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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?

#341

Post by IX-103 »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #296
usui wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Supposedly the Chrome safe browsing service crawls the web looking for malware. Since that's focused on finding malware they likely make it look like a normal user in terms of user agent and IP address, so it can probably detect these pages.

I believe the signals from the safe browsing service are used to affect search result ranking, but I have no idea if they look for different content being served to the Google crawler.

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

#342

Post by carbine »

It’s all well and good to claim that PPC offers little to no incremental benefit to brands like Airbnb and Williams Sonoma. But the gaping hole in this argument has to do with small brands. If you wanted to found a new cast iron skillet company you’d be damned pleased to be able to promote your wares directly to high intent purchasers who — so far — are only aware of the Williams Sonoma option. I’m quite certain that incremental benefits of PPC decrease as you scale and become a household name brand, but MOST brands aren’t.

I’ve been in growth for years and while I dislike PPC and find it boring and obfuscatory (FB and Google will both happily claim credit for the same purchase), there’s no denying that in many cases it works. I’ve been at early stage ecomm co’s where we’d pause the spend to see what happened and — what do ya know? — sales would plummet. Brands relying on it for discovery often benefit substantially.

I’d argue that most of the benefits of PPC accrue to smaller businesses (and the platforms, obv). The error in our collective framing is to hate on advertising because we think of it as coming from big brands. But these days it enables vastly more entrepreneurship and competition than I think many on here realize.

And to everyone cheering on Apple’s recent changes that make FB ad tracking impossible — who do you think suffers as a result? Big brands like LEGO can just redirect funds to a Hollywood film or some other high-visibility activation, because they already have their customers’ attention. It’s the small brands paying the price.

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

#343

Post by carbine »

capybara_2020 wrote: post #285
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.

They also have a responsibility towards the person searching. I know more than a few people that have been conned into thinking an Ad provider is the official site for a service. Especially with government websites. Lots of shady companies use ads above the actual search results to drive people to their site. Charge people for a service that is free.

Would you prefer a monopoly where only Williams Sonoma can advertise on WS keywords? I’m sure if you wanted to start a little premium homewares brand you’d feel differently. Bidding on competitor keywords allows small and big brands to compete for the same transactions, and allows brands to introduce alternatives to customers who might only have one giant brand top of mind.

Defensive branded search is generally only a fraction of budget anyway. I don’t find this practice the least bit onerous or extractive from Google — they’re just allowing for competition, as they should.

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

#344

Post by croes »

aerosmile wrote: post #322
dangrossman wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.forb…

That was an incredibly misleading article. If you check the links, you find the following: 1. P&G didn't turn off that spend, it shifted it to other marketing platforms. 2. Chase didn't change its marketing spend, it just concentrated it from 400k sites to 5k sites. 3. Uber found out that their agency was committing fraud and AFAIK the case is still being litigated. I hate being that guy, but check the links. Those r…

To 1. "P&G’s $200 million digital cut were reinvested into areas with “media reach” including television, audio and ecommerce" So they awitched to other platforms with mostly no back channel and no user tracking. So the whole tracking seems to be pointless

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

#345

Post by UncleMeat »

tekknik wrote: post #335
dodobirdlord wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's got to be a real person intentionally clicking the link, and very large teams of skilled people work exclusively on figuring out which clicks fall in this category. Cursor movement patterns, delay time, whether the link was actually rendering on the display when it was clicked, IP address, cookies, signed-in identities, previous click patterns, location, all of these things and more factor in. When people ta…

Sounds like a good use of AI, if not one of the best! Let’s train an AI using real humans and have it click these links. Run the client in an P2P network so multiple can contribute to this. If ads are no longer profitable, then this should sink both the online advertising market as well as Google.

Clickfraud has been around forever and teams detecting clickfraud have also been around forever. Automation that impersonates human users is not a new idea.

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

#347

Post by evanmoran »

tomjen3 wrote: post #337
earthboundkid wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think it is that clear, actually. If I sell a car that is as good as the Ford one you searched for, but 80% of the cost, wouldn't you want that ad to appear when you searched for ford?

Respectfully, I’d want the car you mention included if I search for “full size sedan” or “alternatives to ford”, and not to appear if I search for “ford”. This is a pipe dream of course with the way AdWords works, but that is what I prefer :)

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

#348

Post by rchaud »

bborud wrote: post #329
aerosmile wrote: post #77

There are so many holes in these arguments that you could drive a truck through it. Which is so infuriating, because a big part of my professional career consisted of watching all of Rand's SEO videos and really appreciating them. I really thought he was a genius. But then over the past few years, he started sharing more general views on entrepreneurship, and those takeaways just didn't really make much sense. Basica…

I worked on several web search engines in the 2000s. During that time I ended up next to someone who was in the SEO business a handful of times at dinners or meetings. When they explained what they were doing to me I kept thinking "this kind of explains how belief systems and religions are formed". You would have these very complete theories of how search engine ranking worked - completely disconnected from reality a…

What's wrong with saying someone's "done SEO" if everyone at the table has the context for what that entails?

Content strategy, keyword research, Search Console integration, site speed improvements, local search business profiles -- all of these contribute to SEO. It's unwieldy to talk about them all, so sometimes people can use a shorthand.

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

#349

Post by rchaud »

photochemsyn wrote: post #130
engineeringwoke wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People on this board love the idea that anyone who isn't an engineer is an idiot and everything that everyone else does that isn't writing code is somehow worthless. In broad strokes, they think that all people who do people-facing work are charlatans that are constantly trying to hide how worthless they are because talking to people, etc. can't possibly provide value. Then, they (like so), ask you to break down your…

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).

Are you saying Boeing's engineering problems could have been avoided if they cut their ad budget?

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

#350

Post by floatingatoll »

hirako2000 wrote: post #301
floatingatoll wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they're allowed to waste my time and earn a kickback, as long as they give me a free cab ride from their kickback to where I wanted to go in the first place? That sounds like it only works if my time that they wasted for selfish gain is valued at $0, which is obviously true as far as they are concerned, but certainly isn't true to me .

I don't defend dark patterns, it obviously is one there, but your time is worth zero when you pay zero. The analogy would be free taxi drivers taking your to their kicking back spots first. If your time is worth X, spend X. It may prove a bit difficult since the paid search engine marketplace isn't thriving. How much would you be willing to pay for a search engine that only displays organic results? There are actuall…

That's a very spot-on question. How much would people pay for advertising-free results? I suspect the answer is disillusioning :(

(Also, I did not intend to imply you were supporting or defending dark patterns — my apologies.)

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