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What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

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Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#81

Post by ChuckMcM »

aerosmile wrote: post #77

There are so many holes in these arguments that you could drive a truck through it. Which is so infuriating, because a big part of my professional career consisted of watching all of Rand's SEO videos and really appreciating them. I really thought he was a genius. But then over the past few years, he started sharing more general views on entrepreneurship, and those takeaways just didn't really make much sense. Basica…

Can I politely suggest that you share with us the holes you see in the arguments and how you see them? Whether or not Rand is any good at what he does or says will be clear by your expert disassembly of his arguments.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#82

Post by beervirus »

aerosmile wrote: post #77

There are so many holes in these arguments that you could drive a truck through it. Which is so infuriating, because a big part of my professional career consisted of watching all of Rand's SEO videos and really appreciating them. I really thought he was a genius. But then over the past few years, he started sharing more general views on entrepreneurship, and those takeaways just didn't really make much sense. Basica…

That was an awful lot of words. Too bad none of them had anything to do with what you think this article gets wrong.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#83

Post by ChuckMcM »

My take on this is that its sort of like the prisoner's dilemma in that if everybody said "We'll not spend anything on ads[1], let the organic results speak for themselves" then you might get one result, but anyone who has been de-indexed from Google knows that having no results on the front page means a huge drop in traffic for you. And if your business depends on web conversions well that is a pretty measurable loss of revenue.

[1] or black hat SEO for that matter.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#84

Post by mbesto »

aerosmile wrote: post #79
mbesto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 agree with the rant how Google introduced a tax that wouldn't have existed in a world without Google. And, technically speaking, it would have been possible for Google to not charge for that tax (but would you have done that in their shoes? It's not like their market share is suffering). But if you are implying that brands should not invest in on-brand search campaigns, then this is a really bad advice. It's a know…

> But if you are implying that brands should not invest in on-brand search campaigns, then this is a really bad advice.

I'll be more explicit - you should test the difference. I usually recommend companies do a blackout month where they turn off all programmatic ads and then do a like-for-like comparison.

To further emphasis my point before, I've seen ad ops agencies say "hey you've got an overall 15x ROAS" and then find out that 80% of their ad spend is on-brand (give them 25x or whatever) and the off-brand (which is 20% of the spend) is giving them 5x. So their ROAS is inappropriately distributed to try to reach an overall ROAS goal.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#85

Post by pradn »

dublinben wrote: post #6
simonsarris wrote: post #2

> 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…

Defensive spending to protect otherwise organic traffic could also be called extortion.

This should be allowed, because this means smaller competitors have a shot at the customer base of a more established competitor. If we ban it, it's just shoring up established players.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#86

Post by ssharp »

fourseventy wrote: post #8

It's well known that the self reported performance numbers from Google Ads and Facebook Ads are inflated, however those ad channels still do drive real value. I run an ecommerce marketing attribution company (ThoughtMetric) so I have first hand knowledge and data about this subject. The most common source of inflation in Google/FB self reported performance numbers is multiple ad channels taking credit for the same or…

I always used to just capture the old UTMZ cookie data (or rebuilt it when the actual UTMZ cookie went away) and stored that with the order data. It's not the most sophisticated attribution method but it at least gets around these sorts of double counting issues with orders.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#87

Post by closeparen »

thomasahle wrote: post #62
mbesto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

For staples, maybe. Advertising also gets people to buy things that they would not otherwise buy.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#88

Post by mbesto »

finnh wrote: post #74
thomasahle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Isn't this just the usual problem with advertising? Not quite: OP's point is about searches that specifically include your brand name. The "usual problem" with advertising in the zero-sum sense you propose is for eyeballs in general (billboards etc). The google tax here is more invidious, being specifically about searches that include your brand.

Exactly. Big difference between

"Williams Sonoma Cast Iron Skillet"

and

"Cast Iron Skillet"

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#89

Post by bliteben »

thegrimmest wrote: post #55
mdoms wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

Why is that a shakedown? Shouldn't competitors be able to advertise their products? Any users who are actually looking for Williams Sonoma will find it. Any who are open to having their minds changed, or are interested in competing products, will be interested in competitors ads.

should your competitors be able to buy 100% of the screen space on mobile with images where your organic result has none? 50% sure maybe but literally google doesn't even put the organic results above the fold on mobile. Often on google on mobile the organic results are 2 screens down.

Re: What if performance advertising is just an analytics scam?

#90

Post by tshaddox »

jayd16 wrote: post #64
mbesto wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I don't see why the search engine would work differently or be any less popular if Google used its algorithms to determine intent (that's Google's whole thing) and then automatically (or via human moderation) prevent companies from showing ads when there is clear intent to find another company's brand. Google would be somewhat less profitable, perhaps, but the search product would still work fine (arguably even better) for the people searching.
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