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

What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

sparktoro.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 369 posts

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#231

Post by croes »

aerosmile wrote: post #104
ChuckMcM wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I politely suggest that you share with us the holes you see in the arguments and how you see them? Whether or not Rand is any good at what he does or says will be clear by your expert disassembly of his arguments.

- Brian's comments about Airbnb's approach to performance marketing are used to imply that Airbnb's lessons apply to other businesses. Very few businesses - especially those that start from small numbers and need to grow them - have 90% of their traffic mix come from repeat customers. Using Brian's comments helps fuel the narrative that brand marketing is a better investment than performance marketing, which is corre…

>Also, as another member pointed out, Airbnb's performance marketing budget is still well over $200M/year, which no responsible/public company would spend if it wasn't returning a great ROAS

That's not really an argument. You wish that a responsible/public company wouldn't do that but we have seen much dumber behavior.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#232

Post by tehjoker »

vkou wrote: post #193
titzer wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are other options. For example, funding a publicly-owned search engine with $1 billion a year in infrastructure and development costs would be 50x cheaper than what the US spends on foodstamps. It'd be 1/10th the NSF's annual budget. Not that that's the best option, but we could consider some new ideas.

A publicly owned search engine, that will absolutely not be used for propaganda purposes by, say, the Department of State, or by a megalomaniac elected representative. Need to build consent for a war with ? Give me access to the search index, and a few weeks, and it'll be done.

Lol if you think that isn't happening right now. Google made a change to its algorithms sometime in the past 5 years to surface "authoritative" sources, meaning sources that toe the state department line. For example, the World Socialist Web Site, which has a consistent anti-war line reported being demoted.

"Google blocked every one of the WSWS’s 45 top search terms" (8/2017)

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/08/04/goog-a04.html

"Google admits to censoring the World Socialist Web Site" (11/2020)

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html

"In a statement before a Senate hearing on October 28, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, admitted that the dominant online search company has censored the World Socialist Web Site.

At the Senate Commerce Committee hearing, when asked by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah to provide the name of one left-wing “high profile person or entity” that has been censored by Google, Pichai named the WSWS."

"Google refines its search results to curb fake news" (4/2017)

https://www.engadget.com/2017-04-25-google-tweaks-search-to-...

(the comments below this article are funny because it's full of liberal-aligned comments on the disproven Trump-Russia conspiracy theory that is still given life in mainstream outlets)

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#233

Post by [deleted] »

croes wrote: post #231
aerosmile wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Brian's comments about Airbnb's approach to performance marketing are used to imply that Airbnb's lessons apply to other businesses. Very few businesses - especially those that start from small numbers and need to grow them - have 90% of their traffic mix come from repeat customers. Using Brian's comments helps fuel the narrative that brand marketing is a better investment than performance marketing, which is corre…

>Also, as another member pointed out, Airbnb's performance marketing budget is still well over $200M/year, which no responsible/public company would spend if it wasn't returning a great ROAS That's not really an argument. You wish that a responsible/public company wouldn't do that but we have seen much dumber behavior.

[deleted]

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#234

Post by bombcar »

tomrod wrote: post #172
lazide wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the eBay test can be misleading - if everyone sees competitor B anytime they search for eBay, eventually they are going to give it a try.

This is untrue. A small proportion, but most people searching for something specific what that something that is specific. If I search for a Dell computer, no way will I buy Apple. Likewise if I use Bing to search for Chrome, no way will I download edge except for user error.

It's when the phrase is at or near generalization that it comes into play - someone searching for Kleenex likely doesn't care what tissue they find, and many people who Google Google would be happy to click Bing if it popped up first.

"Dominos" might be one where people wouldn't mind ordering from Pizza Hut as they're using it as a generic term for pizza.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#236

Post by lmm »

vkou wrote: post #190
worker767424 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a tax, it's a protection racket. You wouldn't like it if someone looking for Williams Sonoma saw results for Sur La Table, would you? Pay up.

An ad directing shoppers to your competitors who pay them is not a protection racket, no more than a travel agency directing travelers to businesses that they have a relationship with. It's the entire business model of aggregators and intermediaries and middle men, which compose roughly half the world's working population.

