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Devil's advocate: as a consumer, google's ads seem 2-4x higher quality than ads out of other networks. I'd be curious whether the conversion rates on the marke

Devil's advocate: as a consumer, google's ads seem 2-4x higher quality than ads out of other networks. I'd be curious whether the conversion rates on the marketing side back up my gut instinct on the consumer side. Any marketers here with numbers?

soared 5y ago
Most major brands use multiple dsps, as performance is easy at low spend volumes and gets more difficult as you spend more. Dsps have access to unique inventory (through direct deals, pmps, etc) and unique technologies. For example, many companies use google, a vendor for mobile, one for ctv, one for retargeting, etc.
- dustymcp 5y ago
  This its also dependendant of the country/region which ones perform better.
partiallypro 5y ago
I don't think I've clicked on a Google ad in a long long time, but I get ads on Facebook and Instagram that on occasion lead directly to a purchase. I'd say Instagram being the most frequent, especially for clothing.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
reayn 5y ago
Just curious, what constitutes the "quality" of an ad for you? I've never really thought about ads that way; for me it was just whichever service can stuff their name down your throat the most often was the most successful.
- treeman79 5y ago
  Was in adtech for awhile. Making sure clicks are real is a massive challenge with many ads networks. There are a lot of tools that help in sure spambots aren’t stealing all the ad money but they also slow down serving of the ads and sometimes they mess up and block things that shouldn’t. We’ve had campaigns where we had to allow more spambots simply because the client couldn’t spend enough money, they were willing to waste more to get better reach. But most clients absolutely love the results when you have really good filters in place. Very low spend and good lead generation.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Ads for actual products and services instead of fake download buttons and penis enlargement pills.
  - vkou 5y ago
    You're being downvoted, but it's true. Move away from the big-boy ad networks (The likes of Microsoft, Google, Facebook), and there's a long tail of networks that will happily run the worst ads. Unsurprisingly, a lot of legitimate companies aren't super-keen on having their ads run next to ones for fake download buttons and penis enlargement pills.
- milesvp 5y ago
  You know it when you see it... I worked in the newspaper industry on the web side for many years. Remnant ads are the worst. These are the ad networks that you use to fill up the last of your ad spots that you weren't able to sell directly. They can fill volumes of ad spots for pennies per 1000 ad impressions. These are pure trash. Ignoring the common problems with actual virus payloads that they might try to inject, these are the most obnoxious, awful ads. They often have big animations with flashing background and jarring colors. They are full of click-bait titles. They are the reason people install ad blockers. I might not be able to tell you what a quality ad looks like, but I can tell you the other end of the spectrum, and it is pure filth.
- JAlexoid 5y ago
  Most relevant ads, with least interference. Compare to most small news sites, that have top/bottom banners, inline ads and the curtains.... I hate the curtains!
- summerlight 5y ago
  There's pretty complicated dynamic regarding ad quality because each participant (users, advertisers, publishers etc) have different goals and ad network needs to balance it. For an advertiser side, one possible, measurable metric is advertiser value per spending money. Value can be defined by advertisers pretty arbitrarily but you can think it as something like how much money you earn from ad conversions. Of course, this is very hard to measure accurately, massive ad network like Google has some advantages though. But note that this is just one of possible metrics, there are hundreds of metrics ad networks want to improve and some of them are conflicting each other by definition. And some of them don't even have an objective way to measure so still depending on user study.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  * not a scam, virus, or other lazy attempt to manipulate me * not visually obnoxious * represents something that somebody actually wants * represents something i don’t know about and might have interest in Some ads are legitimately quite useful, others just abusive, lots in between.
