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Is this how you think ads work? This is horribly naive. If an ad exec at a large corporation thinks this way they should be fired immediately. To answer direct

Is this how you think ads work? This is horribly naive. If an ad exec at a large corporation thinks this way they should be fired immediately. To answer directly : of course you can measure how effective your FB ads are. Pick two markets with similar demographics and a timeframe. Run FB ads in one market as an experiment and traditional media ads in another market as a control. If sales increase in the experiment market vs the control that is strong evidence that FB ads are more effective than traditional marketing. For higher confidence repeat the test with multiple markets and multiple controls. That experiment took me 30 seconds to think of. A sophisticated marketer can probably come up with one that gives even more solid evidence.

navigatesol 7y ago
>Pick two markets with similar demographics and a timeframe. Run FB ads in one market as an experiment and traditional media ads in another market as a control. If sales increase in the experiment market vs the control that is strong evidence that FB ads are more effective than traditional marketing. This sounds like an incredibly naive and expensive experiment, filled to the brim with noise.
- disgruntledphd2 7y ago
  If you have historical sales data and advertising data by geogrpahy, you can control. It's not perfect, but if you do it frequently you can estimate (some of) the impact.
TheIronYuppie 7y ago
Yeah, I also worked in ads and your experiment for a brand of any reasonable size is effectively impossible. You will have a challenge: - Finding a time where there isn't some global event (e.g. oscars, olympics, etc) - Weather effects (it was hot/cold so they went out/didn't go out) - Local effects (Warriors just won the championship) - SUPER local effects (it was prom at this high school) - Brand history (Coke does better in ATL than Pepsi) - etc. And then, even if you did, ACTUALLY being able to measure impact on anything but ultra-transactional things (e.g. buying a movie ticket) is super hard/expensive too. You're going to run a survey after each experiment? And THEN, even if you DID run a survey, maybe it worked for one brand and one brand only! Maybe it doesn't even cross over to other brands in a category, let alone other categories. Look - scientifically speaking, sure, you should be able to do what you describe. Almost none of the time does that work in the real world.
- landryraccoon 7y ago
  Are you saying a good ad manager shouldn’t try to do measurements though? That seems like a cop out. Why would you be making the big bucks if you can’t control for all this noise? Ad campaigns are super expensive. If I were an exec at a company managing a campaign I’d want to see solid metrics and impact on sales, otherwise what’s all this money for? In other words, if you can’t tell the difference between spending the money and not, don’t spend it.
- disgruntledphd2 7y ago
  Yeah, it's very very difficult for brands which are bought offline. That's why Google are working with mastercard to get hash credit card transactions. Additionally, Amazon are probably in a really good place to do marketing for CPG brands, as people actually purchase those on Amazon and thus they can track conversions (whereas FB and Google aren't great for these kinds of advertisers).

navigatesol 7y ago

>Pick two markets with similar demographics and a timeframe. Run FB ads in one market as an experiment and traditional media ads in another market as a control. If sales increase in the experiment market vs the control that is strong evidence that FB ads are more effective than traditional marketing. This sounds like an incredibly naive and expensive experiment, filled to the brim with noise.

disgruntledphd2 7y ago
If you have historical sales data and advertising data by geogrpahy, you can control. It's not perfect, but if you do it frequently you can estimate (some of) the impact.

TheIronYuppie 7y ago

Yeah, I also worked in ads and your experiment for a brand of any reasonable size is effectively impossible. You will have a challenge: - Finding a time where there isn't some global event (e.g. oscars, olympics, etc) - Weather effects (it was hot/cold so they went out/didn't go out) - Local effects (Warriors just won the championship) - SUPER local effects (it was prom at this high school) - Brand history (Coke does better in ATL than Pepsi) - etc. And then, even if you did, ACTUALLY being able to measure impact on anything but ultra-transactional things (e.g. buying a movie ticket) is super hard/expensive too. You're going to run a survey after each experiment? And THEN, even if you DID run a survey, maybe it worked for one brand and one brand only! Maybe it doesn't even cross over to other brands in a category, let alone other categories. Look - scientifically speaking, sure, you should be able to do what you describe. Almost none of the time does that work in the real world.

landryraccoon 7y ago
Are you saying a good ad manager shouldn’t try to do measurements though? That seems like a cop out. Why would you be making the big bucks if you can’t control for all this noise? Ad campaigns are super expensive. If I were an exec at a company managing a campaign I’d want to see solid metrics and impact on sales, otherwise what’s all this money for? In other words, if you can’t tell the difference between spending the money and not, don’t spend it.
disgruntledphd2 7y ago
Yeah, it's very very difficult for brands which are bought offline. That's why Google are working with mastercard to get hash credit card transactions. Additionally, Amazon are probably in a really good place to do marketing for CPG brands, as people actually purchase those on Amazon and thus they can track conversions (whereas FB and Google aren't great for these kinds of advertisers).