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Yeah I think Google and other advertisers are great at predicting what people will buy and then shows them ads for it. That’s different than showing a person an

Yeah I think Google and other advertisers are great at predicting what people will buy and then shows them ads for it. That’s different than showing a person an ad and changing their behavior, but to advertisers they can’t know unless they experiment.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
carlmr 6y ago
But that would still make their ad spend useful. Even if not in the traditional marketing sense. But if you can't see any change in business from 2/3 of ad spend at all it must be fraudulent.
josefx 6y ago
> Yeah I think Google and other advertisers are great at predicting what people will buy and then shows them ads for it. Seems to be entirely subjective. I bought a new blade for a bread cutting machine on amazon, the last one lasted ~25 years. My current recommendations: blades for bread cutting machines. I also checked some Christmas decorations on Amazon, but didn't buy any. So next to the blades I get Christmas decorations recommended. January is a bit late for that, isn't it? I also bought a single server rack on eBay. Now I regularly get spam emails from eBay reminding me of new offers for server racks. Even the company I work for doesn't have that many, so why? In short I am not really convinced that these platforms are good at predicting what I want. Rather it looks as if they are good at showing me what I already have.
- spatley 6y ago
  The answer to your confusion is that un sophisticated remarketing (showing ads for searched or purchased items) has in nearly all cases a measurable improvement on ROI. Improvements to filter out useless ad views are much more complicated and expensive. Advertisers actually don’t care about any individual case, but buy on aggregate results.
  - Snoozus 6y ago
    Oh I don't think anyone is confused about why this happens or why it's still worth it. The next step we need to take is to agree that it is unethical to steal many people's time for a little reward.
- panda888888 6y ago
  Agreed. Companies often don't understand the "directionality" of purchasing behavior. For instance, I recently bought a new iPhone directly from Apple, and I bought a case for it on Amazon. Now two months later, Amazon is recommending that I buy an iPhone (...which I bought two months ago from Apple). Buying a case an then waiting two months to buy the actual phone would be a very strange thing to do, but Amazon seems to think I should do this.
  - eitland 6y ago
    Remember this is the same Amazon that files C# and Javascript books under "Law books" etc, I have documented it: https://erik.itland.no/fun-with-amazons-ai-machine-learning https://erik.itland.no/fun-with-amazons-ai-machine-learning And Amazon is definitely not alone: Google has been troubled with "AI" running rampant in search results for years, seemingly with no or very little QA.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >In short I am not really convinced that these platforms are good at predicting what I want. Rather it looks as if they are good at showing me what I already have. While that's definitely true (I get ads from Amazon for stuff I've already purchased all the time too), in that case Amazon is leveraging their own marketing channels to support their own business -- which has, effectively, zero marginal cost to them. However, when advertisers buy space from Google or FB, that's not the case. There is a definite external cost to such ad buys. As such, being able to identify the "value" of such expenditures is (or can/should be) important to the advertisers. That said, much of advertising is based upon the idea of "top-of-mind awareness."[0] The idea being that if you are considering a purchase, the brand that comes to mind without prompting when considering that purchase will be preferred over brands of which you aren't immediately aware. Purchase decisions made on a whim or without any research are usually those which are low cost. Which is why companies like P&G, Coca Cola and like companies focus on "top-of-mind awareness." If you're going to buy a washing machine or a riding lawn mower, you're much more likely to do research than if you're going to buy a soft drink or a bag of chips. That said, the same "top-of-mind awareness" can be helpful even for big ticket items, as those brands may well be the first ones about which research may be done. Identifying how such advertising may impact purchase behavior is a complex topic, and unless you can quantify specific ad-views to actual purchases, doing so is generally speculative and is the subject of a great deal of quantitative market research[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-of-mind_awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-of-mind_awareness [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_marketing_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_marketing_researc...
- Aunche 6y ago
  The probability that a random person would want to buy a blade for a bread cutting machine is nearly 0%. The probability that you will buy a blade for a bread cutting machine again is non-zero because you may be dissatisfied with your new one.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I would guess it's fairly hard to encode a lot of rules that are obvious to most people algorithmically. Amazon does encode a likelihood of repeat purchases to some degree; they offer a coffee subscription but not a weed whacker subscription. But besides doing something like "purchases >$100 are not likely to be repeat purchases," I would think it would be difficult.
  - pas 6y ago
    The usual reply to this is that Amazon shows you that because you might return it and then buy a new one, gift it to someone, etc. They show it because it "works" for them, not because it's wrong and they just can't somehow make sure they don't show something. Because even if 99% of people don't buy anything twice, 1% probably does for some reason, and that signal just trumps all the noise. (And that's why most of ad spending is bullshit, but since Amazon's cost [even with opportunity cost] is basically 0 on their own site, they'll continue to do this.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

carlmr 6y ago

But that would still make their ad spend useful. Even if not in the traditional marketing sense. But if you can't see any change in business from 2/3 of ad spend at all it must be fraudulent.

