What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam? • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by tshaddox » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 3:59 AM UTC

GeneralMayhem wrote: post #255

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…

Eh... that's not a great analogy. The equivalent of your story would be if you clicked a link for Morton's on the Google SERP and it actually redirected you to Shelly's. What Google is doing is more like taking your destination, then asking "hey, you might like this other steakhouse more, want to give that a try instead?" before driving. Potentially annoying if the answer is always no, but... the answer isn't always…

I think the analogy is pretty spot on. The whole point is that your query expresses your intent to Google. Assuming their algorithm can figure out what your intent is (it certainly can in this case) then they are intentionally acting counter to your expressed intent.

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

#272

Post by lern_too_spel » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:03 AM UTC

earthboundkid wrote: post #19

dublinben wrote: post #6

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.

If you search for Hello Fresh, you'll get a Hello Fresh ad offering 14 free meals. If you search for Blue Apron, you'll get a Hello Fresh ad for 16 free meals. Firms are willing to spend more to win incremental business from a competitor, and consumers benefit.

Now you could argue that the search engine should show organic results to help the consumer get the best deal, and I would agree with you.

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

#273

Post by redis_mlc » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:13 AM UTC

lukestevens wrote: post #224

photochemsyn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also fair to say that if you let the marketers drive business decisions it's a recipe for disaster. Pushing low-quality product out the door just to hit some quarterly sales goal, that's what marketers will push. Epic failures with disastrous long-term consequences are the typical result (Boeing MAX for example).

If you think the Boing 737 MAX disaster was caused by those idiots in marketing calling the shots then you just proved engineeringwoke’s point.

Actually, the 737 MAX disaster was driven from the business side. Somebody promised Southwest $1 million per airframe if differences training was needed.

The organization was too brittle to accept criticism from their eng. organization, as most are, until a crisis.

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

#274

Post by aerosmile » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:18 AM UTC

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.

Now I am curious - what are the examples of unprofitable performance marketing campaigns at that scale conducted by public companies?

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

#275

Post by aerosmile » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:24 AM UTC

inthewoods wrote: post #198

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. Finally, Airbnb is known for all sorts of marketing shenanigans in their early days, and they certainly can't take the credit for a pure brand play." My experience is exactly the opposite. The larger the budget, the less real ha…

The larger the budget, the more sophisticated the teams and the methodology. Also, more players eager to accuse marketing of poor performance (eg: sales and revenue teams). Not sure where you made that experience, but that marketing team would get fired within a quarter at any large scale company I am familiar with. Large companies are inefficient in many ways, but not in what pays the bills.

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

#276

Post by aerosmile » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:26 AM UTC

lukestevens wrote: post #224

photochemsyn wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also fair to say that if you let the marketers drive business decisions it's a recipe for disaster. Pushing low-quality product out the door just to hit some quarterly sales goal, that's what marketers will push. Epic failures with disastrous long-term consequences are the typical result (Boeing MAX for example).

If you think the Boing 737 MAX disaster was caused by those idiots in marketing calling the shots then you just proved engineeringwoke’s point.

This comment is pure gold

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

#277

Post by tomhoward » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

Related: I happened to be acquainted with a founder of one of the major coupon sharing sites, after they’d sold it for a rumored 8-9-figure sum.

It didn’t make sense to me that it could be so attractive to brands to promote coupons there. People have already decided they want to buy the product; why would you want them to go hunting for a big discount after they’re already sold?

He told me that the people who like it are the advertising staff and consultants, so they can generate evidence for their bosses/clients that their campaigns are working.

I get that it can be partially effective. Sometimes I’ll think “I’ll buy this product if I can find a coupon that gets the price under X”.

It’s just a funny old world when an advertising professional is motivated to spend money with a third party to give their customer a big discount on a product they’ve already decided they want, in order for the advertising professional to justify their existence.

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

#278

Post by joe_the_user » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:46 AM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #270

syrrim wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A way to pay for that service, as well as generate an extra $40 billion a year.

Sure, most businesses exist to provide a good or service and get some bit extra beyond their costs. This is known as "profit".

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

#279

Post by justinbaker84 » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:53 AM UTC

myth2018 wrote: post #174

During pandemics, I got really suspicious about adwords. My ads were working reasonabilly well considering the low investment I was making, with a fair amount of prospects filling my contact form on a low but steady rate. I was satisfied with the return I was getting. However, the pandemic caused a significant drop on my product's demand. I thought I was going to get little to no contacts from the moment the lockdown…

You have that right. I am a full time search marketer and here are a few things they do that illustrate their ethical standards:

1. Geo-Targeting - no matter what geographic setting you create they will run your ads all over the world unless you know how to change settings they have intentionally hidden.

2. Keyword Selection - No matter how much effort you put into selecting the best keywords they pretty much run your ads on whatever keywords they want. They make it extremely difficult these days to control what keywords trigger your ads to show up.

3. Campaign Caps - A cap is a limit you can set on how much a campaign will spend each day. Except google will spend up to 2x your cap. So you would think you should just set the cap at half of what you really want but they have complicated algorithms in place to screw up your campaign if you do that.

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

#280

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Oct 14, 2021, 4:59 AM UTC

lmm wrote: post #238

sokoloff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think it's fairly clear that Amazon and Ebay would show up as the top organic results.

What wouldn't show up is lmm-cookware.com, launched early October 2021, who is trying to establish themselves as a new destination for cooking enthusiasts. That domain is new, the business is new, no Google reviews, but they've got the pan in stock, are willing to sell it for $30 shipped, and have an advertising budget to reach customers.

As a consumer, I want to be able to learn about that offer, make my own decision where to buy the pan, and I'm happy to use a search engine who will show me that offer. lmm-cookware, I, and the search engine all win from this outcome. I don't care whether lmm-cookware has been a good place to buy pans such as these for the last 180 days; I care whether they're a good place to buy it right now.