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It annoys me beyond belief that every single digital ads HN thread this is the most upvoted hot take and it rarely comes from someone working in buy side let al

It annoys me beyond belief that every single digital ads HN thread this is the most upvoted hot take and it rarely comes from someone working in buy side let alone ads in general. Good or bad or neutral, FB's targeting specifically works amazingly well and better than anything else for many buyers. Especially for direct response ads. If you can't make money selling your product from digital ads, you're not saving dollars you're losing revenue. This is true especially for 'internet only' upstart products, for example everyone who gets stuck in for instance a $60 athletic short ad loop as an example!! Sometimes you hear examples here about a new product or kickstarter who pre-this type of digital would probably not be able to launch or it would be much harder. Brand advertising is different and targeting can definitely argue doesn't matter as much. But these changes has already changed how we spend money, and we're tiny in the grand scheme. The other point that always gets thrown out: It's also incredibly simple to measure effectiveness or lift. Staying with FB as an example, if you are selling a product it can be as simple as using a unique link for your FB ads. ROI = Purchases with that link / FB spend. FB also has a large set of conversion tracking JS and offline like loading your retail conversions to the platform to match. But given the new rules FB is now 'modeling' ROAS and it has decreased accuracy for us from something like previously capturing 80-95% of conversions to sometimes less than half. This makes a big difference in auto-optimizing on their end and thus our ROAS. And again sure, it gets complicated and definitely more snake oil to buy some 3rd party ad tech which claims to model across all your channels online and off. A lot of times that's gamed or just a bunch of BS. But another way to measure is say you're a larger brand buying TV, digital, OOH etc the works. You can simply control by making only one single change segregated to a control and treatment geo/group before and after, measure delta.

