41–50 of 57 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Financial Times.
But that's daily. I do agree that the FT and probably the NYT are of the same quality. But it takes as lot more time to wade through a daily.
Edit: downvoters please explain reasons.
My argument is that I'm trying to make what is essentially a micro-payment for good quality writing delivered using a universal protocol (e-mail).
I've been cogitating on some of the themes Standage brings up in this interview for awhile and I suspect he's far more correct than incorrect. The proliferation of adblocking and incognito browsing is going to do marked damage to advertising networks like DoubleClick because the loss of demographic targeting means they are forced to basically become run-of-site ad outlets. Additionally, the amount of fraud in the ad…
Viewability measurement is in its infancy, and still has many issues. That said, it is fast becoming a standard measure, and any savvy display advertiser will be using it. At the end of the day, the ones most at risk are brand advertisers who aren't running direct response campaigns. They may have ad recall studies and Marketing Mix Modeling setups that give them some visibility, but there will always be some inventory wasted at the scale those advertisers are dealing with.
For direct response advertisers, things are getting better. While it may be harder to target some segments, and that % may be growing, the tools advertisers have available to them simply did not exist even a few years ago.
Take for example Google Analytics attribution and multi-channel reports. They have made a basic cross-channel attribution toolset available. To everyone. For free. Think about where the industry was even five years ago and let the impact of that sink in.
Facebook's acquisition of Atlas, Google's acquisition of Adometry, and other recent acquisitions in the bid management/dedicated attribution platform space are all pointing in one direction: better visibility into the contribution of your individual efforts.
I manage digital advertising for a living and have done so both client-side and at a top agency in the space. When it comes to the space, and in my not-so-humble opinion, the #1 thing clients wanted (and that I want doubly so now that I'm client-side) is better attribution.
When you are sitting on the types of data FB and Google are, you have many pieces of that puzzle, particularly the cross-channel and cross-device pieces. You also have the statistician brainpower and engineering talent to create the modeling tools that can give this visibility to advertisers. Why they haven't pushed harder on making that data visible is anyone's guess (I do wonder about how any negative revelations might impact their business), but the acquisitions seem like a big step in the right direction.
That said, digital media needs to go beyond static attribution models like: linear decay, time decay, U-shaped, first touch, last touch, etc. Instead, it needs to move more to the dynamic models, where data is assessed at the individual conversion path level. When you look at attribution at the channel or even campaign level, you are missing a ton of the story since the impact of say, a generic video ad vs. a laser-targeted retargeting ad can be night and day. Sure you might want to see channel data in aggregate, but you can't effectively optimize much at that level.
The advertising bubble savvy individuals in this industry are aware of those is video advertising. There's been a big hype train, CPMs are frothy, and everyone is switching to some sort of auto-play/auto-play-next-video format. Personally, I'm not convinced the value is really there at many of these CPMs, but I test and let the data decide.
The best thing companies like Google and Facebook can do to safeguard against any growing mistrust of online advertising efficacy is to keep improving their attribution tools, particularly for display and view-through performance.
Knowing what I do about the data available to me and its strengths/weaknesses I sometimes wish I was back in the days of last-touch models. There's few things as painful for me as knowing that better data exists to optimize against, but not having all the tools I need to get it because they are prohibitively expensive still for many budgets.
I've been cogitating on some of the themes Standage brings up in this interview for awhile and I suspect he's far more correct than incorrect. The proliferation of adblocking and incognito browsing is going to do marked damage to advertising networks like DoubleClick because the loss of demographic targeting means they are forced to basically become run-of-site ad outlets. Additionally, the amount of fraud in the ad…
As a Facebook user, companies are spending money to show me targeted ads, but I never see them. No doubt this decreases their ROI.
I've been cogitating on some of the themes Standage brings up in this interview for awhile and I suspect he's far more correct than incorrect. The proliferation of adblocking and incognito browsing is going to do marked damage to advertising networks like DoubleClick because the loss of demographic targeting means they are forced to basically become run-of-site ad outlets. Additionally, the amount of fraud in the ad…
While you make some good points, I think you may be underestimating the feedback mechanisms of the industry. Viewability measurement is in its infancy, and still has many issues. That said, it is fast becoming a standard measure, and any savvy display advertiser will be using it. At the end of the day, the ones most at risk are brand advertisers who aren't running direct response campaigns. They may have ad recall st…
The interesting thing with the Economist is that they alone seem to be able to do what they do. A weekly editorial summary of news and relevant stories that people pay for, which is read by business people. Is there a competing magazine? I am not aware of it. Their content is unrivalled, although you really need to be aware of their biases. But I don't feel they try to hide them, rather the opposite. However, with so…
This model is used by any number of "business intelligence" micro-zines - which are basically market tip sheets, with some trend speculation. It can be very lucrative if you get a following. I've seen sites charging four or five figure annual subscription fees for something that probably only takes a day or two a week to put together. So IMV the Econo is really just industrialising that model, with some extra journo-…
I've been cogitating on some of the themes Standage brings up in this interview for awhile and I suspect he's far more correct than incorrect. The proliferation of adblocking and incognito browsing is going to do marked damage to advertising networks like DoubleClick because the loss of demographic targeting means they are forced to basically become run-of-site ad outlets. Additionally, the amount of fraud in the ad…
Don't adblockers affect Facebook as well? As a Facebook user, companies are spending money to show me targeted ads, but I never see them. No doubt this decreases their ROI.
