So they compromise everyone's privacy for nothing?
What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
61–70 of 369 posts
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#62> 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…
> The main problem here is that 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. This is what is known as "on brand" Search ads. I like to call these effectively the "Google Tax" because publishers/retailers are forced to pay Google for the traffic they would have already received had the ad not…
> I like to call these effectively the "Google Tax" because publishers/retailers are forced to pay Google for the traffic they would have already received had the ad not been there.
Isn't this just the usual problem with advertising? You have to do it because the other players are doing it. If nobody did it, it would still be the same cake to be shared.
This case is more on the nose, but only because of some fairness assumption that "Williams Sonoma Cast Iron Skillet" _ought_ to be traffic for Williams Sonoma.
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I mean.. RTFM? Look at the address bar? The branding of the site? Pay attention and be careful? This stuff only works on 70 year olds. It stands to reason it won't be viable in a few decades.
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#64> 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…
> The main problem here is that 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. This is what is known as "on brand" Search ads. I like to call these effectively the "Google Tax" because publishers/retailers are forced to pay Google for the traffic they would have already received had the ad not…
>pay Google for the traffic they would have already received had the ad not been there.
But this line of reasoning begs the question. If this system wasn't in place, then Google search would not exist as it does and the search traffic would not necessarily exist in the same way, no?
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there is an under-appreciated average search engine user in the comment: People will typically write their intent on the search engine even when they could simply directly to the website. Case in point: The top 10 bing searches are for websites, including FB, Google, Youtube [1]. This traffic is highly competitive and should (as in all competitive markets) be bid among competitors. https://ahrefs.com/blog/top…
The address bar is the search bar. My wife never types "facebook.com". She types "facebook", gets the google search page, and then clicks on facebook from there. It pisses me off that if I start typing facebook, Chrome doesn't autocomplete to facebook.com. In contrast, if I'm in Safari, and type "n" I get "news.ycombinator.com" autocompleted.
It must be a setting?
Small business people in my area of UK have always done this, type in the box in the middle (usually Google, occasionally Bing or some other service). But my pretty tech-literate kids do it too, even when I show them how they 'should' do it and that is faster, and they don't need the extra click to get where they're going ... mad!
On Chrome on Win10 as I use at work though, typing in the address bar, with my settings, I get auto-fill of addresses (the history search is noticeably missing vs Firefox) including the option to use 'tab to search' on a domain.
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the theory is that if I search for "Williams Sonoma cast iron skillet", but misclick on some competitor, I'm buying that instead? I don't know, I don't usually assume the rest of humanity to be a lot dumber than me.
People don’t need to be dumb to do that. Being inexperienced with computers or confused about computers is enough to cause people to do a lot of things like that. There are a lot of people out there who are inexperienced with or confused by computers. But my main point was that the brand may not be all that important in the first place even though it was included as part of the search term. The person making the sear…
> landing on a competitor site they may choose to buy a similar product from them instead.
Doesn't that just make for effective advertising? I'm failing to see the harm here.
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#67What if this article is missing the forest for the trees a bit? In my experience performance advertising is almost always paired with awareness advertising. The latter makes you aware of the brand/product/whatever then the former nudges you to act/buy/whatever.
So if you’re buying or even just evaluating performance ads without considering the bigger picture you might come to erroneous conclusions.
Take the Lego Movie example from the article. The $65 million movie is no doubt an awareness play. Could you make the case that you should also increase your performance budget to help capture more of the demand you just generated with the movie? Or should you just hope that people go from the movie theater to buy Lego unprompted? Is it worth it for Lego to advertise to people who walk out of the theater and search for “Lego Batman set” or whatever? I think so, even though evaluating such branded search campaigns individually might make them seem inefficient.
It seems very easy to dismiss the performance advertising as a scam when you evaluate it in a vacuum. As noted in the article it’s important (and very difficult) to understand the incremental outcome of any channel or campaign. That incrementality includes awareness campaigns.
After more than a decade in advertising and marketing I am now more than ever unwilling to accept simple or definitive answers to highly complicated questions. At best I hope that we can unwind some of the overall complexity so we can have a chance to trust some of those definitive answers.
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#68> 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…
> Lodge and Food52 etc etc would
And wouldn't any users who end up buying a Lodge pan have been legitimately converted by effective lodge advertising? I don't think anyone who's only interested in Williams Sonoma will just go ahead and buy a Lodge pan. Unless you're suggesting that simply because the user entered "Williams Sonoma" in the search bar that page somehow "belongs" to them, which seems a bit absurd.
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#69Earlier 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.
Well, on a good search engine, IMO, you'd have a predicted store based on the manufacturer (eg their preferred seller) then perhaps a list of top 10 competitors and something like "most recorded purchases after this search are from seller X" with "the most popular similar store is seller Y".
Of course Google wouldn't give that data out as then many companies wouldn't need to advertise at all to get top billing.
Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Defensive spending to protect otherwise organic traffic could also be called extortion.
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.
>>> If Google delivers users the thing they want, ads by definition have to be things users don't want.
Ben Evans has a tweet something like "half of facebook devs are working out how to code the algorithm to serve you just what you want to see, the other half are working out how to get the algorithm to serve you what advertisers want you to see. "
We are doing something wrong