rubyfan 5y ago
I’m not deep in this space but was thinking something along the lines of your response. If I understand it right, advertisers will lose efficiency here but I’m skeptical that it’ll cost ad networks much because advertisers will still need to reach an audience but will now suddenly be less effective at targeting.
nojito 5y ago
>Good or bad or neutral, FB's targeting specifically works amazingly well and better than anything else for many buyers. Especially for direct response ads. A recent study says otherwise. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.1188 https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.118... Do you have any studies supporting your claim that it "works amazingly well"?
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  I buy political ads for a living. I can (usually) make an immediate positive return on investment running ads for donations or growing an email list. Been doing this for years and has raised millions for our clients. I have tested and spent money on other platforms none of them work nearly as well for our clients. Search ads work but I believe that's far more of what OP is talking about. If your website is already #1 spot and someone searches to donate they would probably do it already getting there quickly without the ad. The problem is when others or even the same party parent org buys that top spot to get that traffic.
  - nojito 5y ago
    A simple no would have sufficed. No one is arguing that data brokers don't make millions selling ads. The argument verified by the study is that demographic and location segmentation doesn't work when targeting ads.
    - tormeh 5y ago
      Demographic and location segmentation is just a shitty way to target and is a prime example of looking for your keys under the lamppost because that's where the light is. That said, your point is unfortunately very relevant because many advertisers still do this.
    - stale2002 5y ago
      > A simple no would have sufficed. Actually, I think it is pretty important that they explained that they are an expert in the field, and that you, a not expert, don't really know anything about the space, and thus your opinion is quite literally, not as informed as theirs.
karlp 5y ago
As someone who doesn't work in advertising but is insterested in the space, I find your comment interesting but it doesn't help you are not providing much data for your hot take either. You mention Kickstarter, but looking at the list of crowdfunded projects, most of the successful ones were quite a while ago, if anything the most recent ones looks like scammy crypto coins, which would suggest advertising works rather for bad projects, a net negative. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowdfunding_projects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowd...
- dwild 5y ago
  > You mention Kickstarter, but looking at the list of crowdfunded projects, most of the successful ones were quite a while ago If you want to see Kickstarter projects that failed because of lack of advertisement, I suggest you to go Kickstarter itself[1]... you may have better luck than going on the List of highest-funded crowdfunding projects, which is mostly unrelated to Kickstarter. You'll see that most of them doesn't require much money to works. The only reason they doesn't get that money is their lack of advertising. Sure they could buy ads, but you'll see that they all are pretty niche too, they can't just get the same advertising as a bus stop, that would be just too absurd and cost them 100x more than their current goal. You can believe they just doesn't deserve to exist, that's fair, but that's not the point. The point is to show the importance of advertising and how niche project just couldn't reach their audience if you make it harder and harder to reach. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?raised=0&sort=end_date&seed=2704171&page=1 https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?raised=0&sort=...
morelisp 5y ago
> You can simply control by making only one single change segregated to a control and treatment geo/group before and after, measure delta. Because nothing else is going on in the world besides your ad campaign, right? Like you I find the comments about the ad industry here on HN largely ignorant, but I also think most advertisers and agencies are dumb as rocks, or at best high on their own supply. Like, a piece of analysis I saw recently had some claimed weirdass causation along the lines of, X days is the optimum period between first indication of intent in a product and showing an ad for that product, if the user didn't convert immediately. They had run an experiment like you suggest with varying intervals for audiences. But, the way better correlation was with stimulus payouts. That wasn't in their model, because their model only had the inputs they controlled, before and after, and measured delta. Everyone is selling snake oil because every advertiser is demanding snake oil. It's so fucked up.
- dillondoyle 5y ago
  Yeah definitely 'multi-touch attribution' ad tech is a lot of crap a lot of the time especially for big brands stuff. And lol got to love advertisers selling advertising it's like one of the launch websites you see on Show HN sometimes that just have a bunch of #words that have no meaning ;) it's the flat out 'ads don't work you can't know they worked' stuff which bugs me that is evidently hard to simply explain
alkonaut 5y ago
Perhaps I’m naive but my view is that online advertising should have targeting no better than bus stop ads (coarse geographic) and conversion should ideally not even be measurable. When I buy shoes I prefer to not even say which campaign made me do it (just like the bus stop ad). I find the whole jargon of this post dystopian.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  I don't know. It isn't that I think targeted ads are bad. I think it is simply jarring that humans are that quantifiable, and separately, that I am skeptical of the privacy policies of the gatherers of this data. My Instagram feed shows me lots of startup clothing companies for young to middle aged men, and I finally tried some, and damnit if they aren't decent jeans. If we accept that ads are not inherently evil, and we accept that ads (when not manipulative or selling unethical/addictive products) are more beneficial to a recipient if they're relevant, then targeting (if done ethically and stored as anonymously as possible) is a great thing. I find that the ads are actually more straightforward than traditional ads. They literally say "These jeans are stylish, durable and American-made". I didn't sit through 30 seconds of Brett Favre throwing a football to signal that I'm just like him.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    I think they are bad if they use context I didn’t want to provide. I’d be happy to give any website a pretty detailed profile of interests and “cohort” if I knew that’s where it stopped. But I don’t think ads can target ethically and with respect for privacy. I’d love to be proven wrong.
  - tfehring 5y ago
    I'm also not opposed to targeting in principle, and in fact I'd love to reach an end state where a company - whether you call it an ad company or otherwise - does 98% of my shopping for me. But I feel like we're in an uncanny valley in which adtechs are hoovering up more data than they'd even need to do that, but with no incentive to push consumers toward products we'll actually be happy with. Facebook is probably better off if your new jeans wear out in a few months, and Amazon can't even be trusted to reliably ship you the products they think they're shipping you, let alone vouch for their quality.
clairity 5y ago
in my experience, fb ads are a mixed bag. they tend to give you the illusion of control without the commensurate results, converting at a noticeably lower rate. sometimes prices are low enough to compensate for the lower conversion, but not usually. though it might be changing with the normalization of the fb marketplace, folks aren't usually looking for the things that require advertising inducement on facebook, so there's a significant intent/context mismatch.
tomjen3 5y ago
If Facebook ads are so good, why is it that I basically only get shitty, general ads? I am a single geek with disposable income, why is my feed not filled with ads for cool tech products? I just checked and the only Facebook ad was for cancer awareness.
- xxpor 5y ago
  Are you actually allowing the tracking?
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    I am an Android user. I don't have a choice :(
    - pmontra 5y ago
      You do. Install blockada. No more ads and trackers, even in apps. https://blokada.org/ https://blokada.org/
    - f1refly 5y ago
      You have the choice to both adaway and firefox with the usual addons. You can also choose to not have google on your phone.
- Method-X 5y ago
  Do you have a PiHole?
eschaton 5y ago
Advertising is cancer and it’s a good thing when less money is spent on it and less of it is thrown in peoples’ faces. The ideal system is one where people pay for services and see no ads on the services they pay for and nobody can monetize their data.
- motoxpro 5y ago
  I can't afford to pay for all the stuff I use. FB, IG, YT, etc would cost a fortune. I'll happily watch my ads, thanks.
rkagerer 5y ago
I come from the user side and I am extremely pleased to hear this news. Advertising on my device has gotten completely out of hand, I never asked for it and I don't want it.
- candiodari 5y ago
  It seems like people have already forgotten. When TV ads gradually got less and less effective in the 90s. What was the result? Incredibly intrusive constant bloody annoying ads. Not less of them, far, FAR more. To the point the TV became unwatchable.

