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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?

#31

Post by bombcar »

colinmhayes wrote: post #13
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…

Freakonomics had an episode with an economist that worked with Ebay on ad buys. This sort of "buy ads on your own keywords" was shown to have zero impact on sales to the point that they cut completely stopped advertising when the search included "ebay".

This will work for someone like eBay (people searching eBay want eBay) but for other "brand-name" terms it may NOT work - people searching for Travelocity or whoever is the hotness there may be perfectly happy with the first "similar enough" link.

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

#32

Post by The-Bus »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #7
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…

> 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.

The competing ads will often say something like "Introducing [Product Y] which costs 25% less and is 10% less smellier than [Product X you searched for]"

If you've never heard of Product Y, you might be intrigued and click. Maybe you want something less smelly!

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

#33

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

codetrotter wrote: post #17
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #7

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.

For example if the customer was previously not familiar with Williams Sonoma but had seen an ad in the paper or on TV or on the subway etc, that caused them to search for Williams Sonoma cast iron skillet. And beside that a lot of people routinely misclick or click on ads not understanding that they are ads even when they are marked as such.

So the theory is that if I search for "Williams Sonoma cast iron skillet", but misclick on some competitor, I'm buying that instead? I don't know, I don't usually assume the rest of humanity to be a lot dumber than me.

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

#34

Post by chmsky00 »

Advertising as we know it emerged as a melding of government propaganda research and behavioral economics during world wars, so of course it’s often scammy.

It sounds “deep state” but it’s actually plainly documented in government files and written about by reliable sources.

Remember we’re still emerging from an era of whispering the same old story of morality and obligation to each other.

I am not at all interested in helping someone build a fertilizer empire or pillow brand. Politically my hands are tied to doing so if I want a life.

Poor people effectively live a life of quota and state sanctioned limits on their access to material support by cutting social programs with public support.

Advertising America as anything but a sanctimonious police state is a scam.

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

#35

Post by kposehn »

I'm going to repost my original comment (thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21468505) about this which is still applicable:

> Reliably someone comes along every few months to question [performance marketing]. I always come back to analyses of incrementality as the real proof.

> Take an audience of X people. Divide them in two. Show ads to your test group, don't show to control. Watch your business grow and gauge the lift between the two audiences. The companies that know how to advertise at scale do this constantly and can gauge the real effect of their ad dollars. Facebook, Google and others make these tests possible in their platforms, while other software suites such as Impact Altitude and VisualIQ allow you to do this kind of analysis and testing as well.

> In the end, most of it proves out to be incremental. There are notable exceptions of course, but when are there not?

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

#36

Post by colinmhayes »

bombcar wrote: post #31
colinmhayes wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freakonomics had an episode with an economist that worked with Ebay on ad buys. This sort of "buy ads on your own keywords" was shown to have zero impact on sales to the point that they cut completely stopped advertising when the search included "ebay".

This will work for someone like eBay (people searching eBay want eBay) but for other "brand-name" terms it may NOT work - people searching for Travelocity or whoever is the hotness there may be perfectly happy with the first "similar enough" link.

There's no way to know until they do an A/B test like eBay did I guess. EBay was certain that they needed to do the on brand ads before this economist showed up too.

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

#37

Post by codetrotter »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #33
codetrotter wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example if the customer was previously not familiar with Williams Sonoma but had seen an ad in the paper or on TV or on the subway etc, that caused them to search for Williams Sonoma cast iron skillet. And beside that a lot of people routinely misclick or click on ads not understanding that they are ads even when they are marked as such.

So the theory is that if I search for "Williams Sonoma cast iron skillet", but misclick on some competitor, I'm buying that instead? I don't know, I don't usually assume the rest of humanity to be a lot dumber than me.

People don’t need to be dumb to do that. Being inexperienced with computers or confused about computers is enough to cause people to do a lot of things like that. There are a lot of people out there who are inexperienced with or confused by computers.

But my main point was that the brand may not be all that important in the first place even though it was included as part of the search term. The person making the search could’ve seen an ad and been intrigued by the product, but upon landing on a competitor site they may choose to buy a similar product from them instead.

If you are deeply into the kind of thing you are buying, you will make a lot of research to find the best one. But there are a lot of things we buy that we don’t care as deeply about, and where we may choose the first one that fits the bill sufficiently well.

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

#38

Post by kposehn »

colinmhayes wrote: post #13
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…

Freakonomics had an episode with an economist that worked with Ebay on ad buys. This sort of "buy ads on your own keywords" was shown to have zero impact on sales to the point that they cut completely stopped advertising when the search included "ebay".

eBay is a strong brand where people searching for eBay are going to click on eBay, almost no matter what. For other less recognizable brands or crowded categories, this is often not the case.

Branded search terms are almost always less incremental than non-branded (ie: "lodge logic" vs. "cast iron skillet"), but the actual incrementality of the terms is something every advertiser should be testing continuously.

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

#39

Post by kposehn »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #7
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…

> 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.

Your logic about the ads is sound, but your experience as a customer does not mean all customers exhibit this behavior. The best course of action is to test this conclusion which can be reliably done with a Google Ads Experiment.

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

#40

Post by lazide »

colinmhayes wrote: post #36
bombcar wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will work for someone like eBay (people searching eBay want eBay) but for other "brand-name" terms it may NOT work - people searching for Travelocity or whoever is the hotness there may be perfectly happy with the first "similar enough" link.

There's no way to know until they do an A/B test like eBay did I guess. EBay was certain that they needed to do the on brand ads before this economist showed up too.

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.
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