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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?

#291

Post by dangrossman »

aerosmile wrote: post #274
croes wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

> When P&G turned off $200 million of their digital ad spending, they saw NO CHANGE in business outcomes. When Chase reduced their programmatic reach from 400,000 sites showing its ads to 5,000 sites (a 99% decrease), they saw NO CHANGE in business outcomes. When Uber turned off $120 million of their digital ad spending meant to drive more app installs, they saw NO CHANGE in the rate of app installs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/01/02/when-bi...

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

#292

Post by [deleted] »

kbenson wrote: post #228
RugnirViking wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

No, that assumes perfect market information. Middlemen can provide benefit by allowing people to offload research and reputation tracking to a third party that they trust, allowing them to invest time and effort in that one entity instead of a bunch of smaller ones. For example, do you buy off Amazon or NewEgg, Best Buy, etc or do you just use Craigslist, Ebay, the local paper, or even the local flea/market swap meet…

[deleted]

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

#293

Post by usui »

floatingatoll wrote: post #263
fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

No, it's due to illegal SEO practices where they serve Googlebot a plate of GPT3 meets keyword spam, and then serve you a page full of advertising and phishing links.

I've been wondering for a long time what's been going on. This makes a lot of sense!

So if the User Agent is Google, the website produces relevant-sounding content with no JavaScript spam? I never realized GPT-3 could be used for this. The next time I see a bait-and-switch website in my search, I'll try changing my User Agent to Google.

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

#295

Post by tpetry »

idontwantthis wrote: post #265

SEO has ruined search. It's so hard to find a website that isn't trying to sell you something. I tried searching for an explanation of an aspect of astigmatism correction and I couldn't get anything but thinly veiled ads for optometrists and glasses companies, and no in depth explanation of the detail I wanted explained.

The worst is searching for (honest) reviews of bloggers e.g. describing theor experience with some SaaS or comparing some.

The results are filled with those scummy compare sites comparing e.g. a DBaaS to e.g. mailchimp. They are not even the same type of product!

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

#296

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

usui wrote: post #293
floatingatoll wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's due to illegal SEO practices where they serve Googlebot a plate of GPT3 meets keyword spam, and then serve you a page full of advertising and phishing links.

I've been wondering for a long time what's been going on. This makes a lot of sense! So if the User Agent is Google, the website produces relevant-sounding content with no JavaScript spam? I never realized GPT-3 could be used for this. The next time I see a bait-and-switch website in my search, I'll try changing my User Agent to Google.

I wonder if Google indexes with browser user agents sometimes: unless the site used source IP tricks, it’d let Google detect this sort of thing.

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

#298

Post by aspenmayer »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #59
computerphage wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My "by definition" detector has fired. It says: that's not true by definition. Ads could instead also be things that users want. I do actually think you have a good point.

I like this pedanticism, but I still think you can even argue the "by definition" piece of it. I suppose it ends up being somewhat tautological in the end. If you really like Skillet X, and I ask you which skillet I should buy, and you tell me, "Skillet X," then it is not an ad. If you really like Skillet X, then somebody gives you $5 to recommend it if anybody asks you what skillet to buy, and then when I ask, you t…

The unstated implicit assumption in the question being asked in both situations is this: you’re being asked for your unbiased opinion. All ads are inherently biased, but by not disclosing your compensation, you’re not answering the question as asked. This bias, even if disclosed, renders your recommendation, and our hypothetical innocent recommendation, suspect.

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

#299

Post by diffeomorphism »

kbenson wrote: post #226
usui wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It is. If you want a more accurate analogy, it's like getting into a cab and asking to go to Morton's Meats and the cab driver saying "are you sure? I know this really great place called Shelley's Steaks that's better and cheaper! What do you say?" and then you get to make a call as to whether to trust the cab driver (google) has your best interests at heart or not, and whether to go where you originally wanted or to…

Your analogy is much more transparent about it.

Google is more like the following.

"Hi, I would like to go to Morton's meats"

"Sure, I can take you to Shelly's"

"No, I said Morton's"

"Oh, the steak house downtown. Sure, I can take you to Billy's"

"What? No! Morton, you hear me"

"Ah, yeah, Morton, here you go.... by the way, the other places paid for ads"

Much less transparent, much more obnoxious.

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

#300

Post by account42 »

aesyondu wrote: post #53
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…

I purposely click the non-ad link when searching in Google (because I'm too lazy to type the full url). Does that help at all, i.e., prevents unnecessary ad spend from bidding?

Why not go a step further and configure your browser so that the ad links are not shown at all? Only takes a couple of clicks.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...

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