Perhaps, but a major part of Facebook's business model is organic advertisement (pay-for-reach posts) which won't be affected by ad blockers. AFAICT as a user, that's an increasingly important part of Facebook.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While you make some good points, I think you may be underestimating the feedback mechanisms of the industry. Viewability measurement is in its infancy, and still has many issues. That said, it is fast becoming a standard measure, and any savvy display advertiser will be using it. At the end of the day, the ones most at risk are brand advertisers who aren't running direct response campaigns. They may have ad recall st…
You expect google and facebook to do attribution modeling for you? That's simply unreasonable to expect. That's like waiting lead scoring in CRM systems to be accurate. Never going to happen. All they can do is put some APIs in place, so you can get a hold of the data, but the modeling part is up to you.
There is a lot of doubt around the contribution of display, and video as well. By helping arm advertisers with more data/tools to help them understand the impact of the efforts (and optimize against that), they further prove the value of their channel. This would likely help grow revenue as the value becomes better understood. Depending on what that value ends up being, it may even grow margins if they can command higher CPMs as a result.
I've seen you post before, so I know you have a solid understanding of the limitations of the data currently available. I want to be clear that I'm not asking them for a silver bullet. There will always be a need to analyze performance, view the data through the lenses of different models, and apply your own judgement.
But there is most certainly some low hanging fruit that would be a step in the right direction. Let's take the AdWords platform (not using any bid management platform) for example. Off the top of my head some improvements Google could make there would be:
- Making view-through revenue data available within the UI. If I have a conversion tag placed and am passing in revenue, Google has this data. Why they can't display it when they can display VTs is still a mystery to me.
- Search Funnel reports are a nice start with their attribution and path analysis tools. However the fact that they don't have display campaigns in these reports is a real limited. I know you can now get a lot of that in GA, but many advertisers don't have that setup properly, and doing anything at scale in GA these days is a PITA with their reduced sampling threshold.
- Google has the path data, yet for some reason it is still not exposed in the main UI outside of "assisted" metrics. Good luck digging into that data at granular levels as well if you have multiple conversion goals. Custom columns are a start, but they don't go down to the keyword/ad level yet and are still quite limited.
- Google pushes video ads hard, yet the Video Advertising product is for all intents and purposes a separate product. Sure it shares a similar design, but most of your data is siloed from AdWords (with the exception of audience lists).
I could go on, but these highlight some areas where they could do more to prove the value of their offering. When you throw the capabilities of a platform like Adometry into the mix, I'll bet they could throw a LOT more meaningful data at advertisers. Why shouldn't I, as a customer spending large sums of money with them every month, expect access to these capabilities to get the most out of their product?
I realize your point was that they can provide some data, but decisions still fall on me. That is valid, but there's still a lot more they could do to help inform those decisions with what they have available.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's always been something cargo culty about online advertising. If that market implodes, it's going to be... interesting.
I thought that a while ago. It hasn't happened yet but that doesn't mean it won't. And even if it doesn't implode, it could certainly decline significantly. A HUGE amount of the "free" services and content that pretty much all of us take so much for granted around the web are directly or indirectly supported by online advertising. Take that away and, as you say, it will be interesting.
What free services am I going to miss?
The interesting thing with the Economist is that they alone seem to be able to do what they do. A weekly editorial summary of news and relevant stories that people pay for, which is read by business people. Is there a competing magazine? I am not aware of it. Their content is unrivalled, although you really need to be aware of their biases. But I don't feel they try to hide them, rather the opposite. However, with so…
It would be nice to have other comparable sources, not least because The Economist is very influential, and like any other institution or person, they are often wrong. They seem pretty aware of this, and they write their articles in way that their readers can exert critical thinking. So in the absence of alternatives, we are kind of forced/encouraged to think critically, which is not such a bad thing in the end.