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Ask HN: Does targeted advertising work at all?
I'm too lazy to run ad blockers. So I see plenty of advertising on the internet. Here's the thing: all the ads seem to be for things that I already bought. After I placed an order with Select Blinds, I started getting relentless Select Blinds ads on YouTube. After I made some charitable donations to Mercy Ships and Heifer International, their ads started following me around everywhere. My wife recently got on a new immunosuppressant medication, and now I see ads for that all the time. Great job targeting! But I already spent the money? So what is the point of all this?
- andreyk 5y agoFor the most part my experience is the same as yours, but Instagram is legitimately great at targeting me with stuff I might actually be interested in. I've bought 2 or 3 things as a result of ads on their site, probably the only times ads have led to purchases for me.
- Gtex555 5y agoI feel advertising only really works when the person paying goes for a monopoly , remember when every small youtuber was sponsored by square space , then ExpressVPN. After you have seen 50 square space plugs and you want to setup a website with no programming skills you will go to square space. Outside of that everyone one pays for advertising to stop their competition from having this aforementioned monopoly so its less of the advertising working and more stopping your competition from having a monopoly.
- yuppie_scum 5y agoIt works on my mother-in-law. I have the “I have a great mother in law who loves knitting” T shirts to prove it.
- cm2012 5y agoAs an advertiser, yes, modern algorithmic digital advertising is night and day better performance than dumb digital targeting.
- mrweasel 5y agoDo you do a-b testing? I think one reason people keep asking, is because most answers are opinions and anecdotes. Especially something like remarketing must be hard to do a-b testing on, as the control group is basically not tracked/targetet at all.
- d_tr 5y agoI guess the effectiveness is related to an individual's overall online habits and interests and I would be quite surprised if it did "not work at all" at scale. Besides, if it did not work they would know by now... For example, maybe you do not browse a lot before spending money because you know what you want more or less? I have the habit of clearing my browsing data often, all the tracking options in my Google account are off, and the ads I get seem pretty generic in general, but I sure get ads related to my Google searches if there is something concrete to purchase, like hardware parts.
- soared 5y agoYes. Brands, third parties, google, etc have all ran incremental sales lift tests, brand lift studies, customer lifetime value tests, etc and determined how successful tactics are and moved budget accordingly. There is a reason google/etc are worth billions. I’ve posted this comment before, but: 1. It’s hard to tell when someone has bought a product. You buy it at a reseller and the brand will never know. Or you buy it on mobile, but have researched the brand on desktop. Or you purchased it at work, but were researching it at home. Advertisers suppress known buyers but they don’t perfectly match you to all of your devices. 2. Just like there are not so good developers and not so good code, there are not so good marketers who aren’t that great at their job. Or they have too much work and didn’t set it up correctly. DSPs are extremely extremely complicated, so it’s to make mistakes. 3. Retention and advertising to previous purchasers drives more additional purchases. Maybe you only purchased blinds for the main floor of your house but not the basement.
- Syonyk 5y ago> It’s hard to tell when someone has bought a product. How about, "I've literally got it in my last-day purchase history on eBay and they keep showing me the same thing and a bunch of related stuff to the item that hasn't even arrived yet, but that they've taken my money for"? ... and then eBay follows me around showing the same stuff on other sites. The thing I've purchased. From eBay. At least, they did, until I got more aggressive blocking ads and started using the internet a ton less.
- david_allison 5y agoIf you buy a product and you're dissatisfied, you're more likely than the average person to buy a similar product.
- pooper 5y agoA certain national bank which I shall not name had a banner on top of its app. The link opens a web page that goes to double click and then opens the bank's website. Why would a bank app take me through a double click link just to take me back to their own website? My guess is this is the same reason why eBay shows you ads for things you just bought. There are massive inefficiencies in these large organizations. I'm sure everything they do is locally optimal but not even close globally.
- cercatrova 5y agoSure, I've definitely bought stuff before from targeted ads.
- PrancingPony 5y agoI have as well. I usually get pretty good ad recommendations on Instagram surprisingly enough.
