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I have this suspicion that mobile ads have way weaker effect than claimed. No-one in adtech has any interest in finding out. Marketers don't want to lose budget

I have this suspicion that mobile ads have way weaker effect than claimed. No-one in adtech has any interest in finding out. Marketers don't want to lose budgets or importance either. So a lot of money is wasted on annoying people. How sad.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago
Engaging random marketing consultants is a good way to waste money on ads. However, anyone engineering for advertising from the start of your distribution plans should be able to measure these things. It’s not hard to track which signups came from ad clicks versus organic traffic. The problem is that most companies start out focused on their apps and simply assume advertising is a totally independent function that happens elsewhere in the company. Invest some time into including advertising as part of your signup process and it’s really not that difficult to track LTV of customers who signed up via ads. In fact, that’s how Uber confirmed this fraud. They noticed that some of these fake customers were clicking on the ads and getting signed up within seconds, which is something only bots can pull off. If the customers you’re getting from ad signups aren’t actually spending money in the app, you should know about this from basic analytics.
- Snoozus 6y ago
  Even if you do this the ad-people will claim that showing people ads repeatedly will make them buy your product eventually. Maybe when they actually need such a product. At this point you cannot connect the events anymore. This effect is probably weak but not falsifiable.
jayd16 6y ago
I'm certain they do want to find out. Adtech still wants to know where paying users are even if the total is less than they'd like to claim.
chrisdinn 6y ago
I think the problem is that the overwhelming majority of digital ad formats just don’t work. Does anyone who works in digital ad tech genuinely believe that these formats work? I have been here for the last ten years and have come to believe they do not, certainly not comparable like traditional linear TV or print in their heydays. There are exceptions. I think Google search ad works so well it’s eating the product. I think YouTube’s TrueView is great for modern brand advertisers (safety issues aside). But by and large, banner ads, forced video pre-rolls, etc don’t work. The negative message of the format offsets any message you try to convey. Yes, fraud is a part of this. But I think a lot of this evidence looks the same as if none of their targeted, performance-based advertising was doing anything at all, beside really weak branding. Genuinely interested to hear from people who disagree.
- wasdfff 6y ago
  Instagram ads for millenials are like flies to honey in my anecdotal experience. So many of my peers buy their furniture, dress shoes, clothing, water bottles, watches, dog leashes, pretty much everything in their lives from seeing some like-aged person use that thing on an instagram ad (and the product usually being pretty cheap). It blows my mind how successful these dime a dozen drop shipping companies based on instagram are with millenials and gen z, and buying like this will only be more normalized in the future as more people know someone who got something nice from that instagram ad.
  - MivLives 6y ago
    Yeah I've noticed I've even been drawn to something because of the mindless scroll to that's pretty neat, the button to buy it is right in front of me. I suspect this really only works for more novelty things like clothing that are cheap enough to enough to impulse buy and of interest to image conscious people.
  - spideymans 6y ago
    >It blows my mind how successful these dime a dozen drop shipping companies based on instagram are with millenials and gen z, and buying like this will only be more normalized in the future as more people know someone who got something nice from that instagram ad. Especially with stay-at-home orders due to the pandemic, everyone (well, not everyone... but hyperbole) now has their own drop shipping brands operated out of their basements, all selling the same cheap products off of AliExpress. Will consumers catch on to what is going on? Do they even care?
- georgeecollins 6y ago
  Digital advertising is super effective for mobile ftp games. It is not a question if they work, it’s a question if the game can earn enough to justify the cost. Companies in that space have a super smart team of economists and data scientist constantly checking when a mobile app is worth advertising. Someone in this thread said no one has proved to them that digital ads are ever worth it. My experience is that when they are you don’t want to advertise it to potential competitors or the people who carry your ads.
janmo 6y ago
Interestingly mobile ads are typically cheaper to buy than desktop ones.
bastawhiz 6y ago
I've been playing a silly phone game for about a month now. Only last week I realized it has ads: I'd become so ad-blind that I completely ignored the banner ad they keep at the bottom of the window at all times. I only noticed it because it flickered when transitioning to another ad.
wpietri 6y ago
Makes sense to me. CEO: "We need to do something about growth!" Marketer: "Mobile ads are something!" CEO: "I read those are hot. Here's a bucket of money! Do lots of something so we have lots of growth!" [spending ensues] As the Uber story shows, a lot of money gets spent without anybody making sure that it actually works. The actual goal is not to have an effect. It's to be seen as taking bold action. If the business gets better, bonuses and promotions ensue, no matter what the actual cause. Cargo cult management. It sounds insane, but I'm sure it's rife. Years ago I was coaching at a Lean Startup weekend class. One team really killed it, rapidly testing product hypotheses through real-world testing. Their initial idea was quickly proven worthless, but they listened to users and came up with an idea that would sell. I kept in touch with one of those team members. He went back to his prominent, well-funded startup, excited to improve his company. But nobody wanted improvement. Execs wanted to sit in a big room, think big thoughts, and produce specs. The engineers were to implement those specs. But nobody would measure the effects of anything. Proof that a grand poobah's idea didn't actually pan out was deeply unwelcome. It slowly drove my pal mad and he quit. The company bumped along for a few years to a modest acquisition, but it never really lived up to the hopes.

