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The thing is these ads are not exactly effective either. I mean you'll read about the guru's with 90% conversion rate at 0.50c per click or some garbage like th

The thing is these ads are not exactly effective either. I mean you'll read about the guru's with 90% conversion rate at 0.50c per click or some garbage like that but when you run them yourself, with what is considered a normal company (not a unicorn) you somehow find yourself with a <1% CR on most remarketing/tracking ads. They are crazy cheap though and essentially act like a TV/Radio ad. It's about getting repeated exposure, even if it's not a direct conversion (because it never is). Everyone wants to get rich quick these days and highly customized ads appear to be the best way to get there.

8fingerlouie 6y ago
It’s not like the current tracking adds are super efficient always. I searched for a new washing machine, found one I liked, bought it, and spent the next 3 months looking at washing machine adds.
- melomal 6y ago
  The cost of keeping it like that is next to none so there's very little motivation to fix it too. I've done many remarketing ads and generally speaking setting it up to avoid recent buyers is pointless in the grand scheme of daily work.
- II2II 6y ago
  Clearly more tracking needs to be done in order to connect your conversion to your purchase. Not only will they stop showing ads of washing machines after the purchase, knowing the make and model will help them gauge when to start targeting repair ads as well as start targeting replacement machine ads. They will also know whether you will stick to the current manufacturer or which you will switch to, and which model you will buy. You will be able to live with the comfort of knowing that your entire future of washing machine purchases is planned out and concentrate your energy on more important things in life (such as lobbying for better privacy protections).
  - tluyben2 6y ago
    Well, they could just use common sense: a washing machine is something people look at when the old one broke down or moved house: they need it so they are likely to buy one asap. Show it a week and then stop. Laptops are similar: makes no sense showing it for months, and that is what happens now. Even if they have the sales data, it is not connected to the ad data (bought a laptop from a big chain here this week: will get ads for that laptop from the same chain for months) so common sense should work fine for now. If the ads appear around the days I am looking for the article, I even might click on them. Now that my brain knows all ads are irrelevant because they are outdated things I already have, I just do not see them anymore.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  With a lot more AI the smart people at Google, Amazon and Facebook may find out one day that there are products you buy rarely versus products you buy repeatedly. Like washing machines vs potato chips. It makes sense to show ads for potato chips but with washing machines you should stop after purchase. I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where ads are totally out of context.
  - fhood 6y ago
    You know I think Amazon may have gotten better about that in the last little bit. I don't recall being flooded with recommendations for something I just purchased recently.
    - CaptainZapp 6y ago
      Amazon knows what you ordered. So it's pretty simple for them not displaying ads for high-ticket items you just purchased.
  - fakedang 6y ago
    > I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where ads are totally out of context. Or out of nowhere. I get ads for real estate in Chicago - except that I live across the Atlantic. Or ladies products every time after my fiancee used my phone. Not to mention how most ads are just plain bad. I don't mind actually watching good ads - I was hooked onto buying the Asus Zenbook Pro Duo for a while because of its ad (although later I learnt that the product was shit). The Honda Day/Night ad is another one that comes to mind.
  - ChrisIsTaken 6y ago
    Not an AI problem. This happens when small businesses outsource their adsense campaign to one of the many completely incompetent fly by night SEO shops, or to their grandson who's "good at computers". Half of Google's income is derived from businesses pissing their marketing budget up a wall with incorrectly targeted ads. But it's still more effective than newspapers.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  You seem to imply that the alternative would be more effective. What ads did you see in the 3 months prior to buying it? Maybe they were equally bad or worse but you forgot because of the psychological impact of the washing machines.
  - 8fingerlouie 6y ago
    I’d like to say I saw the “normal selection”, but the truth is I don’t remember. I’m fairly certain there were not many washing machines there, but probably a good deal of “tech”. In any case, I put up a network wide Pi-hole blocker shortly after it because the washing machine adds didn’t just show up on my single device, but pretty much every device i own, including my wife’s phone. I’ve since spent a long time since trying to convince my wife that Apple doesn’t listen for keywords and sell it (though I have no doubt Facebook, Google and Amazon would - if allowed), and that the fact she was seeing washing machine adds as well was either that she had searched for one (at the same time) or they were basing it on our public ip. I also switched my search engine to DDG at the same time, and it’s quite funny watching the profiling algorithms struggle to find something they think I like. There are still washing machines in there, but the rest of the adds are pretty much all over the place.
