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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?

#41

Post by CaveTech »

I take issue with the conflation of Performance Advertising with Awareness Advertising.

The whole point of _performance_ advertising is that it's effect is _measurable_. If AirBnB spent $500m+ on performance advertising, they should be able to trace that back to an exact amount of revenue. If you are a brand in this scenario, you can conduct split tests by sampling the conversion rate of users from advertising vs non-advertising. Again, it should be simple to see if the conversion rate for users targeted via advertising has increased or is unchanged.

In the branded search examples, again, as an advertiser, you can see what searches are associated with your leads. While you do have to compete for attention on your own branded search (to compete against competitors taking the slot), you should also be able to recognize unbranded terms which drive conversions for you. Again, assuming this is actually _performance_ marketing, you would be able to look at the cost of these placements and the ROI, and the impact would be measurable.

The rest of the article is largely composed of straw-man arguments that imply the results are not measurable, when in fact they are (if done right).

disclaimer: I'm the CTO of a performance marketing platform. The vast majority of conversions on our platform happen same-session. There's a very easy way to measure this effect -> pause your campaigns and immediately see conversions fall.

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

#42

Post by missedthecue »

I think performance advertising is a great idea if you don't rank very high in search results for your category.

"Rental stays in XYZ city" will bring up an airbnb result all day, probably in the top five results. Therefore, paying $3 a click to be placed above your own search result is probably silly.

I happen to have a small side project and advertise it with a very low budget on facebook, google, and bing. It works. I don't rank very high because my SEO skills are poor, but google ads absolutely drive real and interested people to my site.

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

#43

Post by gingerlime »

dublinben wrote: post #6
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…

Defensive spending to protect otherwise organic traffic could also be called extortion.

Exactly. And it's bad for customers too. My mum (70) just fell for it, and she's pretty clued about computers and technology. She searched for a flight with Ryanair, so entered Ryanair on Google. First result was some scummy reseller, which sold her the same ticket for a higher price with some "extras".

Bidding on a competitor's brand name keyword should be banned. But Google can't resist double-dipping.

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

#44

Post by franczesko »

s17n wrote: post #23
rvnx wrote: post #9

No, advertising is not a scam. It's only a scam if you pay for the visitors that would have come anyway (buying your own keywords, and also retargeting/remarketing in most situation).

This is what the article discusses.

Ok, read it. The article falsely assumes that performance marketing relies purely on the vendor conversion data. I don't know any business out there, which would do that.

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

#46

Post by colinmhayes »

lazide wrote: post #40
colinmhayes wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They talked about this on the 2 hour long podcast. It was actually pretty funny too, I'd recommend it.

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

#47

Post by AlexandrB »

vlovich123 wrote: post #28
mdoms wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 And if they were not above organically they would simply buy the advertising space that William Sonoma purchased. It's one of the slimiest things Google does - allows competitors to purchase advertising space on a query specifically crafted to fin…

Yeah, I think the only on-brand search ads that should be allowed are ones for totally unrelated products OR those ads are placed below what on-brand search results would provide. Google has no incentive to fix this though because it's an extra tax they charge the entire online advertising space (+ all the other search providers do it). Carefully crafted legislation could put an end to this tax.

> Yeah, I think the only on-brand search ads that should be allowed are ones for totally unrelated products...

The problem is that this is subjective and would need to be automated somehow. I think Google's original sin here is making the ads look so much like organic search results. Someone placing an ad against a competitors brand name would not be a huge issue if organic results were still front and centre like in the "good old days" of early 2000s Google.

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

#48

Post by gingerlime »

kposehn wrote: post #35

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 gro…

> Facebook, Google and others make these tests possible in their platforms

Any specific tips/links on how to do this with Google/Youtube retargeting?

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

#49

Post by wormslayer666 »

sokoloff wrote: post #29
fabianhjr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisements are fundamentally not what search service users want regardless of searching for a specific brand or not. (Its what advertisers want others to want)

If I’m searching for “Williams Sonoma 12 inch skillet”, advertisements for places selling it are a pretty large subset of what I want.

If a search engine encounters the query "Williams Sonoma 12 inch skillet", retail outlets selling it should organically appear in results without the need for ads.

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

#50

Post by dabeeeenster »

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.

It's not about the customer, it's about the fact that the merchants have to pay the Google tax in order to play.
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