- Flowsion 5y agoI almost never pay attention to ads and have never purchased anything from ads.. until Instagram. The targeted ads on Instagram are unreal. They've shown me products from local creators/shop owners that there's no way I would have found otherwise. I still get a lot of crappy ads and get bombarded with the same product I just purchased at times. But, it's by far the most customized/useful ad experience I've had.
- paulcole 5y agoYes! I have hardly any friends on Facebook and I never post, but I only use it for the ads. I learn about tons of clothes companies and sales on stuff I like.
- alexb_ 5y agoThis is the most bizarre use of Facebook I've ever heard of
- massysett 5y agoActually it sounds brilliant. Certainly Facebook is a lousy way to actually have social connections. But using it as a coupon book is something it would be good at. Reminds me of the now-periodic posts on HN grousing about how bad Google has become. The complainers expect too much. Google is the modern Yellow Pages, or Computer Shopper. You use it for the ads (and SEO stuff). It’s good to look for the highest bidder - that indicates a powerful bidder who can afford it. In the old days this was picking the plumber with the big Yellow Pages ad. At least they’re more likely to be in business with someone answering the phone. You’ll have much worse average luck calling the business with no ad that just has a one-line phone number listing.
- alexb_ 5y agoFuck it. Someone make a website that's sole purpose is to buy data from social media and then give you relevant ads. Literally no actual purpose other than that
- paulcole 5y agoI love catalog shopping. Facebook is like that but even better!
- kingcharles 5y agoYouTube ads are so well targeted for me that I almost regret upgrading to Premium. If I had the time I would toggle the option to see the ads. I used to spend way too much time watching all the ads before the content.
- saberworks 5y agoI use an ad blocker so don't generally see ads. However, I own a Kindle Voyage which I use to read sci-fi and fantasy novels. I have not paid the extra $20 or whatever it is to disable the ads. The ads are definitely targeted, as I only see ads for books related to what I've already purchased and read. In fact, all I see is ads for books in the series I happen to be reading at the time. For example, I'm finally getting around to reading the rest of the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series. I started over and now I'm on book 5, all purchased through Amazon so far, all directly through the store on the kindle. And it just keeps advertising books 1-5 (which I've already purchased). It makes no sense. I have a list of authors I follow on amazon.com. It would be a better use of everyone's time if they just picked a random book from any of my favorite authors, made sure I hadn't already purchased it through amazon, and only then show it to me. It's like they're not even trying.
- vanilla_nut 5y agoFYI, you can just ask them in a support chat to remove the ads and they'll do it for free.
- lanstin 5y agoAmazon advertises and recommends with a notification books that I have already read on Kindle all the time. But they aren’t paying for these so not the same problem as the purchase based targeting.
- kcplate 5y agoSo In my experience on the advertiser side of these suggestion widgets—The algorithms generally aren’t all that smart behind them, and it’s possible in Amazon’s case the items you are getting recommended might have a different SKU number than the ones you have already bought, but of course it is the same author and genre to your reading interest. Doubt it’s looking at book title to be honest.
- nottorp 5y ago> The ads are definitely targeted, as I only see ads for books related to what I've already purchased and read. Maybe you do. I'm subscribed to Asimov's and SF&F electronic editions digitally via the Kindle store. Not even once have I noticed an ad for scifi/fantasy books on my Kindle. Most of the time it's fluffy bestsellers.
- theartfuldodger 5y agoThe ads are very effective, but ad agencies are not filled with top tier people, you can train someone to run ad campaigns in a day. As a result, much of the button pushers at small agencies are recent grads with backgrounds not well suited to optimization. A remarketing ad can be set up using exclusion lists to stop display after a purchase ( checkout page cookie), also most should be set up with limits. These are basic,obvious and easy things to implement. Attribution isn't always perfect but what you observed is more of a reflection of the high frequency of low tier ad managers. Many don't know any better, many don't care, many have no access to actually edit a client website (or know how) It's the wild west still. The example you used is also of a brand that I am overmarketed to, whoever is spending their money has some belief or knowledge of very broad targeting that I don't understand. I have not nor ever will buy blinds and my browsing behavior does not align with the obvious interest groups one would pick. It's not just the small agencies that blow money, someone is patting themselves on the back about the 100,000,000+ impressions they are generating daily for selectblinds, but that funnel is going to be ugly when it's time to jazz up their presentation to show off that success!
