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Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

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Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#631

Post by sophia_li »

I've had numerous experiences working closely with big companies and small companies' marketing/media buying teams. From my experience, these big companies lack the diligence on ROAS. Maybe it's the lack of ownership, whereas for smaller companies, usually the CEO/COO/Founder(s) on top of their spending and other performance metrics. I see much less of a waste on the ad spend when it comes to customer acquisition.

For example, I had a company that was spending a million dollars a month, they are a big brand, a tech company, their team kept on asking why the spend wasn't up even when their CAC was way over their target. The team wanted to keep the spend up to meet their metrics at any cost, in reality for every customer they were acquiring they were losing 50% on ROAS.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#632

Post by joeblau »

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #571
nutanc wrote: post #522

We did a similar kind of experiment some time back and found both FB ads and Google ads were doing jack shit for us. Google was better. FB ads were absolutely useless. So we stopped our ad spend. We observed no change in our customer acquisition. Another way these ad engines extract money out of you is by allowing competitors to bid for your brand name keyword. Try searching for Ozonetel on Google. There will be six…

> searching for Ozonetel on Google. There will be six competitor ads and then our website will show up :) Tried it. One ad. From ozontel.com

Hah, I saw Ozonetel Alternative - Dialpad® Official Site...

So Dialpad.

Pretty sneaky Dialpad lol

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#633

Post by skronch »

voxl wrote: post #613
crakhamster01 wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one can actually prove it has any ROI at all. No one is willing to run the experiments necessary. This is entirely false. I work in adtech, and almost all companies run experiments in order to optimize their ad spend (everything from Ad A vs Ad B, to Ad vs No Ad, to Channel A vs Channel B, and more). This isn't to say that advertising always produces ROI. Quite often, experiments will be run that will show a cer…

That's great, thanks for your experience, but can't comment on the argument provided? Isn't it possible that these experiments you talk about are fatally flawed? I have serious doubts that a company can run and do well designed statistical experiments when academic experts are plagued by p-hacking and other foot guns.

IMO large social media platforms are actually much more capable of running these experiments than academics. (Disclaimer: I work on ads at one of these companies).

Platforms can accurately determine who engaged with an ad (basic logging on their sites), they have infrastructure to create statistically balanced ad experiments, and can also accurately determine whether a conversion happened (either through a conversion pixel or through data brokers).

Running these tests on behalf of advertising clients, or for internal research is fairly standard. If we couldn't prove statistically that our ads were working, I would have left a long time ago.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#634

Post by xapata »

shadowgovt wrote: post #526
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coca Cola sells water with flavouring and quite astonishing amounts of sugar. Apple sells nice devices made by what might as well be slave labour. Both are propped up - actually maintained - by huge and vastly expensive brand management strategies. The criticisms of individual campaigns here are missing the point. It's not about micro ad spend, but the perception of value and manipulation of behaviour created by the…

This analysis excludes glossy packaging and status signalling from the inherent superiority, when (in terms of overall market value) they're part of the superiority.

And in Coca-Cola's case (among others) the advertising is much of what creates the value. When you know it's a Coke, it tastes better. I've had a lifetime of absorbing ads that make me think of good things whenever I know I'm drinking a Coke.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#635

Post by srtjstjsj »

joeblau wrote: post #632
nuclearnice1 wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> searching for Ozonetel on Google. There will be six competitor ads and then our website will show up :) Tried it. One ad. From ozontel.com

Hah, I saw Ozonetel Alternative - Dialpad® Official Site... So Dialpad. Pretty sneaky Dialpad lol

It's not sneaky to compete in a marketplace.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#636

Post by srtjstjsj »

dannyw wrote: post #627
nl wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't true. Google search ads are rarely malicious - Google does a pretty good screening them.

I disagree. When searching for crypto related terms, more often than not I see phishing sites as ads than legitimate ads.

What are some examples?

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#637

Post by xapata »

rocqua wrote: post #396
amelius wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They only lost market share because everybody else was still using advertising. Therefore, this is not a test in favor of advertising (only in the prisoner's dilemma sense).

If advertising is an arms race with more total cost than total benefit, that would be an argument that advertising works. Because anyone, at any given time, will benefit from running advertising. It also means advertising is a net loss to society, but that is separate from the question 'does advertising work'

> net loss to society

Not so clear, especially before internet search engines existed. As a consumer, I find it useful to know what's available for me to purchase.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#638

Post by srtjstjsj »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #609
notatoad wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing illegal about referencing somebody else's trademark as long as you're using it to talk about their product. Having a trademark doesn't forbid your competitors from talking about you.

What I think should be made illegal is that Google (and others) is essentially collecting another toll even when users enter in the brand name of the target business in the first place. That is: 1. User types CompanyFoo (whose real URL is www.companyfoo.com) into their address bar, which lands them on Google (because Google owns Chrome and pays billions for the privilege on other browsers). 2. Since Google will sell…

You are under no obligation to use Google's browser or search engine if you believe it doesn't provide you with a valuable search experience.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#639

Post by srtjstjsj »

bhouston wrote: post #575
Pxtl wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised that's legal, since they're literally referencing somebody else's trademark.

I first ran my such Google Ad in 2005. And yeah our competitor at the time was pissed. Google makes money with these so they allow it as long as the ad text does contain the trademark.

You need to have a thick skin in business. What matters are whether consumers are happy.

Re: Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

#640

Post by srtjstjsj »

pests wrote: post #546
pb7 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: why do you feel your competitors shouldn't be able to do this? If your customers intend to go directly to you, why do they not go directly to your site but instead search for it on a general search engine? More generally: if I search for "apple", what should the first result be? Wikipedia or Apple.com?

Normal users don't type domains, they type where they want to go into the address bar. my aunt will type "google" into chromes url bae to bring up the classic google search page she knows, and then will continue to type something like "jcpenney" into that box.

If the site is in her browser history she'll get an autocomplete suggestion for jcpenney.com .
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