3 ms·

not any other site. Google can target better than anyone because they know what you are looking for and can provide advertisements for that thing. If I'm tryi

not any other site. Google can target better than anyone because they know what you are looking for and can provide advertisements for that thing. If I'm trying to find a track bike, and if I search google for track bikes, I get ads for places that sell track bike. However, If I have in my profile that I ride bikes, bike companies can target me very specifically. Or if I say what bands I like and have listed where I live or go to school, advertisements for concerts for those bands (or bands I might like) can come up. Obviously a lot of sites online can do similar target style advertising, but IMO not as targeted as what facebook can pull of. And they can go horizontally with the company types that advertise, as profiles on facebook are very general. I can put a lot of my info up - for facebook, the more the better. Most sites don't have this broad ability. They are much more niche oriented.

nickb 18y ago
>However, If I have in my profile that I ride bikes, bike companies can target me very specifically. Sure, but does you having that item in your profile tell me, as an advertiser, anything about your intent to buy a bike? Buy it today? Are you buying it in the next two weeks while I have the money to run a campaign? The answer is of course a big no. Just knowing something about someone doesn't tell you about their current intent. Now, would showing someone like that bike ads over the course of a year help him decide on the make and model of the next bike he purchases? Probably it would. But that's a very expensive proposition and not very profitable. This is why Facebook has such low CPMs. Now, suppose I had a way of saying "I'm looking to buy a bike"... a person like that would be much more valuable to an advertiser than someone who already rides bikes and has preferences set already for the type of bike/model that she likes. A customer that is new to bikes is A LOT easier to persuade to try out your brand than someone who's been riding bikes for years. In the end, Google's intent-based advertising is so much more amazing since it caters to everyone's whims so perfectly and displays things to you that you really might want to buy and buy it now.
- dcurtis 18y ago
  That logic may be true about bikes. But what if my Facebook profile says I like the movies Godzilla, Jurassic Park, and The Bourne Identity? It's very easy to extrapolate a common movie "typeness" that someone likes from a list. Then you can target new movies in that genre very specifically to users who would be most likely to watch them. For movies, books, tv shows, etc, and repeatable purchases, the cache of information at Facebook is far, far more valuable than two words at Google.
  - natrius 18y ago
    "For movies, books, tv shows, etc, and repeatable purchases, the cache of information at Facebook is far, far more valuable than two words at Google." That data is valuable, but not more valuable than Google's data. It's not just two words. Google knows every movie you've searched for since the last time you cleared your cookies. Assuming Google links the cookie from AdSense with your general Google cookie, they know what sites you visit. They know tons of things about you, and that data is similar in value in isolation to Facebook's data. When you combine that data with intent, which you know from a given search query, you can display more valuable ads than Facebook could ever hope to. If Facebook Chat gets traction and Facebook pushes its messaging as more of an email replacement, they'll have useful data they can use to determine intent, which they can use to better target ads and get more money per click.
    - whacked_new 18y ago
      Speaking of FB Chat, I used it for the first time yesterday when somebody messaged me, and it freaked me out. I don't know how many people enjoy having to chat with a browser window open. Sure, it's portable, but it's unappealing in many cases; and you're practically guaranteed that they're analyzing your chat logs.
    - dcurtis 18y ago
      I am pretty sure Google doesn't use your back search history in advertising targeting. They've said this many times. If they did, here's my past few searches: jordan ritter, glowing resin bar, mac hard drive use visualization, ironport, joost commercial, photoshop light bar, wiki futurama, wiki lost, xserve g4 wiki What does that list tell you about me or my buying habits? Now expand that list by a few thousand random search terms. Any more detail?
- carterschonwald 18y ago
  All I know is that facebooks ad's are obnoxious enough that it was the catalyst for me finally installing adblocker plus on firefox. I don't want to see ads for meeting attractive libidous neighborhood women on the sidebar of the website I use to keep in touch with friends and organize social gatherings with those same folks. It makes me feel like I'm using myspace or some porn site whose ads are specialized to the geographic region indicated by your connection....
  - volida 18y ago
    use email then
    - carterschonwald 18y ago
      the funny thing is, I'd much prefer that, but there are many people that for whatever reasons, are comfortable only using one particular variant of electronic communications, and if I want to reach them I have to accommodate that. I have friends who aren't comfortable using phones (the lack of body language stresses them out), friends can't deal with textual communications because of the lack of explicit emotional tone leaves them confused, and friends who only check their email when they're expecting an email. And those are just some simple cases. In the context of that, using any single digital communication mechanism only allows me to communicate with a subset of the people I care about. Anyways, my point was that the ads on facebook can be obnoxious enough that it spurs someone to install adblocking software
- nostrademons 18y ago
  A lot of advertising isn't targeted towards getting you to buy things now, it's so that when you do go out and buy things, you'll recognize their product first and prefer it over the competitors that are also sitting on the shelves. As a kid, I always wondered why companies bothered to run TV commercials. After all, you aren't likely to jump off the couch and buy a car this instant, no matter how much Ernie Boch tells you to. But a friend's mom explained that they don't care if you buy now: they advertise so that in a year or two, when you find yourself in need of a car, the first place that comes to mind will be Boch Toyota. It's amazing how many people don't do any research on consumer purchases and instead rely on a simple recognition heuristic. Even people who should know better. The reason my startup's on GoDaddy is because when my cofounders bought the domain & rented the server (before I came on board), they just went with whatever they'd heard of.
  - nickb 18y ago
    Yep, I think those are called branding exercises. Only big companies engage in those types of advertising since they are not easily gauged for effectiveness. It's very hard to convince some smaller company that they should spend $5M on some blimp and slap their logo on the side or something crazy like that. Big companies (car companies spring to mind) have that kind of money and advertising budgets and they do run these kinds of branding campaigns all the time. But the issues with these campaigns is that they're the first to go when recession hits. In times of recession, first thing you cut is branding advertising since you can't measure it and you can't track it. Online banners, and especially google adwords, will fare better in slowdowns since a company must advertise if it is to survive and get some revenue in. They will probably pick something that's effective and something that they can track right away.