prepend 5y ago
My experience is different and I find Google ads as (in)effective as other ad networks. As a consumer I certainly wouldn’t think they are 2-4x as useful. I think their price is based on the fact that they have a near monopoly on search and lock-in with search on android.
- jsnell 5y ago
  > I think their price is based on the fact that they have a near monopoly on search and lock-in with search on android. But this has nothing to do with search ads. It's about display advertising on 3rd party sites.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    But their search monopoly is one of the ways they build such a robust and accurate profile of who they’re serving each ad to.
    - jsnell 5y ago
      But the thesis of the GP is that their ad targeting is no better than the competetitors, so any price discrepancy must be due to foul play. Are you disagreeing with that, and saying that the ad targeting is actually materially better thanks to this data?
eitland 5y ago
Measured by how much I've bought by clicking on Google ads vs by clicking on Facebook ads, Facebook ads are better by a couple of orders of magnitude at least I think (I'm actually not sure if I ever bought something based on a Google ad). Add to this how little time I use on Facebook vs Google properties and how I used to love Google and despise Facebook it becomes even worse. Maybe Google just failed spectacularly for a decade and everyone else had fantastic experience but I doubt it.
- short12 5y ago
  Absolutely agreed. Facebook ads are mildly targeted (and terribly inaccurate) and then incredibly repetitive. But they are leagues ahead of Google ads which are just complete shit It's amazing their incredibly terrible advertising actually funds a huge breadth of services. Marketing departments really are that dumb I guess
  - otabdeveloper4 5y ago
    Google is a monopoly, they don't have to be good.
- ribosometronome 5y ago
  I've found ads on a platform like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, etc considerably more blatant/similar to traditional ads compared to an ad when searching using Google. It's easy to miss the "Ad" text next to a top result on Google and click a relevant ads without realizing it. Meanwhile, buying artisanal chocolate at 2 am on Facebook feels very much like, "Ok, you got me this time Facebook ads!"
kposehn 5y ago
Marketer here. Numbers: low nine-figures spent over the last 7 years or so on RTB display and GDN/YT Outcome: * Google on display tends to be much higher quality than most major DSP platforms. Incremental ROAS on Google's non-search ads tends to be better, with YouTube being the best performer. * When you use GDN and YouTube, you are bidding on a much more accurate set of behaviors and first part data in addition to the content matching, which is second to none for large scale. * One of the better audience types Google gives you access to is search intent. You can target people that have exhibited search behavior that indicates their interest or likelihood to purchase what you have on offer * Despite these advantages, like any platform Google can also have major quality issues if you do not manage your campaigns well and click fraud can happen easily (thankfully in my experience they're decent at detecting and refunding fraudulent spend) Edit: I would caution people commenting here to not use their own behavior as examples of how an ad platform is/isn't effective. HN users tend to be significant outliers vs. the general population.
- nickff 5y ago
  >"Edit: I would caution people commenting here to not use their own behavior as examples of how an ad platform is/isn't effective. HN users tend to be significant outliers vs. the general population. " Self-reported behavior is also extremely unreliable, and I would take all their comments with a grain of salt.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    You perfectly illustrated his point, pedant.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