rubyfan 5y ago

I’m not deep in this space but was thinking something along the lines of your response. If I understand it right, advertisers will lose efficiency here but I’m skeptical that it’ll cost ad networks much because advertisers will still need to reach an audience but will now suddenly be less effective at targeting.

nojito 5y ago

>Good or bad or neutral, FB's targeting specifically works amazingly well and better than anything else for many buyers. Especially for direct response ads. A recent study says otherwise. https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.1188 https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/pdf/10.1287/mksc.2019.118... Do you have any studies supporting your claim that it "works amazingly well"?

dillondoyle 5y ago
I buy political ads for a living. I can (usually) make an immediate positive return on investment running ads for donations or growing an email list. Been doing this for years and has raised millions for our clients. I have tested and spent money on other platforms none of them work nearly as well for our clients. Search ads work but I believe that's far more of what OP is talking about. If your website is already #1 spot and someone searches to donate they would probably do it already getting there quickly without the ad. The problem is when others or even the same party parent org buys that top spot to get that traffic.
- nojito 5y ago
  A simple no would have sufficed. No one is arguing that data brokers don't make millions selling ads. The argument verified by the study is that demographic and location segmentation doesn't work when targeting ads.
  - tormeh 5y ago
    Demographic and location segmentation is just a shitty way to target and is a prime example of looking for your keys under the lamppost because that's where the light is. That said, your point is unfortunately very relevant because many advertisers still do this.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > A simple no would have sufficed. Actually, I think it is pretty important that they explained that they are an expert in the field, and that you, a not expert, don't really know anything about the space, and thus your opinion is quite literally, not as informed as theirs.

karlp 5y ago

As someone who doesn't work in advertising but is insterested in the space, I find your comment interesting but it doesn't help you are not providing much data for your hot take either. You mention Kickstarter, but looking at the list of crowdfunded projects, most of the successful ones were quite a while ago, if anything the most recent ones looks like scammy crypto coins, which would suggest advertising works rather for bad projects, a net negative. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowdfunding_projects https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-funded_crowd...

dwild 5y ago
> You mention Kickstarter, but looking at the list of crowdfunded projects, most of the successful ones were quite a while ago If you want to see Kickstarter projects that failed because of lack of advertisement, I suggest you to go Kickstarter itself[1]... you may have better luck than going on the List of highest-funded crowdfunding projects, which is mostly unrelated to Kickstarter. You'll see that most of them doesn't require much money to works. The only reason they doesn't get that money is their lack of advertising. Sure they could buy ads, but you'll see that they all are pretty niche too, they can't just get the same advertising as a bus stop, that would be just too absurd and cost them 100x more than their current goal. You can believe they just doesn't deserve to exist, that's fair, but that's not the point. The point is to show the importance of advertising and how niche project just couldn't reach their audience if you make it harder and harder to reach. [1] https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?raised=0&sort=end_date&seed=2704171&page=1 https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?raised=0&sort=...

morelisp 5y ago

> You can simply control by making only one single change segregated to a control and treatment geo/group before and after, measure delta. Because nothing else is going on in the world besides your ad campaign, right? Like you I find the comments about the ad industry here on HN largely ignorant, but I also think most advertisers and agencies are dumb as rocks, or at best high on their own supply. Like, a piece of analysis I saw recently had some claimed weirdass causation along the lines of, X days is the optimum period between first indication of intent in a product and showing an ad for that product, if the user didn't convert immediately. They had run an experiment like you suggest with varying intervals for audiences. But, the way better correlation was with stimulus payouts. That wasn't in their model, because their model only had the inputs they controlled, before and after, and measured delta. Everyone is selling snake oil because every advertiser is demanding snake oil. It's so fucked up.

