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> Do you really think that 550 billions of dollars are spent each year on something that doesn’t work? Look at all the top advertisers on the internet, in almo

> Do you really think that 550 billions of dollars are spent each year on something that doesn’t work? Look at all the top advertisers on the internet, in almost every case it's all big brand advertisers that can't prove results, like Nike for instance. I know someone at Nike who held a marketing position there: she said, basically they just throw the money out there and hope that it works. There's very little validation that any of it works. And, I've heard on an NPR show how a lot of big brand advertisers are just continuing to do what they've always done because they've been doing it so long. Now, the economist of course would say that companies who squander money on advertisements would loose market share. That's the way it should work. But our capitalist markets aren't nearly as efficient as people commonly believe. On a personal note: I can tell you 99.99% or more of the advertisements don't work on me at all. How do i know this? I keep close account of everything I spend money on. I once did an audit on everything I've spend money on in the last 3 years and found that almost everything I spent money on is not due to ads (with the exception of SEO ~ I do occasionally find products through search engines but this usually isn't considered a direct advertisement expense). It's not that I'm against ads. If an Ad promised a product I actually wanted (say a home at an affordable price, or a faster way to get to work), I'd buy it in a heartbeat. The problem is, everything that's being advertised is more stuff I don't want.

Konnstann 8y ago
As much as I can agree that my purchases are also not tied to advertising, other than "Sale on apples, 50% off", I don't think you can extrapolate based on the people who frequent Hacker News.
- davidfischer 8y ago
  While I can't speak for Hacker News as a whole and I'm going to talk about clicks and not purchases strictly, I am willing to talk about developers more generally who frequently say things like "advertising doesn't work on me". Collectively, they are mistaken and it does work on them. I work on advertising at Read the Docs and when we were first added to the main ad blocker lists our revenue went down. We were 100% pay per click at that time and our revenue went down by the same percentage as the number of ad impressions went down. Looking at it statistically, developers who run ad blockers still click on ads at the same rate as those that don't as long as they actually see the ad.
wastedhours 8y ago
Ads can largely work for generating an action - it's just no one really wants to admit that the CPA is probably orders of magnitude more than we all spin it to be, and in lots of cases isn't efficient, or even profitable. I deploy ad spend every day, and can see when it works - do I think spending a £1 on the online ads we use is the best use of that £1? In a lot of cases, nope (though in some, yes). But £1 on outbound marketing when your agency is spinning you a line about it generating £5 is too much for the top brass to resist. I think the entire market would be much better for ads if there weren't so many fingers in the pie - too many people are making money, and too many reputations internally are at stake for the fundamentals to be questioned. I'd like to say "fk programmatic" - we need to pull the market back into intent based advertising.
Jill_the_Pill 8y ago
"I once did an audit on everything I've spend money on in the last 3 years and found that almost everything I spent money on is not due to ads" I was kind of thinking this as well: I hardly buy anything but unprocessed groceries. But then I thought of the kind of ads that don't seek a purchase, the ones that set the background or expectation of the culture. It's harder to document those working. "Big government wastes our taxes and taxes are too high" "Our country is the only developed nation without socialized healthcare." "It's normal in America to have two cars in a family or to take an annual vacation by airplane." "Guns don't kill people, etc." That stuff is insidious marketing/advertising too. We may be more vulnerable to it than the consumer type.
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  The stuff you speak about it easily dismissed. The time it usually takes a mediocre reporter to invent that headline is the same amount of time it takes to disprove the point. It gets easier when you practice for a bit. >> "Big government wastes our taxes and taxes are too high" but I know that reducing taxes will probably not fix the local bridge over there. >> "Our country is the only developed nation without socialized healthcare." but this is also one of the only countries in the world with a working legal system >> It's normal in America to have two cars in a family or to take an annual vacation by airplane. but I have two kids, a loving wife and a set of friends who live locally and provide me better than that vacation to Mallorca >> Guns don't kill people, etc." but people are vastly more efficient at killing with guns. More importantly, by openning any of those headlines I pretty much know what's going to be written there anyway. So there's no value in that - the value is in education.
  - Jill_the_Pill 8y ago
    I know that some particular credit card isn't going to get me more quality time with my family and that some car isn't going to turn me into a wind-swept adventurer on a mountaintop. People fall for all of it.
    - Jill_the_Pill 8y ago

Konnstann 8y ago

As much as I can agree that my purchases are also not tied to advertising, other than "Sale on apples, 50% off", I don't think you can extrapolate based on the people who frequent Hacker News.

davidfischer 8y ago
While I can't speak for Hacker News as a whole and I'm going to talk about clicks and not purchases strictly, I am willing to talk about developers more generally who frequently say things like "advertising doesn't work on me". Collectively, they are mistaken and it does work on them. I work on advertising at Read the Docs and when we were first added to the main ad blocker lists our revenue went down. We were 100% pay per click at that time and our revenue went down by the same percentage as the number of ad impressions went down. Looking at it statistically, developers who run ad blockers still click on ads at the same rate as those that don't as long as they actually see the ad.

wastedhours 8y ago

Ads can largely work for generating an action - it's just no one really wants to admit that the CPA is probably orders of magnitude more than we all spin it to be, and in lots of cases isn't efficient, or even profitable. I deploy ad spend every day, and can see when it works - do I think spending a £1 on the online ads we use is the best use of that £1? In a lot of cases, nope (though in some, yes). But £1 on outbound marketing when your agency is spinning you a line about it generating £5 is too much for the top brass to resist. I think the entire market would be much better for ads if there weren't so many fingers in the pie - too many people are making money, and too many reputations internally are at stake for the fundamentals to be questioned. I'd like to say "fk programmatic" - we need to pull the market back into intent based advertising.

Jill_the_Pill 8y ago

"I once did an audit on everything I've spend money on in the last 3 years and found that almost everything I spent money on is not due to ads" I was kind of thinking this as well: I hardly buy anything but unprocessed groceries. But then I thought of the kind of ads that don't seek a purchase, the ones that set the background or expectation of the culture. It's harder to document those working. "Big government wastes our taxes and taxes are too high" "Our country is the only developed nation without socialized healthcare." "It's normal in America to have two cars in a family or to take an annual vacation by airplane." "Guns don't kill people, etc." That stuff is insidious marketing/advertising too. We may be more vulnerable to it than the consumer type.

heavenlyblue 8y ago
The stuff you speak about it easily dismissed. The time it usually takes a mediocre reporter to invent that headline is the same amount of time it takes to disprove the point. It gets easier when you practice for a bit. >> "Big government wastes our taxes and taxes are too high" but I know that reducing taxes will probably not fix the local bridge over there. >> "Our country is the only developed nation without socialized healthcare." but this is also one of the only countries in the world with a working legal system >> It's normal in America to have two cars in a family or to take an annual vacation by airplane. but I have two kids, a loving wife and a set of friends who live locally and provide me better than that vacation to Mallorca >> Guns don't kill people, etc." but people are vastly more efficient at killing with guns. More importantly, by openning any of those headlines I pretty much know what's going to be written there anyway. So there's no value in that - the value is in education.
- Jill_the_Pill 8y ago
  I know that some particular credit card isn't going to get me more quality time with my family and that some car isn't going to turn me into a wind-swept adventurer on a mountaintop. People fall for all of it.
  - Jill_the_Pill 8y ago