- lordkrandel 5y agoTo me, it's completely pointless. I don't buy from ads. Never ever. Not on Tv, not on the web. If something is advertised on me, I tend to hate it. I start my shopping on Amazon, then look for alternatives in shops I know, then compare the prices. Quit the phone, zap the TV, install an adblocker. Beware, I'm not saying I'm a robot, I just distaste the ad language, and prefer comparisons. Remember the Bill Hicks sketch about ads people? That's me.
- donohoe 5y agoThat’s the thing, you probably have. There are ads that want you to buy something, and there are ads that, when you are making a choice between products, you’ll go with the brand you’re most familiar with. Ads build that familiarity.
- lordkrandel 5y agoOr maybe I won't and go for the competitor... it often works this way. So many times I see something expensive being advertised and I go for a cheaper one I never heard of. So again, I might be a rare case, but ... I'm not saying that I never bought snacks that are also advertised, because everything is advertised. But I come from a "hard discount" family, and I'm a very hard target, I don't even like being given presents for Christmas. I'm just saying that if everyone was "castrating" like me, we would see much less spending on advertising.
- vanilla_nut 5y agoExactly this for me, too. I make lattes and cappuccinos pretty often at home. I don't drink dairy milk, so I'm constantly on the lookout for decent alternative milk brands. I've tried pretty much every brand I can find at local stores, and some that I have to order online... Except Oatly. Because when I lived in NYC, their subway advertising was so aggressive, in your face, and annoying, I swore I'd never buy the product. Because no brand that spends that much on advertising can possibly be price-efficient for their actual product. I've actually tried it at a friend's house recently, and really enjoyed it. But I still refuse to support a brand that advertises so heavily.
- quanto 5y agoAbsolutely yes. I did both academic research (recommendation engine algorithms) and industry work (leading online advertising at a large e-commerce ). I can confidently say from my background that the targeted advertising works. In fact, it works so well that it is almost awe-inspiring to see it in real action. Any e-commerce or advertising firms, including my former team, have internal data to support this claim. For our case, the difference between a highly optimized traditional adverting vs a crude targeted advertising algo is a still factor of N in favor of the algo (N >> 1). As the algo is optimized, N grows larger.
- beagle3 5y agoI was somewhat involved in (relatively early days of) real time bidding and targeted advertising, circa 2010 or so. My data at the time led me to believe that there is a small-ish part of the population on which targeted advertising is effective, and all the effort (information-theoretic wise) is locating this group, when your only tool (in real time bidding, anyway) is bidding on random ad impressions. I’m sure the world is different now, and this inight might not be relevant to today’s world. But it does explain why re-targeting is way more effective than most people assume.
- WalterBright 5y agoI have ad blindness. I never see the ads. Even the floaters, I just look around them till they're gone. I do peruse ads in my muscle car magazines, because that's why I buy those magazines. I enjoy the ad placements in those car hotrodding TV shows, because I am interested in how to do the projects they're doing, and the stuff needed to do them. Amazon pushes ads to my kindle, but I couldn't tell you what they were for because they don't register on my brain.
- codyb 5y agoYea, this is pretty much my experience. Just kinda… don’t really see them even when they’re there. Still use ad blockers a lot of the time but that’s cause of the insidious tracking not cause I’m against advertising as a concept.
- powerlogic31 5y ago
- sigil_my_ev 5y agoI think what's hard to deduce with advertising, especially for small projects or people who don't have much experience is the activation energy needed to see any results from what seem like relatively large ad spends. To be clear, I suck at this. I've attempted to buy instagram / facebook ads and had little luck. For FaceBook ads you basically have to spend around $6k before the algorithm even starts to care about what you're doing. This is essentially because it has to first serve enough ads to figure out if people are actually clicking before actually targeting the demographic you set. That said, as much as I hate it, I have no clue how to do social media marketing (TikTok or otherwise) and it's astonishing how much energy and time this takes. I used to joke that it'd be a better use of my time to find a college girl who likes TikTok and has a stimulant prescription to run social media for my bad side-project. (this is a joke) However, targeted ads definitely work. I still get ads on instagram for the rapid-test clinic that just opened up across the street from my apartment. I can literally see the clinic from my window.