dillondoyle 5y ago
Yeah definitely 'multi-touch attribution' ad tech is a lot of crap a lot of the time especially for big brands stuff. And lol got to love advertisers selling advertising it's like one of the launch websites you see on Show HN sometimes that just have a bunch of #words that have no meaning ;) it's the flat out 'ads don't work you can't know they worked' stuff which bugs me that is evidently hard to simply explain

alkonaut 5y ago

Perhaps I’m naive but my view is that online advertising should have targeting no better than bus stop ads (coarse geographic) and conversion should ideally not even be measurable. When I buy shoes I prefer to not even say which campaign made me do it (just like the bus stop ad). I find the whole jargon of this post dystopian.

unethical_ban 5y ago
I don't know. It isn't that I think targeted ads are bad. I think it is simply jarring that humans are that quantifiable, and separately, that I am skeptical of the privacy policies of the gatherers of this data. My Instagram feed shows me lots of startup clothing companies for young to middle aged men, and I finally tried some, and damnit if they aren't decent jeans. If we accept that ads are not inherently evil, and we accept that ads (when not manipulative or selling unethical/addictive products) are more beneficial to a recipient if they're relevant, then targeting (if done ethically and stored as anonymously as possible) is a great thing. I find that the ads are actually more straightforward than traditional ads. They literally say "These jeans are stylish, durable and American-made". I didn't sit through 30 seconds of Brett Favre throwing a football to signal that I'm just like him.
- alkonaut 5y ago
  I think they are bad if they use context I didn’t want to provide. I’d be happy to give any website a pretty detailed profile of interests and “cohort” if I knew that’s where it stopped. But I don’t think ads can target ethically and with respect for privacy. I’d love to be proven wrong.
- tfehring 5y ago
  I'm also not opposed to targeting in principle, and in fact I'd love to reach an end state where a company - whether you call it an ad company or otherwise - does 98% of my shopping for me. But I feel like we're in an uncanny valley in which adtechs are hoovering up more data than they'd even need to do that, but with no incentive to push consumers toward products we'll actually be happy with. Facebook is probably better off if your new jeans wear out in a few months, and Amazon can't even be trusted to reliably ship you the products they think they're shipping you, let alone vouch for their quality.

clairity 5y ago

in my experience, fb ads are a mixed bag. they tend to give you the illusion of control without the commensurate results, converting at a noticeably lower rate. sometimes prices are low enough to compensate for the lower conversion, but not usually. though it might be changing with the normalization of the fb marketplace, folks aren't usually looking for the things that require advertising inducement on facebook, so there's a significant intent/context mismatch.

tomjen3 5y ago

If Facebook ads are so good, why is it that I basically only get shitty, general ads? I am a single geek with disposable income, why is my feed not filled with ads for cool tech products? I just checked and the only Facebook ad was for cancer awareness.

xxpor 5y ago
Are you actually allowing the tracking?
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I am an Android user. I don't have a choice :(
  - pmontra 5y ago
    You do. Install blockada. No more ads and trackers, even in apps. https://blokada.org/ https://blokada.org/
  - f1refly 5y ago
    You have the choice to both adaway and firefox with the usual addons. You can also choose to not have google on your phone.
Method-X 5y ago
Do you have a PiHole?

eschaton 5y ago

Advertising is cancer and it’s a good thing when less money is spent on it and less of it is thrown in peoples’ faces. The ideal system is one where people pay for services and see no ads on the services they pay for and nobody can monetize their data.

motoxpro 5y ago
I can't afford to pay for all the stuff I use. FB, IG, YT, etc would cost a fortune. I'll happily watch my ads, thanks.

rkagerer 5y ago

I come from the user side and I am extremely pleased to hear this news. Advertising on my device has gotten completely out of hand, I never asked for it and I don't want it.

candiodari 5y ago
It seems like people have already forgotten. When TV ads gradually got less and less effective in the 90s. What was the result? Incredibly intrusive constant bloody annoying ads. Not less of them, far, FAR more. To the point the TV became unwatchable.