nickb 18y ago

>However, If I have in my profile that I ride bikes, bike companies can target me very specifically. Sure, but does you having that item in your profile tell me, as an advertiser, anything about your intent to buy a bike? Buy it today? Are you buying it in the next two weeks while I have the money to run a campaign? The answer is of course a big no. Just knowing something about someone doesn't tell you about their current intent. Now, would showing someone like that bike ads over the course of a year help him decide on the make and model of the next bike he purchases? Probably it would. But that's a very expensive proposition and not very profitable. This is why Facebook has such low CPMs. Now, suppose I had a way of saying "I'm looking to buy a bike"... a person like that would be much more valuable to an advertiser than someone who already rides bikes and has preferences set already for the type of bike/model that she likes. A customer that is new to bikes is A LOT easier to persuade to try out your brand than someone who's been riding bikes for years. In the end, Google's intent-based advertising is so much more amazing since it caters to everyone's whims so perfectly and displays things to you that you really might want to buy and buy it now.

dcurtis 18y ago
That logic may be true about bikes. But what if my Facebook profile says I like the movies Godzilla, Jurassic Park, and The Bourne Identity? It's very easy to extrapolate a common movie "typeness" that someone likes from a list. Then you can target new movies in that genre very specifically to users who would be most likely to watch them. For movies, books, tv shows, etc, and repeatable purchases, the cache of information at Facebook is far, far more valuable than two words at Google.
- natrius 18y ago
  "For movies, books, tv shows, etc, and repeatable purchases, the cache of information at Facebook is far, far more valuable than two words at Google." That data is valuable, but not more valuable than Google's data. It's not just two words. Google knows every movie you've searched for since the last time you cleared your cookies. Assuming Google links the cookie from AdSense with your general Google cookie, they know what sites you visit. They know tons of things about you, and that data is similar in value in isolation to Facebook's data. When you combine that data with intent, which you know from a given search query, you can display more valuable ads than Facebook could ever hope to. If Facebook Chat gets traction and Facebook pushes its messaging as more of an email replacement, they'll have useful data they can use to determine intent, which they can use to better target ads and get more money per click.
  - whacked_new 18y ago
    Speaking of FB Chat, I used it for the first time yesterday when somebody messaged me, and it freaked me out. I don't know how many people enjoy having to chat with a browser window open. Sure, it's portable, but it's unappealing in many cases; and you're practically guaranteed that they're analyzing your chat logs.
  - dcurtis 18y ago
    I am pretty sure Google doesn't use your back search history in advertising targeting. They've said this many times. If they did, here's my past few searches: jordan ritter, glowing resin bar, mac hard drive use visualization, ironport, joost commercial, photoshop light bar, wiki futurama, wiki lost, xserve g4 wiki What does that list tell you about me or my buying habits? Now expand that list by a few thousand random search terms. Any more detail?
carterschonwald 18y ago
All I know is that facebooks ad's are obnoxious enough that it was the catalyst for me finally installing adblocker plus on firefox. I don't want to see ads for meeting attractive libidous neighborhood women on the sidebar of the website I use to keep in touch with friends and organize social gatherings with those same folks. It makes me feel like I'm using myspace or some porn site whose ads are specialized to the geographic region indicated by your connection....
- volida 18y ago
  use email then
  - carterschonwald 18y ago
    the funny thing is, I'd much prefer that, but there are many people that for whatever reasons, are comfortable only using one particular variant of electronic communications, and if I want to reach them I have to accommodate that. I have friends who aren't comfortable using phones (the lack of body language stresses them out), friends can't deal with textual communications because of the lack of explicit emotional tone leaves them confused, and friends who only check their email when they're expecting an email. And those are just some simple cases. In the context of that, using any single digital communication mechanism only allows me to communicate with a subset of the people I care about. Anyways, my point was that the ads on facebook can be obnoxious enough that it spurs someone to install adblocking software
nostrademons 18y ago
A lot of advertising isn't targeted towards getting you to buy things now, it's so that when you do go out and buy things, you'll recognize their product first and prefer it over the competitors that are also sitting on the shelves. As a kid, I always wondered why companies bothered to run TV commercials. After all, you aren't likely to jump off the couch and buy a car this instant, no matter how much Ernie Boch tells you to. But a friend's mom explained that they don't care if you buy now: they advertise so that in a year or two, when you find yourself in need of a car, the first place that comes to mind will be Boch Toyota. It's amazing how many people don't do any research on consumer purchases and instead rely on a simple recognition heuristic. Even people who should know better. The reason my startup's on GoDaddy is because when my cofounders bought the domain & rented the server (before I came on board), they just went with whatever they'd heard of.
- nickb 18y ago
  Yep, I think those are called branding exercises. Only big companies engage in those types of advertising since they are not easily gauged for effectiveness. It's very hard to convince some smaller company that they should spend $5M on some blimp and slap their logo on the side or something crazy like that. Big companies (car companies spring to mind) have that kind of money and advertising budgets and they do run these kinds of branding campaigns all the time. But the issues with these campaigns is that they're the first to go when recession hits. In times of recession, first thing you cut is branding advertising since you can't measure it and you can't track it. Online banners, and especially google adwords, will fare better in slowdowns since a company must advertise if it is to survive and get some revenue in. They will probably pick something that's effective and something that they can track right away.