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"I'm ad tolerant, but the ads Twitter show me are always useless. The ads have zero relevance to me, my profile, my twitter stream, the people I follow, etc etc

by rsync 11y ago

"I'm ad tolerant, but the ads Twitter show me are always useless. The ads have zero relevance to me, my profile, my twitter stream, the people I follow, etc etc. I have no idea where Twitter gets information about me, but it doesn't seem to come from Twitter." I am very interested in this ... We did a (roughly) 6 month long experiment here (rsync.net) in advertising on twitter - on paper it seemed like a very good idea: - Target very specific linux/unix/backup/ZFS keywords - really low volume, hyper specific stuff - and show our rsync.net sponsored tweet. Two things happened: 1. Zero actual results - nothing at all that could be quantified. 2. TONS of garbage/fake followers/retweets/favorites. We tried. We couldn't make it work at all. Not for real, targeted customer acquisition. If you're pepsi and you just need people to see the word "pepsi" I'm sure it's great, but if you need to pay X and get Y customers ... difficult to see how you make that work.

alex_hirner 11y ago
You pointed out a huge problem to find the right people with highly specific needs. That's why we are working on an identification tool that automatically returns people according to their intent (stated interest, complains "e.g. if I only could..."). The grand idea is to turn around the annoying sales funnel who many preach is just the right thing to do. However, such a funnel produces a lot of waste, first the seller's money, second the prospects time and nerves. http://sircular.rocks/zocialgraph.pdf http://sircular.rocks/zocialgraph.pdf
cperciva 11y ago
That's because all of your ad impressions were being shown to Tarsnap users! In all seriousness, I've had a lot of people say they keep seeing rsync ads on twitter and ask me if you're trying to poach my customers. I always tell them that you're a good guy and I'm sure you wouldn't do that.
- rsync 11y ago
  Interesting - I actually had one or two people email rsync.net and complain about the exact same thing - they thought I was camping on tarsnap specific keywords... We also have a lot of people who don't even know that there are sponsored tweets (ads) on twitter and thought we were blatantly spamming them ... so they blacklisted/ignored us and sent complainy emails.

by rsync 11y ago

alex_hirner 11y ago

You pointed out a huge problem to find the right people with highly specific needs. That's why we are working on an identification tool that automatically returns people according to their intent (stated interest, complains "e.g. if I only could..."). The grand idea is to turn around the annoying sales funnel who many preach is just the right thing to do. However, such a funnel produces a lot of waste, first the seller's money, second the prospects time and nerves. http://sircular.rocks/zocialgraph.pdf http://sircular.rocks/zocialgraph.pdf

cperciva 11y ago

That's because all of your ad impressions were being shown to Tarsnap users! In all seriousness, I've had a lot of people say they keep seeing rsync ads on twitter and ask me if you're trying to poach my customers. I always tell them that you're a good guy and I'm sure you wouldn't do that.

rsync 11y ago
Interesting - I actually had one or two people email rsync.net and complain about the exact same thing - they thought I was camping on tarsnap specific keywords... We also have a lot of people who don't even know that there are sponsored tweets (ads) on twitter and thought we were blatantly spamming them ... so they blacklisted/ignored us and sent complainy emails.