  "Edit: I would caution people commenting here to not use their own behavior as examples of how an ad platform is/isn't effective. HN users tend to be significant outliers vs. the general population." In other words, exactly what the top comment is doing. Sample size=1. Methods=unknown ("seem 2-4x better") That said, we could apply the same principle to the parent comment from the marketer. He is using his own behaviour as an example of how the Google ad platform is/isn't effective. There is a serious lack of transarency in the "open market" system Google is both overseeing and participating in. In the long run, that opacity could spell disaster, so says a former Google lawyer. This opacity is a problem that seemingly inconsequential litigation like this from the Texas AG is (unintentionally) helping to address. Discovery helps us understand what Google wants to hide from the public.
dillondoyle 5y ago
I buy political ads. Probably spent low middle double digit millions over last 10 years. Facebook has the best direct response ROI (e.g. a donation, a volunteer, a tracked conversion to voting). I used to be able to get > 100% ROI immediately but with iOS changes it's becoming hard to impossible. I think FB will become more of a brand ad and loose a lot of app install or direct to consumer business. Those are what most people consider relevant, for instance i get a ton of athletic shorts ads after I hover on one (usually because they use sexy images lol...). Google has great DR ROI for search, though if your website is already #1 is that valuable? Big brands have to pay so their competitor doesn't get the slot though. Google video, e.g. YouTube is very high quality and low CPMs compared to say Hulu and FB video 'view optimization' sucks like they count a 3 second scroll pass and the total complete watch % are absolutely tiny. If you spend big (like 10k a day i think) you can access google's surveys which show a good amount of recall. I've done my own surveys I built mobile survey interstitials and retarget people who watched video ads. Generally see a few point % bump in head to head voting (e.g. vote candidate X over Y) and actually a really high amount of recall candidate names with very few picking the fake spoiler. Again though with iOS this becomes hard/impossible. Stories ads are valuable to me I love a digital native ad that fits the format. Open market RTB video is mostly shit. Unless you do a kind of hybrid called a private marketplace deal (and a lot of other acronym buzz stuff) which gets you the high quality inventory but it's just an easier way instead of reaching out to each of the sites individually. Most websites are either auto spam content generation or layer so many auto play videos with sound off you're just wasting money. And they can lie in their bid saying it's a large size or audio on. Have to then spend $ and time on fraud prevention. Open market desktop display ads (banners) are scraping shit off the floor usually IMHO. And then open market stuff like Taboola or when a website puts a link farm at bottom of page are like rectum licking in the scale of quality, to extend this gross metaphor. Snap/twitter are interesting but haven't provided a ton of audience/value for me in my campaign audiences. Twitter is cool like targeting specific handles - havent done it in a while maybe not able to anymore with iOS idk. Snap is cool to try and get younger people IMHO. Mobile interstitials can be valuable. I've built fun 'playable' interactive ads but I don't know of any other campaign or political vendor who has done something that is truly mobile native. They mostly just have static banners. examples for game install ads they show previews that are playable. I like to think of interactivity that works on mobile to pull a voter into the ad experience. Twitter is selling mopub maybe? That's a higher quality network for this inventory. Connected TV is great (a bunch of acronyms and definitions/sources, but basically anything steaming to a tv). Though it's insanely expensive during the election because all the TV buyers are fighting to buck viewership trends and selling campaigns equivalency - which is fairly valuable. all the other corporations in the world are spending more on digital as broadcast TV dies but the incumbents in the political space have too much power and money at stake to follow the eyeballs. Most only spend like 15% on digital which is INSANE to me. A 'good' campaign i've never seen spend more than like 35%... IDK maybe bloomberg got to over 50% which is where it should be if you includ CTV. TV people usually win because historically the TV vendor is the main consultant of a campaign setting message and direction. Instead of a digital firm buying/owning as a whole package which I think makes more sense.