Hidden kickbacks are a racket though. Google has very deliberately been making their ads less and less distinct from their top search results, in a frog-boiling way.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#237

Post by kornhole »

What if adtech is not really about selling ads? What if search business is not really about providing search? Perhaps the data collected from these ads/trackers everywhere is the raw material of more valuable predicition and manipulation products sold and classified on the income statement as advertising. The content producers that carry these so called ads are also now servant to the revenue provider, the so called adtech company, and not their readers.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#238

Post by lmm »

sokoloff wrote: post #76
wormslayer666 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a search engine encounters the query "Williams Sonoma 12 inch skillet", retail outlets selling it should organically appear in results without the need for ads.

If it’s $39.99 on W-S.com, I definitely want to see the place that’s willing to sell the same pan for $34.99, the EBay listing for $32.50, and the one selling a competing similar one for $29.99 even if those sites don’t have the organic search SEO juice to land in the top 10. As a Google search user, why wouldn’t I value these? If Google doesn’t serve them and another search engine does, I’d be inclined to switch to…

> If it’s $39.99 on W-S.com, I definitely want to see the place that’s willing to sell the same pan for $34.99, the EBay listing for $32.50, and the one selling a competing similar one for $29.99 even if those sites don’t have the organic search SEO juice to land in the top 10.

But why would those sites not have the "organic search SEO juice"? If those sites are actually good places to buy that kind of thing, a good search engine should direct a user searching for that thing there.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#239

Post by dorfsmay »

floatingatoll wrote: post #208
vkou wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An ad directing shoppers to your competitors who pay them is not a protection racket, no more than a travel agency directing travelers to businesses that they have a relationship with. It's the entire business model of aggregators and intermediaries and middle men, which compose roughly half the world's working population.

You tell a cab driver to take you to Morton's Meats and instead they take you to Shelly's Steaks (who pays them a kickback each time they do this), and then charge you for that detour to earn their kickback when you demand they take you to Morton's like you asked in the first place. Is this appropriate behavior by the taxi driver? Would a regular person consider this deserving of punishment? Is Google's search result…

You pay the taxi to take you to an address. You don't pay anything to google, you decided to use their ad funded "search engine", which they don't charge you anything for, and you complain that you get... Ads?

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#240

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

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…

Similar principle applies to

- review sites like Yelp (interestingly one of Google's loudest antitrust critics)

- domain names (arguably the entire ICANN generic top level domains sell-off)^1; US trademark grantees who fail to take action against confusingly similar domain names risk losing trademark protection

1. The gTLD application alone as $185,000 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gtld)

In the case of Google and Yelp, the tech company can manipulate the alleged "algorithm" (read: no humans involve so you cant sue us, haha) behind the scenes and determine the "visibility" of the ad/review.

Ads are the perfect "business model" for tech companies because there is so little scrutiny of the ad services delivered. It is like philanthropy. When we make a donation, we generally do not track what happens to the money afterwards. We get a warm fuzzy feeling from making the donation as it is "doing the right thing". Then we leave the recipient to do as they please. How many companies buy ads on Google because they feel it is "the right thing to do". How many feel their donation was unwarranted after the ads fail to produce results.

Defensive ad purchases, defensive domain name registrations and even defensive gTLD purchases are one side of the coin. Another is the "winner take all" line-of-thinking (80/20, network effects, etc.) that tech companies worship that they in turn project onto customers. Competing for visibility on a fully searchable web of enormous capacity presupposes (artifically) that visible space is scarce. Ad auctions for the purpose of placing an ad on page one of hundreds of thousands of pages of results. The truth is that many people used to read newspapers from beginning to end. The whole paper, not just page one.

In a physical newspaper, there are ads on many pages. Often there are in fact no ads on page one. How many Google customers are encouraged to purchase ads that will appear on SERP #2 (do they even have ads on SERP #2). Imagine if newspapers tried to create a bidding war for page one of the physical newspaper. With the online versions, it seems that is exactly what happens. Do not blame the newspapers, do not blame Williams-Sonoma, blame the "tech" companies. This only reflects the pathetic "tech" company psychology, not the thinking of the businesses who give them money for online ad services.

Post reply on HN