josefx 6y ago

> Yeah I think Google and other advertisers are great at predicting what people will buy and then shows them ads for it. Seems to be entirely subjective. I bought a new blade for a bread cutting machine on amazon, the last one lasted ~25 years. My current recommendations: blades for bread cutting machines. I also checked some Christmas decorations on Amazon, but didn't buy any. So next to the blades I get Christmas decorations recommended. January is a bit late for that, isn't it? I also bought a single server rack on eBay. Now I regularly get spam emails from eBay reminding me of new offers for server racks. Even the company I work for doesn't have that many, so why? In short I am not really convinced that these platforms are good at predicting what I want. Rather it looks as if they are good at showing me what I already have.

spatley 6y ago
The answer to your confusion is that un sophisticated remarketing (showing ads for searched or purchased items) has in nearly all cases a measurable improvement on ROI. Improvements to filter out useless ad views are much more complicated and expensive. Advertisers actually don’t care about any individual case, but buy on aggregate results.
- Snoozus 6y ago
  Oh I don't think anyone is confused about why this happens or why it's still worth it. The next step we need to take is to agree that it is unethical to steal many people's time for a little reward.
panda888888 6y ago
Agreed. Companies often don't understand the "directionality" of purchasing behavior. For instance, I recently bought a new iPhone directly from Apple, and I bought a case for it on Amazon. Now two months later, Amazon is recommending that I buy an iPhone (...which I bought two months ago from Apple). Buying a case an then waiting two months to buy the actual phone would be a very strange thing to do, but Amazon seems to think I should do this.
- eitland 6y ago
  Remember this is the same Amazon that files C# and Javascript books under "Law books" etc, I have documented it: https://erik.itland.no/fun-with-amazons-ai-machine-learning https://erik.itland.no/fun-with-amazons-ai-machine-learning And Amazon is definitely not alone: Google has been troubled with "AI" running rampant in search results for years, seemingly with no or very little QA.
nobody9999 6y ago
>In short I am not really convinced that these platforms are good at predicting what I want. Rather it looks as if they are good at showing me what I already have. While that's definitely true (I get ads from Amazon for stuff I've already purchased all the time too), in that case Amazon is leveraging their own marketing channels to support their own business -- which has, effectively, zero marginal cost to them. However, when advertisers buy space from Google or FB, that's not the case. There is a definite external cost to such ad buys. As such, being able to identify the "value" of such expenditures is (or can/should be) important to the advertisers. That said, much of advertising is based upon the idea of "top-of-mind awareness."[0] The idea being that if you are considering a purchase, the brand that comes to mind without prompting when considering that purchase will be preferred over brands of which you aren't immediately aware. Purchase decisions made on a whim or without any research are usually those which are low cost. Which is why companies like P&G, Coca Cola and like companies focus on "top-of-mind awareness." If you're going to buy a washing machine or a riding lawn mower, you're much more likely to do research than if you're going to buy a soft drink or a bag of chips. That said, the same "top-of-mind awareness" can be helpful even for big ticket items, as those brands may well be the first ones about which research may be done. Identifying how such advertising may impact purchase behavior is a complex topic, and unless you can quantify specific ad-views to actual purchases, doing so is generally speculative and is the subject of a great deal of quantitative market research[1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-of-mind_awareness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-of-mind_awareness [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_marketing_research https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_marketing_researc...
Aunche 6y ago
The probability that a random person would want to buy a blade for a bread cutting machine is nearly 0%. The probability that you will buy a blade for a bread cutting machine again is non-zero because you may be dissatisfied with your new one.
ghaff 6y ago
I would guess it's fairly hard to encode a lot of rules that are obvious to most people algorithmically. Amazon does encode a likelihood of repeat purchases to some degree; they offer a coffee subscription but not a weed whacker subscription. But besides doing something like "purchases >$100 are not likely to be repeat purchases," I would think it would be difficult.
- pas 6y ago
  The usual reply to this is that Amazon shows you that because you might return it and then buy a new one, gift it to someone, etc. They show it because it "works" for them, not because it's wrong and they just can't somehow make sure they don't show something. Because even if 99% of people don't buy anything twice, 1% probably does for some reason, and that signal just trumps all the noise. (And that's why most of ad spending is bullshit, but since Amazon's cost [even with opportunity cost] is basically 0 on their own site, they'll continue to do this.)