DaedPsyker 6y ago
Could it just be that online advertising is simply oversold? I don't know about others but I'd click an ad maybe once every 6 months at best. Maybe there is logic behind constant feed although on a number of occasions I actively avoid products for bombarding me (looking at you grammerly).
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  I do believe online advertising is a bit of a bubble right now. Lots of bullshit unprofitable VC-funded companies burn tons of money on advertising (more than what they'd ever earn from the potential customer) in an attempt to establish monopolies which in turn inflates the value of advertising companies.
  - melomal 6y ago
    Slap the word A.I. or ML in there are you are golden. New platform, new opportunities. I have thrown money into ad's on various content suggestion platforms, Reddit, Quora, BuySellAds, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and a hell of a lot more. TikTok is apparently incredible right now with conversions and pricing. It's all over the forums and the guru's are pumping it too. Give me some solid targeting options and viable metrics and you could probably wrangle some money out of me and many other marketers out there. I would say it's easy money if you can spin the ad network in a new way.
- melomal 6y ago
  From a marketing pro's perspective you assume that because you have data - reach, impressions, est. click-through rates etc - that you can find a 'quick win' aka get rich rich quick. So inevitably you try it, then you get some 'tips', then you read a marketing guru's success story, then you start getting ads for ebooks all of which have the best strategy and you really feel that you have no choice but to go for it. It's the FOMO/what if complex magnified by professional requirements to grow at all costs. From now on I consider online advertising like gambling. You think you can win but the house always win's because you spend more money on A/B testing, copy edits and new keywords all of which create very few leads or deals. You always think you can win too, 8 years later I still go back to online ad's because I feel that there's just that juicy copy, design, content combo round the corner.
dillondoyle 6y ago
I see this a lot but I find that it can't be true on the whole for many many. We buy ads for political clients. On FB I could get a positive immediate roi for donations. Scaling huge is hard (i got one client to over $1 million last cycle for context). Admittedly but you could go a lot bigger if you look at ROI down the line with email donations. And we're not alone. I don't think the many many direct to consumer brands would spend so much money on FB if they didn't get a positive ROI. Maybe some PE or other funded brands are trying to grow over profit spending more than they make. But there are a ton that are profit seeking and get good value. FB is definitely an exception though unless you are an app install ad on mobile.
- afdgadfgadfh 6y ago
  Where is the control for the experiment? What is the ROI on non-targeted ads?
  - eivarv 6y ago
    Exactly. Not to mention that lots of people do lots of stupid stuff – so appealing to it's popularity doesn't tell us much either.
  - dillondoyle 6y ago
    There are a lot of ways to do it. For us we make a donation page. The only links that go there are from FB ads. We also use different refcodes for different ad groups AND the FB pixel passing in purchase value which is really good at optimizing FB's delivery to highest ROAS FB is very very very good at this I feel like people who question it or like don't understand basic attribution should do some more research before denigrating There are other non-direct measurement, FB for instance allows you to upload offline purchases. Definitely not as clean especially if you're hitting across different channels. But a basic A/B holdout test is pretty good in that case too.
    - dillondoyle 6y ago
      Also re-reading I think I misunderstood half of your question. For us personally we cannot get anywhere close to similar ROI from other platforms like Snap that attempt to be FB let alone contextual targeting. It probably works better for app instal ads but otherwise it's. The cookie based ecosystem also doesn't add a ton of value, some studies say between 5-15%. It's Facebook and Amazon and Google's 1P data that don't rely on cookies.
quest88 6y ago
Anecdotally they're effective on me. I've bought lots of things through fb/instagram ads.
bpodgursky 6y ago
The arrogance of people outside the industry saying that a many-billion-dollar market is "not effective" is... kinda ludicrous on here. If you don't think it's right for them to exist, I'm not challenging that viewpoint at all. But coming in and assuming, with minimal to no research, that thousand of people and billions of dollars are pouring into complicated products which don't actually do anything, is a bit of an anti-vaxxer approach to the world.