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

Engaging random marketing consultants is a good way to waste money on ads. However, anyone engineering for advertising from the start of your distribution plans should be able to measure these things. It’s not hard to track which signups came from ad clicks versus organic traffic. The problem is that most companies start out focused on their apps and simply assume advertising is a totally independent function that happens elsewhere in the company. Invest some time into including advertising as part of your signup process and it’s really not that difficult to track LTV of customers who signed up via ads. In fact, that’s how Uber confirmed this fraud. They noticed that some of these fake customers were clicking on the ads and getting signed up within seconds, which is something only bots can pull off. If the customers you’re getting from ad signups aren’t actually spending money in the app, you should know about this from basic analytics.

Snoozus 6y ago
Even if you do this the ad-people will claim that showing people ads repeatedly will make them buy your product eventually. Maybe when they actually need such a product. At this point you cannot connect the events anymore. This effect is probably weak but not falsifiable.

jayd16 6y ago

I'm certain they do want to find out. Adtech still wants to know where paying users are even if the total is less than they'd like to claim.

chrisdinn 6y ago

I think the problem is that the overwhelming majority of digital ad formats just don’t work. Does anyone who works in digital ad tech genuinely believe that these formats work? I have been here for the last ten years and have come to believe they do not, certainly not comparable like traditional linear TV or print in their heydays. There are exceptions. I think Google search ad works so well it’s eating the product. I think YouTube’s TrueView is great for modern brand advertisers (safety issues aside). But by and large, banner ads, forced video pre-rolls, etc don’t work. The negative message of the format offsets any message you try to convey. Yes, fraud is a part of this. But I think a lot of this evidence looks the same as if none of their targeted, performance-based advertising was doing anything at all, beside really weak branding. Genuinely interested to hear from people who disagree.

wasdfff 6y ago
Instagram ads for millenials are like flies to honey in my anecdotal experience. So many of my peers buy their furniture, dress shoes, clothing, water bottles, watches, dog leashes, pretty much everything in their lives from seeing some like-aged person use that thing on an instagram ad (and the product usually being pretty cheap). It blows my mind how successful these dime a dozen drop shipping companies based on instagram are with millenials and gen z, and buying like this will only be more normalized in the future as more people know someone who got something nice from that instagram ad.
- MivLives 6y ago
  Yeah I've noticed I've even been drawn to something because of the mindless scroll to that's pretty neat, the button to buy it is right in front of me. I suspect this really only works for more novelty things like clothing that are cheap enough to enough to impulse buy and of interest to image conscious people.
- spideymans 6y ago
  >It blows my mind how successful these dime a dozen drop shipping companies based on instagram are with millenials and gen z, and buying like this will only be more normalized in the future as more people know someone who got something nice from that instagram ad. Especially with stay-at-home orders due to the pandemic, everyone (well, not everyone... but hyperbole) now has their own drop shipping brands operated out of their basements, all selling the same cheap products off of AliExpress. Will consumers catch on to what is going on? Do they even care?
georgeecollins 6y ago
Digital advertising is super effective for mobile ftp games. It is not a question if they work, it’s a question if the game can earn enough to justify the cost. Companies in that space have a super smart team of economists and data scientist constantly checking when a mobile app is worth advertising. Someone in this thread said no one has proved to them that digital ads are ever worth it. My experience is that when they are you don’t want to advertise it to potential competitors or the people who carry your ads.

janmo 6y ago

Interestingly mobile ads are typically cheaper to buy than desktop ones.

bastawhiz 6y ago

I've been playing a silly phone game for about a month now. Only last week I realized it has ads: I'd become so ad-blind that I completely ignored the banner ad they keep at the bottom of the window at all times. I only noticed it because it flickered when transitioning to another ad.

wpietri 6y ago

Makes sense to me. CEO: "We need to do something about growth!" Marketer: "Mobile ads are something!" CEO: "I read those are hot. Here's a bucket of money! Do lots of something so we have lots of growth!" [spending ensues] As the Uber story shows, a lot of money gets spent without anybody making sure that it actually works. The actual goal is not to have an effect. It's to be seen as taking bold action. If the business gets better, bonuses and promotions ensue, no matter what the actual cause. Cargo cult management. It sounds insane, but I'm sure it's rife. Years ago I was coaching at a Lean Startup weekend class. One team really killed it, rapidly testing product hypotheses through real-world testing. Their initial idea was quickly proven worthless, but they listened to users and came up with an idea that would sell. I kept in touch with one of those team members. He went back to his prominent, well-funded startup, excited to improve his company. But nobody wanted improvement. Execs wanted to sit in a big room, think big thoughts, and produce specs. The engineers were to implement those specs. But nobody would measure the effects of anything. Proof that a grand poobah's idea didn't actually pan out was deeply unwelcome. It slowly drove my pal mad and he quit. The company bumped along for a few years to a modest acquisition, but it never really lived up to the hopes.