Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 282 posts

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

#191

Post by tomrod »

zippergz wrote: post #189
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 almost feel like there are two factions. I'm pretty similar to you. I have clicked on ads a handful of times, but it's very rare. However, I have worked in jobs where I had visibility into the metrics, and I have seen internet ads be EXTREMELY effective. Not in terms of clicks (which could easily be accidental or fraudulent), but in terms of people clicking and then purchasing. People aren't going to "accidentally"…

But it is an open question of incrementality -- did you just cannibalize a sale from a different, possibly cheaper, channel? How much lift did you actually get?

That's the problem I've seen in the digital ad space -- lift is either hard to measure, or ignored completely. Causality to the sale is assumed on the ad.

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

#192

Post by autokad »

lithos wrote: post #169
ameister14 wrote: post #159

I've worked in and around marketing/advertising for the last 6 years in different capacities and have found that the emphasis on audience hyper-segmentation and retargeting to the exclusion of other methods is the single biggest piece of bullshit out there. Targeting people based on what they are apparently interested in vs. places they go that reflect those interests doesn't give better results and can turn off your…

Still getting TONS of car advertising, after I bought one 8 months ago (when I see it). seriously car ads are what pushed me to JavaScript off by default since their ads are almost as rude as porn ads. Even the normal advertising reset trick of "open all in new tab" on a folder with a dozen cloud/server hosts didn't swap out advertising to their normally sane ads.

i bought my friends kid a backpack that looked like an owl. i got advertisements for the it for a few weeks after, which was strange to me. I bought the backpack on amazon, and the advertisements were amazon. didn't they know I bought it already? didn't they know I probably didn't need 2 of them?

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

#193

Post by willhslade »

lithos wrote: post #169
ameister14 wrote: post #159

I've worked in and around marketing/advertising for the last 6 years in different capacities and have found that the emphasis on audience hyper-segmentation and retargeting to the exclusion of other methods is the single biggest piece of bullshit out there. Targeting people based on what they are apparently interested in vs. places they go that reflect those interests doesn't give better results and can turn off your…

Still getting TONS of car advertising, after I bought one 8 months ago (when I see it). seriously car ads are what pushed me to JavaScript off by default since their ads are almost as rude as porn ads. Even the normal advertising reset trick of "open all in new tab" on a folder with a dozen cloud/server hosts didn't swap out advertising to their normally sane ads.

Can you elaborate on the reset trick? It's new to me.

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

#194

Post by zippergz »

tomrod wrote: post #191
zippergz wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost feel like there are two factions. I'm pretty similar to you. I have clicked on ads a handful of times, but it's very rare. However, I have worked in jobs where I had visibility into the metrics, and I have seen internet ads be EXTREMELY effective. Not in terms of clicks (which could easily be accidental or fraudulent), but in terms of people clicking and then purchasing. People aren't going to "accidentally"…

But it is an open question of incrementality -- did you just cannibalize a sale from a different, possibly cheaper, channel? How much lift did you actually get? That's the problem I've seen in the digital ad space -- lift is either hard to measure, or ignored completely. Causality to the sale is assumed on the ad.

I think that's a great point, and definitely hard for a huge company like P&G. But for a small company, it can be easier, because when your volumes are low enough, it's often very easy to directly see sales uplift in your top line numbers when you run the ad. If I normally get 20 orders a day, I run an ad and get 40, then the ad budget runs out and I'm back to a steady 20, I'm not too worried about cannibalization.

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

#195

Post by chiefalchemist »

Make ya wonder how many pre internet TV and print ads they would have sacked if they had the ability to truly measure their effectiveness.

Ya also have to wonder how they got to $100,000,000 worth of ads before they decided to pull back.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

willhslade wrote: post #193
lithos wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still getting TONS of car advertising, after I bought one 8 months ago (when I see it). seriously car ads are what pushed me to JavaScript off by default since their ads are almost as rude as porn ads. Even the normal advertising reset trick of "open all in new tab" on a folder with a dozen cloud/server hosts didn't swap out advertising to their normally sane ads.

Can you elaborate on the reset trick? It's new to me.

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by lithos »

willhslade wrote: post #193
lithos wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still getting TONS of car advertising, after I bought one 8 months ago (when I see it). seriously car ads are what pushed me to JavaScript off by default since their ads are almost as rude as porn ads. Even the normal advertising reset trick of "open all in new tab" on a folder with a dozen cloud/server hosts didn't swap out advertising to their normally sane ads.

Can you elaborate on the reset trick? It's new to me.

Cloud providers, web hosts, and similar all provide pretty acceptable ads on average (soundless, videoless), while also tending to be a high bidder.

So sometimes I would use the open all option on a bookmark folder that I shoved a bunch of providers in. Just to have those ads show

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

#198

Post by olewhalehunter »

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…

Marketing folks do not actually have to market any product successfully other than their own utility to thrive.

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

#199

Post by concede_pluto »

kuschku wrote: post #128
majewsky wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The ad business requires Google to hire a hell of a lot of developers who are not working on the search engine. A pay service would be viable on less revenue. And nobody knows who many people are actually willing to pay for Google search because we've never had to.

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

#200

Post by zmk_ »

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…

Long time ago I used some free $ on adwords to advertise Dropbox. I maxed out the free storage upgrades within a day or two. I am sure I am not the one who did that. People click on ads. Plus ads are not always meant to lead to sales. For companies like P&G who sell products with many substitutes it's also about maintaining brand awareness.
Post reply on HN