8fingerlouie 6y ago

It’s not like the current tracking adds are super efficient always. I searched for a new washing machine, found one I liked, bought it, and spent the next 3 months looking at washing machine adds.

melomal 6y ago
The cost of keeping it like that is next to none so there's very little motivation to fix it too. I've done many remarketing ads and generally speaking setting it up to avoid recent buyers is pointless in the grand scheme of daily work.
II2II 6y ago
Clearly more tracking needs to be done in order to connect your conversion to your purchase. Not only will they stop showing ads of washing machines after the purchase, knowing the make and model will help them gauge when to start targeting repair ads as well as start targeting replacement machine ads. They will also know whether you will stick to the current manufacturer or which you will switch to, and which model you will buy. You will be able to live with the comfort of knowing that your entire future of washing machine purchases is planned out and concentrate your energy on more important things in life (such as lobbying for better privacy protections).
- tluyben2 6y ago
  Well, they could just use common sense: a washing machine is something people look at when the old one broke down or moved house: they need it so they are likely to buy one asap. Show it a week and then stop. Laptops are similar: makes no sense showing it for months, and that is what happens now. Even if they have the sales data, it is not connected to the ad data (bought a laptop from a big chain here this week: will get ads for that laptop from the same chain for months) so common sense should work fine for now. If the ads appear around the days I am looking for the article, I even might click on them. Now that my brain knows all ads are irrelevant because they are outdated things I already have, I just do not see them anymore.
spaetzleesser 6y ago
With a lot more AI the smart people at Google, Amazon and Facebook may find out one day that there are products you buy rarely versus products you buy repeatedly. Like washing machines vs potato chips. It makes sense to show ads for potato chips but with washing machines you should stop after purchase. I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where ads are totally out of context.
- fhood 6y ago
  You know I think Amazon may have gotten better about that in the last little bit. I don't recall being flooded with recommendations for something I just purchased recently.
  - CaptainZapp 6y ago
    Amazon knows what you ordered. So it's pretty simple for them not displaying ads for high-ticket items you just purchased.
- fakedang 6y ago
  > I much preferred the time when kiteboarding sites had static kiteboarding ads instead of the current situation where ads are totally out of context. Or out of nowhere. I get ads for real estate in Chicago - except that I live across the Atlantic. Or ladies products every time after my fiancee used my phone. Not to mention how most ads are just plain bad. I don't mind actually watching good ads - I was hooked onto buying the Asus Zenbook Pro Duo for a while because of its ad (although later I learnt that the product was shit). The Honda Day/Night ad is another one that comes to mind.
- ChrisIsTaken 6y ago
  Not an AI problem. This happens when small businesses outsource their adsense campaign to one of the many completely incompetent fly by night SEO shops, or to their grandson who's "good at computers". Half of Google's income is derived from businesses pissing their marketing budget up a wall with incorrectly targeted ads. But it's still more effective than newspapers.
exporectomy 6y ago
You seem to imply that the alternative would be more effective. What ads did you see in the 3 months prior to buying it? Maybe they were equally bad or worse but you forgot because of the psychological impact of the washing machines.
- 8fingerlouie 6y ago
  I’d like to say I saw the “normal selection”, but the truth is I don’t remember. I’m fairly certain there were not many washing machines there, but probably a good deal of “tech”. In any case, I put up a network wide Pi-hole blocker shortly after it because the washing machine adds didn’t just show up on my single device, but pretty much every device i own, including my wife’s phone. I’ve since spent a long time since trying to convince my wife that Apple doesn’t listen for keywords and sell it (though I have no doubt Facebook, Google and Amazon would - if allowed), and that the fact she was seeing washing machine adds as well was either that she had searched for one (at the same time) or they were basing it on our public ip. I also switched my search engine to DDG at the same time, and it’s quite funny watching the profiling algorithms struggle to find something they think I like. There are still washing machines in there, but the rest of the adds are pretty much all over the place.

