41–50 of 162 posts
Ad impressions don't work. Twitter & Facebook can't monetize. Facebook paid >20B for companies that don't sell ads.
The point is that the ads don't work for the advertisers; clearly, they've worked well for the platforms selling ads, e.g. Google.
This reminds me of a fascinating article in The New Yorker called "Twilight of the Brands." [0] The author's basic argument is that brands have historically filled an information gap. Before the Internet, when consumers didn't have tons of on-demand info about products, brands were a compass that pointed them in the right direction. If the last Sylvania TV you bought worked well, you might buy another one without hun…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah we do: Coca-cola <-- The product offers no value other than "brand". (Brand is advertising).
But is that advertising or just excellent distribution of product?
But it's the brand that makes the distribution network worthwhile, so people living on $2 per day who traditionally drink tea and eat an abundance of locally grown fresh fruit believe a 20 cent bottle of sugary water is a worthwhile luxury.
There's also a certain amount of effort that goes into persuading very different consumers that it's socially acceptable to mix that same blend of sugary water with mid-priced spirits or in cocktails at exclusive bars in the expensive cities.
You will also find papers stating the exact opposite and how to get great returns and stuff. Everyone it seems gets a different experience from the same platform and then they justify it by publishing white papers. Just like anything else, it is never black and white. But black folks want everything to be black while white folks make fun of the black.
Also check this more detailed analysis that goes a bit deeper: http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2013/03/13/dear-ebay-its-n...
This reminds me of a fascinating article in The New Yorker called "Twilight of the Brands." [0] The author's basic argument is that brands have historically filled an information gap. Before the Internet, when consumers didn't have tons of on-demand info about products, brands were a compass that pointed them in the right direction. If the last Sylvania TV you bought worked well, you might buy another one without hun…
I understand the point he is making, and I agree that the importance of advertising is declining. However, I wouldn't be able to explain Samsung's success without looking at advertising.
Otherwise an equally valid conjecture is that Samsung bought-in to the idea that the only way to consolidate success is through establishing a brand. As Intel did, for example. But I don't think anyone could argue that Samsung's ad campaigns are mostly cost-effective, coherent, and well-targeted. In other words, I don't think one can articulate a set of hypotheses that links the vast majority of Samsung's ad spending to Samsung's market success.
Contrarywise, there is a pretty good theory that Samsung succeeded in PCs, before they cranked up the ad spending, by being vertically integrated in almost all high-value components except CPUs.
If your website is already tracking ad performance on a per-ad basis (i.e., tracking all the clicks on that ad, and keeping what you pay per click below what you're getting per click), then optimizing for only the paid search traffic that's incremental, and not cannibalistic, is pretty straight-forward, conceptually.
For a given ad's keyword, instead of optimizing only for the results you get from PPC traffic, you treat your PPC bid as an input that affects sales across PPC and SEO traffic for that keyword, and optimize accordingly.
There are a few extra steps and decisions that need to be made before full implementation, but this is the basic idea. It's actually not too bad to account for.
I remember reading the tobacco industry was actually secretly grateful when the EU banned them from advertising. As I remember it, they were in a stale-mate. The market was pretty much divided up. Most people were loyal to their brand and that was that. Despite that, they were spending a massive amount of money on advertising even though their market shares remained unchanged. The reason was that if one of them stopp…
I remember reading the tobacco industry was actually secretly grateful when the EU banned them from advertising. As I remember it, they were in a stale-mate. The market was pretty much divided up. Most people were loyal to their brand and that was that. Despite that, they were spending a massive amount of money on advertising even though their market shares remained unchanged. The reason was that if one of them stopp…
In your theory, if advertising stopped existing the world would save a ton of money and everyone would maintain market share... but since brands are built on PR and Word of Mouth, brands will always be at risk if they can't advertise and keep you on the forefront of their mind.
They might not lose market share to other big brands, but new brands with a fresh positioning will be able to uproot their position.
This reminds me of a fascinating article in The New Yorker called "Twilight of the Brands." [0] The author's basic argument is that brands have historically filled an information gap. Before the Internet, when consumers didn't have tons of on-demand info about products, brands were a compass that pointed them in the right direction. If the last Sylvania TV you bought worked well, you might buy another one without hun…
I understand the point he is making, and I agree that the importance of advertising is declining. However, I wouldn't be able to explain Samsung's success without looking at advertising.