21–30 of 369 posts
No, advertising is not a scam. It's only a scam if you pay for the visitors that would have come anyway (buying your own keywords, and also retargeting/remarketing in most situation).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Defensive spending to protect otherwise organic traffic could also be called extortion.
Forget about the corporate POV for a second, as a user, if I'm searching for X, I probably want X in my results, no? It's the fundamental contradiction in Google's search ads model. If Google delivers users the thing they want, ads by definition have to be things users don't want.
I do actually think you have a good point.
No, advertising is not a scam. It's only a scam if you pay for the visitors that would have come anyway (buying your own keywords, and also retargeting/remarketing in most situation).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if Williams Sonoma was not advertising on that search term, Lodge and Food52 etc etc would If I as a customer am using such specific search terms, then I would assume that my intention is to find and possibly buy this specific product. The results of other brands might be annoying, but why should I click on them? The relevant results are still displayed on the first page.
I think there is an under-appreciated average search engine user in the comment: People will typically write their intent on the search engine even when they could simply directly to the website. Case in point: The top 10 bing searches are for websites, including FB, Google, Youtube [1]. This traffic is highly competitive and should (as in all competitive markets) be bid among competitors. https://ahrefs.com/blog/top…
It's weird that Rand Fishkin has been in the marketing space for so long, but somehow hasn't encountered a single effective performance marketing team that measures their spend well and complements the efforts of SEO and social media marketers (like Rand). Hard not to see this as a clumsy sales pitch for his company, especially when it starts with such a disingenuous example/quote (of course AirBnb didn't have to spe…
I mean I guess he would know from personal experience? He hadn't been the CEO for a year or two at the time, but he was still very much the public face of Moz when they "asked 28% of Mozzers to leave"[1], who worked on products complementing SEO. They used various euphemisms, but ultimately it's because they made no money[2].
[1] https://moz.com/blog/moz-is-doubling-down-on-search [2] https://twitter.com/randfish/status/765973082611781633
It's well known that the self reported performance numbers from Google Ads and Facebook Ads are inflated, however those ad channels still do drive real value. I run an ecommerce marketing attribution company (ThoughtMetric) so I have first hand knowledge and data about this subject. The most common source of inflation in Google/FB self reported performance numbers is multiple ad channels taking credit for the same or…
One of the most vexing problems for me is how to calculate how much to spend. We had a year of double ad budget, but we didn’t see a corresponding rise in sells. Only 10%. We assumed we reached market saturation, but it still a lot of guesswork, even when meticulously diving into GA data.
> 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…
> 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 And if they were not above organically they would simply buy the advertising space that William Sonoma purchased. It's one of the slimiest things Google does - allows competitors to purchase advertising space on a query specifically crafted to fin…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Forget about the corporate POV for a second, as a user, if I'm searching for X, I probably want X in my results, no? It's the fundamental contradiction in Google's search ads model. If Google delivers users the thing they want, ads by definition have to be things users don't want.
Advertisements are fundamentally not what search service users want regardless of searching for a specific brand or not. (Its what advertisers want others to want)
It's well known that the self reported performance numbers from Google Ads and Facebook Ads are inflated, however those ad channels still do drive real value. I run an ecommerce marketing attribution company (ThoughtMetric) so I have first hand knowledge and data about this subject. The most common source of inflation in Google/FB self reported performance numbers is multiple ad channels taking credit for the same or…
One of the most vexing problems for me is how to calculate how much to spend. We had a year of double ad budget, but we didn’t see a corresponding rise in sells. Only 10%. We assumed we reached market saturation, but it still a lot of guesswork, even when meticulously diving into GA data.