers inserting themselves in the middle and collecting a fee. The big brands have figured out that in cost-per-click (or any cost-per-action model) retargeting delivers the best results, so if you go and search for fli…

I see this as positive in some ways. Previously most topics made a pittance compared to the "mesothelioma attorney" kind of topics. So if your site wasn't about one of these high-paying keywords, tough luck. Retargeting levels the landscape a little.

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

#173

Post by reitanqild »

jshelly wrote: post #167

In my own personal experience, I can honestly say I've never "intentionally" clicked on an ad in the past 20+ years I've been on the internet. I will say I've certainly looked at ads in magazines, billboards, tv commercials (before tivo) and even those small planes pulling banners at the beach. I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective. What does surprise me is why its taken this long to figure…

Given the amount of stupid ads I see I sometimes click one when I see something that is remotely interesting (dev tools etc), hoping to train googles AS (Artificial Stupidity) to serve me more relevant ads. (No, I'm still happily married and I cannot figure out why a company that sits on my personal email and most of my internet searches for the last 15 years cannot figure that out. Especially as I have even configured my ad preferences in the settings.)

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

#174

Post by sumoboy »

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?

Another tactic I'll use is actually parse thru apache log for adwords clicks looking for duplicate IP's. File a complaint with google to get a refund if I see patterns of abuse.

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

#175

Post by awkwarddaturtle »

jshelly wrote: post #167

In my own personal experience, I can honestly say I've never "intentionally" clicked on an ad in the past 20+ years I've been on the internet. I will say I've certainly looked at ads in magazines, billboards, tv commercials (before tivo) and even those small planes pulling banners at the beach. I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective. What does surprise me is why its taken this long to figure…

I haven't intentionally clicked on an ad nor have I intentionally look at an ad in magazines, tv commericals, etc.

I've gotten rid of my magazine subs years ago and haven't owned a TV in years.

> I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective.

Depends on the type. Certain google/facebook ads get far better traction than any traditional ad.

The truth of the matter is all ads are ineffective. It's just that digital ads are easier to track ( the impression, clicks, views, etc ) whereas "traditional" ads are not.

The problem for companies/ad agencies/etc are that kids/younger demographics are spending so much time on social media. We know that some digital marketing works because these youtube stars make a killing selling their own merchandise that they advertise on their own channels.

The best thing for ad industry is if traditional media dies and goes away and then they could focus their attention on "digital" rather than traditional/print.

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

#177

Post by 1_2__4 »

jsemrau wrote: post #32

This reminds me of my experience with Google Adwords. My target was to increase signups for travellers to selected cities looking for 'events nearby'. So, I selected my cities and customer segments and had a limit set of 30 Dollars / day. Regularly, I paid for 2-5 Dollar more per day than my max price. I reduced the price to actually match my max price, but this would as a result out-price me of the relevant keywords…

> I believe there is a whole world of click-fraud with Google and Facebook in this which noone is tracking

I believe it's actually a little more subtle than that. Google and Facebook don't have to commit fraud, and arguably their business model is to be a kind of middleman for fraudsters. They can be doing everything ostensibly above-board (and I would argue are) but profiting from the combination of advertisers and click farms.

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

#178

Post by mathattack »

jshelly wrote: post #167

In my own personal experience, I can honestly say I've never "intentionally" clicked on an ad in the past 20+ years I've been on the internet. I will say I've certainly looked at ads in magazines, billboards, tv commercials (before tivo) and even those small planes pulling banners at the beach. I am not surprised that digital marketing is not that effective. What does surprise me is why its taken this long to figure…

Perhaps it turns to brand awareness? For some ads (say Cars) the ROI is huge enough to justify.

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

#179

Post by sumoboy »

jansan wrote: post #151
WalterBright wrote: post #49

As an ad exec once said, "half the money we spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, we don't know which half."

Well, I just found out which half I wasted on Google AdWords. I had a campaign targeting the US. It was much less effective than I had expected, and just yesterday I found out why: There is a little option in advanced settings that lets you decide if you want to display your ads to users "in your targeted countries", or "interested in your targeted countries". The second is the default option, and if you do not chang…

Plenty of reporting available that would have identified keywords and geo performance stats. Adwords seems easy enough but it's pretty complex to get things done right.

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

#180

Post by sctb »

m-j-fox wrote: post #82

Fucking downvotes? Why can't someone say something matter-of-factly? HN, you broken.

Please stop violating the guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14879917 and marked it off-topic.
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