DaedPsyker 6y ago

Could it just be that online advertising is simply oversold? I don't know about others but I'd click an ad maybe once every 6 months at best. Maybe there is logic behind constant feed although on a number of occasions I actively avoid products for bombarding me (looking at you grammerly).

Nextgrid 6y ago
I do believe online advertising is a bit of a bubble right now. Lots of bullshit unprofitable VC-funded companies burn tons of money on advertising (more than what they'd ever earn from the potential customer) in an attempt to establish monopolies which in turn inflates the value of advertising companies.
- melomal 6y ago
  Slap the word A.I. or ML in there are you are golden. New platform, new opportunities. I have thrown money into ad's on various content suggestion platforms, Reddit, Quora, BuySellAds, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and a hell of a lot more. TikTok is apparently incredible right now with conversions and pricing. It's all over the forums and the guru's are pumping it too. Give me some solid targeting options and viable metrics and you could probably wrangle some money out of me and many other marketers out there. I would say it's easy money if you can spin the ad network in a new way.
melomal 6y ago
From a marketing pro's perspective you assume that because you have data - reach, impressions, est. click-through rates etc - that you can find a 'quick win' aka get rich rich quick. So inevitably you try it, then you get some 'tips', then you read a marketing guru's success story, then you start getting ads for ebooks all of which have the best strategy and you really feel that you have no choice but to go for it. It's the FOMO/what if complex magnified by professional requirements to grow at all costs. From now on I consider online advertising like gambling. You think you can win but the house always win's because you spend more money on A/B testing, copy edits and new keywords all of which create very few leads or deals. You always think you can win too, 8 years later I still go back to online ad's because I feel that there's just that juicy copy, design, content combo round the corner.

dillondoyle 6y ago

I see this a lot but I find that it can't be true on the whole for many many. We buy ads for political clients. On FB I could get a positive immediate roi for donations. Scaling huge is hard (i got one client to over $1 million last cycle for context). Admittedly but you could go a lot bigger if you look at ROI down the line with email donations. And we're not alone. I don't think the many many direct to consumer brands would spend so much money on FB if they didn't get a positive ROI. Maybe some PE or other funded brands are trying to grow over profit spending more than they make. But there are a ton that are profit seeking and get good value. FB is definitely an exception though unless you are an app install ad on mobile.

afdgadfgadfh 6y ago
Where is the control for the experiment? What is the ROI on non-targeted ads?
- eivarv 6y ago
  Exactly. Not to mention that lots of people do lots of stupid stuff – so appealing to it's popularity doesn't tell us much either.
- dillondoyle 6y ago
  There are a lot of ways to do it. For us we make a donation page. The only links that go there are from FB ads. We also use different refcodes for different ad groups AND the FB pixel passing in purchase value which is really good at optimizing FB's delivery to highest ROAS FB is very very very good at this I feel like people who question it or like don't understand basic attribution should do some more research before denigrating There are other non-direct measurement, FB for instance allows you to upload offline purchases. Definitely not as clean especially if you're hitting across different channels. But a basic A/B holdout test is pretty good in that case too.
  - dillondoyle 6y ago
    Also re-reading I think I misunderstood half of your question. For us personally we cannot get anywhere close to similar ROI from other platforms like Snap that attempt to be FB let alone contextual targeting. It probably works better for app instal ads but otherwise it's. The cookie based ecosystem also doesn't add a ton of value, some studies say between 5-15%. It's Facebook and Amazon and Google's 1P data that don't rely on cookies.

quest88 6y ago

Anecdotally they're effective on me. I've bought lots of things through fb/instagram ads.

bpodgursky 6y ago

The arrogance of people outside the industry saying that a many-billion-dollar market is "not effective" is... kinda ludicrous on here. If you don't think it's right for them to exist, I'm not challenging that viewpoint at all. But coming in and assuming, with minimal to no research, that thousand of people and billions of dollars are pouring into complicated products which don't actually do anything, is a bit of an anti-vaxxer approach to the world.