7 ms·

The thing is I am not sure a large percentage of advertisers are aware of such things and adjust their expectations. Facebook and their ilk encourage you to bel

The thing is I am not sure a large percentage of advertisers are aware of such things and adjust their expectations. Facebook and their ilk encourage you to believe their numbers even though they are mostly phony - I mean how many people do you know that haven't block ads that actually click on them without them making their ui so confusing that you do it by accident? The market is overhyped

jakear 6y ago
I block ads on desktop, but on things like mobile Instagram, there’s not much you can do. To some extent I’ve learned to stop worrying and love the tracking, and I will with some regularity tap through to story ads I see with genuine interest in the product (generally outdoorsy things). I’ve not bought anything yet because the websites have failed to convince me the product isn’t junk, but that’s their problem — Facebook has successfully completed their side of the deal (get eyes on the website).
- throwaway8941 6y ago
  Have you tried DNS-based ad blocking like pi-hole or https://nextdns.io/ https://nextdns.io/ ?
  - jakear 6y ago
    I’m likely different from many hn readers, but the ads really don’t bother me all that much, and fussing with technology bothers me quite a lot. I like my personal devices to Just Work (tm), and configuring dns/setting up raspberry pi’s/etc is the antithesis of that. If I have free time I’ll spend it in the shop, kitchen, or outside — absolutely not fussing with technology.
kposehn 6y ago
> The thing is I am not sure a large percentage of advertisers are aware of such things and adjust their expectations. True. Advertiser education is a big challenge for platforms, agencies and marketing employees. Every time I go to a new company I have to educate people on the nuts and bolts so they understand how it works. By and large, they get it and the value gets proven in no uncertain terms. > Facebook and their ilk encourage you to believe their numbers even though they are mostly phony The tests I refer to get around that. If you spend $X on ads to one group and they come in the door and spend more money, how is that phony? And where are there actual ads stats on a campaign a company has purchased that are phony by FB? They've had issues around their marketing of ad statistics externally, but after well into the mid nine figures spent there in my career I've never seen a single phony ad stat, only mistakes we made ourselves that inflated/compressed our numbers. > I mean how many people do you know that haven't block ads that actually click on them without them making their ui so confusing that you do it by accident? You're thinking of content ads on low quality publisher that are trying to stuff as many ways to monetize on their site at the cost of customer experience. Those are total crap most of the time and, yes, often are not incremental. And of course, there's a population of people with ad blockers. But they still search, they still click affiliate links and they are still affected by larger brand advertising in the end. It is pervasive. > The market is overhyped Definitely not going to disagree there!
nerdponx 6y ago
You don't have to actually click on the ad anymore. There was a period of time when I was seeing a lot of ads for Bonobos pants. If I bought the pants as a result, I'd be shocked if my record as "Bonobo pants buyer" was not linked to my record as "Bonobo ads viewer". This is one of the purposes of all the tracking.

jakear 6y ago

I block ads on desktop, but on things like mobile Instagram, there’s not much you can do. To some extent I’ve learned to stop worrying and love the tracking, and I will with some regularity tap through to story ads I see with genuine interest in the product (generally outdoorsy things). I’ve not bought anything yet because the websites have failed to convince me the product isn’t junk, but that’s their problem — Facebook has successfully completed their side of the deal (get eyes on the website).

throwaway8941 6y ago
Have you tried DNS-based ad blocking like pi-hole or https://nextdns.io/ https://nextdns.io/ ?
- jakear 6y ago
  I’m likely different from many hn readers, but the ads really don’t bother me all that much, and fussing with technology bothers me quite a lot. I like my personal devices to Just Work (tm), and configuring dns/setting up raspberry pi’s/etc is the antithesis of that. If I have free time I’ll spend it in the shop, kitchen, or outside — absolutely not fussing with technology.

kposehn 6y ago

> The thing is I am not sure a large percentage of advertisers are aware of such things and adjust their expectations. True. Advertiser education is a big challenge for platforms, agencies and marketing employees. Every time I go to a new company I have to educate people on the nuts and bolts so they understand how it works. By and large, they get it and the value gets proven in no uncertain terms. > Facebook and their ilk encourage you to believe their numbers even though they are mostly phony The tests I refer to get around that. If you spend $X on ads to one group and they come in the door and spend more money, how is that phony? And where are there actual ads stats on a campaign a company has purchased that are phony by FB? They've had issues around their marketing of ad statistics externally, but after well into the mid nine figures spent there in my career I've never seen a single phony ad stat, only mistakes we made ourselves that inflated/compressed our numbers. > I mean how many people do you know that haven't block ads that actually click on them without them making their ui so confusing that you do it by accident? You're thinking of content ads on low quality publisher that are trying to stuff as many ways to monetize on their site at the cost of customer experience. Those are total crap most of the time and, yes, often are not incremental. And of course, there's a population of people with ad blockers. But they still search, they still click affiliate links and they are still affected by larger brand advertising in the end. It is pervasive. > The market is overhyped Definitely not going to disagree there!

nerdponx 6y ago

You don't have to actually click on the ad anymore. There was a period of time when I was seeing a lot of ads for Bonobos pants. If I bought the pants as a result, I'd be shocked if my record as "Bonobo pants buyer" was not linked to my record as "Bonobo ads viewer". This is one of the purposes of all the tracking.