soared 5y ago

Most major brands use multiple dsps, as performance is easy at low spend volumes and gets more difficult as you spend more. Dsps have access to unique inventory (through direct deals, pmps, etc) and unique technologies. For example, many companies use google, a vendor for mobile, one for ctv, one for retargeting, etc.

dustymcp 5y ago
This its also dependendant of the country/region which ones perform better.

partiallypro 5y ago

I don't think I've clicked on a Google ad in a long long time, but I get ads on Facebook and Instagram that on occasion lead directly to a purchase. I'd say Instagram being the most frequent, especially for clothing.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

reayn 5y ago

Just curious, what constitutes the "quality" of an ad for you? I've never really thought about ads that way; for me it was just whichever service can stuff their name down your throat the most often was the most successful.

treeman79 5y ago
Was in adtech for awhile. Making sure clicks are real is a massive challenge with many ads networks. There are a lot of tools that help in sure spambots aren’t stealing all the ad money but they also slow down serving of the ads and sometimes they mess up and block things that shouldn’t. We’ve had campaigns where we had to allow more spambots simply because the client couldn’t spend enough money, they were willing to waste more to get better reach. But most clients absolutely love the results when you have really good filters in place. Very low spend and good lead generation.
MattGaiser 5y ago
Ads for actual products and services instead of fake download buttons and penis enlargement pills.
- vkou 5y ago
  You're being downvoted, but it's true. Move away from the big-boy ad networks (The likes of Microsoft, Google, Facebook), and there's a long tail of networks that will happily run the worst ads. Unsurprisingly, a lot of legitimate companies aren't super-keen on having their ads run next to ones for fake download buttons and penis enlargement pills.
milesvp 5y ago
You know it when you see it... I worked in the newspaper industry on the web side for many years. Remnant ads are the worst. These are the ad networks that you use to fill up the last of your ad spots that you weren't able to sell directly. They can fill volumes of ad spots for pennies per 1000 ad impressions. These are pure trash. Ignoring the common problems with actual virus payloads that they might try to inject, these are the most obnoxious, awful ads. They often have big animations with flashing background and jarring colors. They are full of click-bait titles. They are the reason people install ad blockers. I might not be able to tell you what a quality ad looks like, but I can tell you the other end of the spectrum, and it is pure filth.
JAlexoid 5y ago
Most relevant ads, with least interference. Compare to most small news sites, that have top/bottom banners, inline ads and the curtains.... I hate the curtains!
summerlight 5y ago
There's pretty complicated dynamic regarding ad quality because each participant (users, advertisers, publishers etc) have different goals and ad network needs to balance it. For an advertiser side, one possible, measurable metric is advertiser value per spending money. Value can be defined by advertisers pretty arbitrarily but you can think it as something like how much money you earn from ad conversions. Of course, this is very hard to measure accurately, massive ad network like Google has some advantages though. But note that this is just one of possible metrics, there are hundreds of metrics ad networks want to improve and some of them are conflicting each other by definition. And some of them don't even have an objective way to measure so still depending on user study.
colechristensen 5y ago
* not a scam, virus, or other lazy attempt to manipulate me * not visually obnoxious * represents something that somebody actually wants * represents something i don’t know about and might have interest in Some ads are legitimately quite useful, others just abusive, lots in between.

prepend 5y ago

My experience is different and I find Google ads as (in)effective as other ad networks. As a consumer I certainly wouldn’t think they are 2-4x as useful. I think their price is based on the fact that they have a near monopoly on search and lock-in with search on android.

jsnell 5y ago
> I think their price is based on the fact that they have a near monopoly on search and lock-in with search on android. But this has nothing to do with search ads. It's about display advertising on 3rd party sites.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  But their search monopoly is one of the ways they build such a robust and accurate profile of who they’re serving each ad to.
  - jsnell 5y ago
    But the thesis of the GP is that their ad targeting is no better than the competetitors, so any price discrepancy must be due to foul play. Are you disagreeing with that, and saying that the ad targeting is actually materially better thanks to this data?

eitland 5y ago

Measured by how much I've bought by clicking on Google ads vs by clicking on Facebook ads, Facebook ads are better by a couple of orders of magnitude at least I think (I'm actually not sure if I ever bought something based on a Google ad). Add to this how little time I use on Facebook vs Google properties and how I used to love Google and despise Facebook it becomes even worse. Maybe Google just failed spectacularly for a decade and everyone else had fantastic experience but I doubt it.

short12 5y ago
Absolutely agreed. Facebook ads are mildly targeted (and terribly inaccurate) and then incredibly repetitive. But they are leagues ahead of Google ads which are just complete shit It's amazing their incredibly terrible advertising actually funds a huge breadth of services. Marketing departments really are that dumb I guess
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago
  Google is a monopoly, they don't have to be good.
ribosometronome 5y ago
I've found ads on a platform like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Youtube, etc considerably more blatant/similar to traditional ads compared to an ad when searching using Google. It's easy to miss the "Ad" text next to a top result on Google and click a relevant ads without realizing it. Meanwhile, buying artisanal chocolate at 2 am on Facebook feels very much like, "Ok, you got me this time Facebook ads!"

kposehn 5y ago

Marketer here. Numbers: low nine-figures spent over the last 7 years or so on RTB display and GDN/YT Outcome: * Google on display tends to be much higher quality than most major DSP platforms. Incremental ROAS on Google's non-search ads tends to be better, with YouTube being the best performer. * When you use GDN and YouTube, you are bidding on a much more accurate set of behaviors and first part data in addition to the content matching, which is second to none for large scale. * One of the better audience types Google gives you access to is search intent. You can target people that have exhibited search behavior that indicates their interest or likelihood to purchase what you have on offer * Despite these advantages, like any platform Google can also have major quality issues if you do not manage your campaigns well and click fraud can happen easily (thankfully in my experience they're decent at detecting and refunding fraudulent spend) Edit: I would caution people commenting here to not use their own behavior as examples of how an ad platform is/isn't effective. HN users tend to be significant outliers vs. the general population.

