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What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

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

#241

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

usui wrote: post #221
ianlevesque wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a poor analogy. Google isn't taking you to the wrong website, they are showing you the alternatives at the same time as the search result you wanted.

Wait. Is thst true though? I'm a technical person, with a lot of very specific searches. Around 70% of the time, I don't actually get the results that answer what I'm looking for, no matter how many quotation marks I surround my strings and no matter if I use site:x.com, and various other Google hacks I've had to come up with to try and find my relevant results. The reason this happens is because the Google result sh…

> The reason this happens is because the Google result shows my words in the excerpt, but when I click in, there's zero percent of the content to be found.

I’ve seen this too, but I’ve always assumed it has to do with meta tags or something.

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

#242

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#243

Post by roofwellhams »

stoicking wrote: post #162
NumberCruncher wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rand implies that you have to do your own studies [...] which is 100% wrong - Facebook will do them for you So FB, who earns on my spending, offers me to measure for me whether my spending makes sense for me. Why would FB ever tell me to spend less? Don't they like money?

The causal incrementality of ad spend is rarely negative. You expect to see decreasing returns with additional ad spend. For each dollar in ad spend, one advertiser might want to see $3 in revenue, another $5. Incrementality studies then allow advertisers to tune spend to their operating points. Facebook does like money. Do you think lying to the biggest advertisers in the world is the best long-term strategy, or do…

Facebook doesn't really think long term.

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

#244

Post by roofwellhams »

aerosmile wrote: post #129
NumberCruncher wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rand implies that you have to do your own studies [...] which is 100% wrong - Facebook will do them for you So FB, who earns on my spending, offers me to measure for me whether my spending makes sense for me. Why would FB ever tell me to spend less? Don't they like money?

It's fair to question credibility, but you have to realize that their results can be compared against 3rd parties, and it would lead to a lot of reputational damage (and also legal risk) to systematically defraud your advertisers. All it takes is one smart team to out the entire enterprise.

3rd parties are not paid or sponsored by Facebook? It's like credit rating of stocks, everyone follows each other.

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

#245

Post by bckr »

kbenson wrote: post #229
drevil-v2 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way more than a dollar. If you really want to cost a company a pretty penny, click on the ad after searching for an "intent" to do something rather than the exact brand. Some of those Adwords cost many tens of dollars.

That could be the boycott of the 21st century. Don't like how a company is behaving? Get a social media campaign to have people make intentful searched in different search engines, click through, go to a signup form/add stuff to a cart, and then just leave.

If I can do 10 of these, which would take a few minutes, I could cost a company $100. Which means, with the right tools for spoofing my identity, I could cost them $1000 an hour. If I spend a good work day on this, I could probably cost them $10,000.

If I convince 10 people to do this with me for a day, we could cost them $100,000. We might be able to cost them $1M in a week.

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

#246

Post by birtoise »

citizenpaul wrote: post #109

I've been beating this drum for a decade. I once even had a marketing department shut down with analytical proof. I got tired of the marketing department with probably 50x the IT department budget constantly jumping down our throats about how "IF ONLY IT HAD DELIVERED X BY X we could have had 100,000,000,000x /s sales this month" I made a dynamic report dashboard in my first react project to analyze market spending a…

This comment is obviously false, but its children comments are on the same level as reddit threads -- pre-made, repetitive, joke-like one liners that add nothing to the discussion.

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

#247

Post by birtoise »

toinbis wrote: post #134

In performance marketing(=KPIS are a)sales volume and b) Cost per action - CPA) it's very simple - you can't scam how much you've spent on ads. Also you can't scam how much you charged the traffic you've bought. Both figures are reported by your finance department with pretty much 100% precision. Yes, you do have a challanging problem of attribution. But the spend and revenue figures are what matters at the end of th…

If you discredit the article's argument by the headline, what's the point? Everyone may do exactly that to your comment and opinion: at first glance it did not inspire me as worthy of my attentive reading time.

C'mon, this ain't reddit. Don't comment without reading.

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

#248

Post by _carbyau_ »

RugnirViking wrote: post #216
_carbyau_ wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a reason for the saying: "Cut out the middle man." All too often the middleman is milking both sides. Google has value due to the search engine capabilities. But people realising they are being milked changes the value proposition. I think Google is safe for now, though I don't think that is a good thing.

"All too often the middleman is milking both sides." By definition a middleman is milking both sides. Were a middleman not there, it would definitionally be better for both parties. The only case where this is not true is the one where the middleman makes no money

My apologies, my phrase "milking" was meant to imply "overly burdensome resource taking" when compared with their value add. IE cost too much

To rephrase, all too often middlemen are there because of legislative/financial props from government or other incumbent advantages and - as you say - both sides would be better without them.

In this case - as in many middlemen cases - Google provides value - their search services. This "value" is the hook for their place in the transaction.

If Google provided a useless list of random results for every search term then it is obvious they would lose their place.

But where is the crossover point? Where Google doesn't provide enough perceived value compared to their perceived cost such that the market abandons them?

Peoples growing dislike of ads and - from this article - advertisers changing perception of ad value will change the cost vs value equation.

But I still think Google is safe for now.

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

#249

Post by syrrim »

worker767424 wrote: post #166
mbesto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main problem here is that 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. This is what is known as "on brand" Search ads. I like to call these effectively the "Google Tax" because publishers/retailers are forced to pay Google for the traffic they would have already received had the ad not…

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.

Google is offering a service, namely a way to connect your customers to your website. Arguably, on brand ads are just a way to pay for that service.

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

#250

Post by underwater »

dorfsmay wrote: post #239
floatingatoll wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Down that road lies the argument that Google should be treated like a public utility. If the only mode of transport available were sponsored taxis, then people would be rightly demanding for the ability to pay for a car or use a government run public transit system.
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