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P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

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Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#51

Post by TeMPOraL »

abritinthebay wrote: post #13
RodericDay wrote: post #4

I've often dreamed of coding up some kind of worm-virus, but instead of stealing data or demanding ransom or corrupting storage, it would just install uBlock Origin on infected computers. Millions of infected people, with zero idea what an "ad-blocker" is, just wondering where all the YouTube ads went. And then, hopefully after a month or so of infection, companies realizing that their bottom-lines were unaffected, p…

You’d lose a lot more companies than that - vast swathes of content producers would go under. Their bottom line absolutely would be affected. This dream would be the single most destructive thing to happen to the internet

Yeah, destructive in the sense of how antibiotics are destructive to germs. Please, give me more of them!

(Also, I hate the phrase "content producer". It seems to imply that content is fungible - companies thinking in such terms are precisely those who should go under.)

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#52

Post by a_imho »

tomascot wrote: post #16
paulie_a wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I have grown so tired of analytics and advertising my personal idea would be to build a plugin that doesn't block anything. But instead it simply visits websites on random topics over time and clicks ads here and there. Slowly degrading the data shitty advertising companies have and ruining ROI. I am starting to do this manually and randomly clicking ads. I honestly need to start doing that on facebook due…

If I'm not mistaken this exists for Firefox. Or at least existed at some point, I guess something like that could get a lot of big players upset

Adnauseam?

https://adnauseam.io/

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#53

Post by simooooo »

nitwit005 wrote: post #20
wyc wrote: post #8

Bob Hoffman at the Ad Contrarian called this in January: "P&G To Online Ad World: We've Had Enough" - https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2017/01/p-to-online-ad-wor... Digital advertising is rife with (what should be considered) fraud. Advertisers feel as though they are getting fleeced, and the advertising middlemen reap massive margins. The accountability isn't where it needs to be; there are websites that hide ads u…

> there are websites that hide ads under other ads, still reporting displays for all ads per page load. While people have done that, most ads seem to load load with some JS to confirm if the ad is visible, and if it's above or below the fold.

How would it have any clue if it's below another div? Pretty much impossible

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#54

Post by manigandham »

This isn't really a qualitative judgement against advertising so much as what happens in large mature industries as waste and inefficiency and perverse incentives pile up. Look at any government/military over-spending for similar effects.

P&G is one of the largest advertisers on the planet using hundreds of agencies with thousands of vendors with millions of placements across digital media, managed by thousands of people trying to make themselves look good and get that bonus. This is a typical cycle of cleaning house.

The industry itself is slowly getting better and will eventually fix many problems through technology and regulation but there's still a very long way to go for that.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#55

Post by manigandham »

tomjen3 wrote: post #18
disc wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it's possible that digital marketing is not all that effective for commodity items? I admit to having brand preferences for laundry detergent and garbage bags, though I like to believe (perhaps wishfully) they are a result of first-hand and family experiences.

My algorithm for that kind of stuff is what is cheapest in the store I am in? I think that is what a lot of people do.

A lot of people love brands and pick the one they last remember - which is why advertising is so powerful. It maybe sound cheesy/irrational/unbelievable but it's true and there are 100s of billions in market value built on it.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#56

Post by emn13 »

VMG wrote: post #31
laythea wrote: post #30

Back in the olden days where ads where more sparse, they would have so much more impact. Nowadays after the awash of ads we have everywhere, companies are collectively loosing their ability to make ads impact. (by logic, the more we are exposed to it, the less effective it it). Therefore they did it to themselves. They abused it, so that now people reject them where they can, and it becomes less profitable. No sympat…

Recently on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833508 > The growth of “zero-sum” activities may, however, be even more important. Look around the economy, and it’s striking how much high-talent manpower is devoted to activities that cannot possibly increase human welfare, but entail competition for the available economic pie. Advertising seems to be a zero-sum game. I can imagine some industries cartellizing…

It's a pipe dream; but advertising/lobbying deserves regulatory hurdles much like other public health threats (e.g. tobacco). And before anyone shouts "freedom of speech" - we already do that extensively for stuff like fraud, libel, and incitement to violence/terrorism, so this isn't really anything particularly new.

It's simply detrimental to the overall ability for us to think.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#57

Post by red_admiral »

0xbear wrote: post #46
wyc wrote: post #8

Bob Hoffman at the Ad Contrarian called this in January: "P&G To Online Ad World: We've Had Enough" - https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2017/01/p-to-online-ad-wor... Digital advertising is rife with (what should be considered) fraud. Advertisers feel as though they are getting fleeced, and the advertising middlemen reap massive margins. The accountability isn't where it needs to be; there are websites that hide ads u…

Yeah, but it's not like traditional advertising is free of fraud either. You can't even really pretend to measure the effectiveness of campaigns there. And there's much more money in it.

> You can't even really pretend to measure the effectiveness of campaigns there.

I disagree - for something at the scale of P&G, you can bet that they're doing a LOT of measuring for every campaign they run.

The article reads to me as if they're applying the same metrics to their online ads that they use already for traditional campaigns, and finding little impact.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#58

Post by nikanj »

simooooo wrote: post #53
nitwit005 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are websites that hide ads under other ads, still reporting displays for all ads per page load. While people have done that, most ads seem to load load with some JS to confirm if the ad is visible, and if it's above or below the fold.

How would it have any clue if it's below another div? Pretty much impossible

Because this is running on the customer's browser, CPU efficiency doesn't matter at all. They can do all sorts of stupid things, like grab the DOM from the browser, lay it out in a JS rendering engine and see if their div ends up being visible.

I haven't had the time to look through the ad javascripts on your typical fat webpage, but when there's tens of megabytes of code and it pegs my CPU at 100%, I know it's doing more than just displaying a .png in an iframe.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#59

Post by emn13 »

kilroy123 wrote: post #7
RodericDay wrote: post #4

I've often dreamed of coding up some kind of worm-virus, but instead of stealing data or demanding ransom or corrupting storage, it would just install uBlock Origin on infected computers. Millions of infected people, with zero idea what an "ad-blocker" is, just wondering where all the YouTube ads went. And then, hopefully after a month or so of infection, companies realizing that their bottom-lines were unaffected, p…

I don't think it's even necessary. The percentage of people using ad blockers keeps going up and up.

I kind of suspect adblocking is doomed to die rather quickly if it ever seriously threatens the ad industry. As anti-adblock has shown even fairly trivial measures can be effective; and if you control the platform in more depth you can be a lot trickier about it, e.g. by doing minification-esque transforms to the complete dom tree.

Re: P&G Cuts More Than $100M in ‘Largely Ineffective’ Digital Ads

#60

Post by Jach »

michaelvoz wrote: post #35
jsemrau wrote: post #32

This reminds me of my experience with Google Adwords. My target was to increase signups for travellers to selected cities looking for 'events nearby'. So, I selected my cities and customer segments and had a limit set of 30 Dollars / day. Regularly, I paid for 2-5 Dollar more per day than my max price. I reduced the price to actually match my max price, but this would as a result out-price me of the relevant keywords…

Perhaps rather anecdotal, but this is why I joined Uber, and did not take my Facebook or Google offers. It feels nice to work on tech that directly impacts lives and how a persons day flows. As opposed to, as you correctly put it, optimizing click bait.

Both Google and Facebook work on "tech that directly impacts lives and how a person's day flows". So far producing more value than Uber has, but Uber provides a valuable service too. And while Google & Facebook's revenue is primarily from their ad business, they're not ad companies, like, say, Rubicon Project.
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