nickff 5y ago
>"Edit: I would caution people commenting here to not use their own behavior as examples of how an ad platform is/isn't effective. HN users tend to be significant outliers vs. the general population. " Self-reported behavior is also extremely unreliable, and I would take all their comments with a grain of salt.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  You perfectly illustrated his point, pedant.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"Edit: I would caution people commenting here to not use their own behavior as examples of how an ad platform is/isn't effective. HN users tend to be significant outliers vs. the general population." In other words, exactly what the top comment is doing. Sample size=1. Methods=unknown ("seem 2-4x better") That said, we could apply the same principle to the parent comment from the marketer. He is using his own behaviour as an example of how the Google ad platform is/isn't effective. There is a serious lack of transarency in the "open market" system Google is both overseeing and participating in. In the long run, that opacity could spell disaster, so says a former Google lawyer. This opacity is a problem that seemingly inconsequential litigation like this from the Texas AG is (unintentionally) helping to address. Discovery helps us understand what Google wants to hide from the public.

dillondoyle 5y ago

I buy political ads. Probably spent low middle double digit millions over last 10 years. Facebook has the best direct response ROI (e.g. a donation, a volunteer, a tracked conversion to voting). I used to be able to get > 100% ROI immediately but with iOS changes it's becoming hard to impossible. I think FB will become more of a brand ad and loose a lot of app install or direct to consumer business. Those are what most people consider relevant, for instance i get a ton of athletic shorts ads after I hover on one (usually because they use sexy images lol...). Google has great DR ROI for search, though if your website is already #1 is that valuable? Big brands have to pay so their competitor doesn't get the slot though. Google video, e.g. YouTube is very high quality and low CPMs compared to say Hulu and FB video 'view optimization' sucks like they count a 3 second scroll pass and the total complete watch % are absolutely tiny. If you spend big (like 10k a day i think) you can access google's surveys which show a good amount of recall. I've done my own surveys I built mobile survey interstitials and retarget people who watched video ads. Generally see a few point % bump in head to head voting (e.g. vote candidate X over Y) and actually a really high amount of recall candidate names with very few picking the fake spoiler. Again though with iOS this becomes hard/impossible. Stories ads are valuable to me I love a digital native ad that fits the format. Open market RTB video is mostly shit. Unless you do a kind of hybrid called a private marketplace deal (and a lot of other acronym buzz stuff) which gets you the high quality inventory but it's just an easier way instead of reaching out to each of the sites individually. Most websites are either auto spam content generation or layer so many auto play videos with sound off you're just wasting money. And they can lie in their bid saying it's a large size or audio on. Have to then spend $ and time on fraud prevention. Open market desktop display ads (banners) are scraping shit off the floor usually IMHO. And then open market stuff like Taboola or when a website puts a link farm at bottom of page are like rectum licking in the scale of quality, to extend this gross metaphor. Snap/twitter are interesting but haven't provided a ton of audience/value for me in my campaign audiences. Twitter is cool like targeting specific handles - havent done it in a while maybe not able to anymore with iOS idk. Snap is cool to try and get younger people IMHO. Mobile interstitials can be valuable. I've built fun 'playable' interactive ads but I don't know of any other campaign or political vendor who has done something that is truly mobile native. They mostly just have static banners. examples for game install ads they show previews that are playable. I like to think of interactivity that works on mobile to pull a voter into the ad experience. Twitter is selling mopub maybe? That's a higher quality network for this inventory. Connected TV is great (a bunch of acronyms and definitions/sources, but basically anything steaming to a tv). Though it's insanely expensive during the election because all the TV buyers are fighting to buck viewership trends and selling campaigns equivalency - which is fairly valuable. all the other corporations in the world are spending more on digital as broadcast TV dies but the incumbents in the political space have too much power and money at stake to follow the eyeballs. Most only spend like 15% on digital which is INSANE to me. A 'good' campaign i've never seen spend more than like 35%... IDK maybe bloomberg got to over 50% which is where it should be if you includ CTV. TV people usually win because historically the TV vendor is the main consultant of a campaign setting message and direction. Instead of a digital firm buying/owning as a whole package which I think makes more sense.