- HWR_14 5y ago> However, targeted ads definitely work. I still get ads on instagram for the rapid-test clinic that just opened up across the street from my apartment. I can literally see the clinic from my window. How is this working? I mean, I didn't think the claim was that targeted ads don't understand geography. The question was about if they drive behavior. And since you've seen the clinic every day, how does the advertising help?
- Nextgrid 5y agoMy uneducated opinion: those ads may appear stupid and are useless 95% of the time, but 95% is more profitable than whatever else they would've shown you (as in they're still right 5% of the time), so failing a better option, the practice continues.
- Waterluvian 5y agoI scoffed at advertising all my life, assuming it works it’s magic subconsciously, if at all. Last year I began using THC to sleep better. And last week I experienced developing a deep craving for a specific snack food I saw an ad for. And everything clicked for me: advertising is probably very very effective on more easily manipulable people. People who are thrall to their lower brain impulses. I felt like I was six again. I just had to have a Skor bar so badly.
- Rebelgecko 5y agoWhat is the strongest signal that someone will be buying blinds the near future? a) Someone recently bought blinds b) Someone bought blinds 5 years ago c) Someone hasn't bought blinds ever (maybe they're renting, or just tape newspaper to their windows) Turns out, on average, the answer is a. Either because you're returning blinds you don't like and are in the market for replacements, or because you're doing a home remodel and once you fix up one window you'll need blinds for the next one. Even if most people who bought blinds won't be buying new ones in the next week, those are still better odds than advertising to someone who will never buy blinds in their entire life.
- sli 5y agoI often wonder how various products sort out on this question because while this example makes sense, other ones would not. A common example is ladders. I might buy more than one because you need two lengths, but I can't imagine many people are frequent return customers for ladders the way they may be for blinds, and I can't think of any instances where they would be back in the market for a ladder that are also realistic (e.g. probably not a lot of people buying all their friends new ladders).
- throwawaylinux 5y agoWhere does this data come from? What do you think if you included the option d) Someone recently made a search that included the word "blinds" ?
- alkonaut 5y agoA person in category a probably also searched. The thing is just that a recent purchase isn’t a strong enough signal to not retarget. It’s a too big risk to take because the probable recent buyers are fewer so it’s not worth filtering them out. At least that’s my impression of how it works.
- vegesm 5y agoBack of a napkin calculation: showing OP 100 ads of blinds probably costs 0.1$ in the US. The cost of a blind is 100$ (I have no idea, don't live in the US). So if the probability of buying a second blind is at least 0.1% it was worth running the campaign. The fact is, online ads are super cheap.
- nlh 5y agoEvery time there's a thread on HN about advertising, there's at least a few comments (there are already some in this thread) that claim, loudly, "Ads don't work on me! I never buy things based on ads!". The thing is, they're all wrong. Advertising is a trillion-dollar business because it works. The human mind is susceptible to suggestion, and it's been demonstrated over and over again for basically as long as we've had civilization. What is ALSO true, however, is that ad dollars are exceeeeeedingly inefficiently deployed. Which is why you experience things like weird retargeting on things you've already boight. I experience this too -- there are several brands that for which I'm a happy paying customer and I still see their ads 1-2 times a day.
- vba616 5y agoI've been looking for a certain home improvement product for roughly six months. I've searched on-line dozens of times, I've been to stores, nobody wants to sell it to me, show me ads, nothing. >Advertising is a trillion-dollar business because it works How many months in the corporate world did you spend before figuring out that money = results and substance takes precedence over appearance?
- mkdirp 5y agoAds don't work on me because I block all ads*. I sent through my wife's Instagram account earlier today (with her consent of course) and the amount of ads is mind boggling. Sometimes it's not easy to figure out what's an ad and what's not. * where I can. I still struggle with "sponsored" content, or fake review sites. It's becoming harder and harder to figure out what isn't an ad, and I hate it. If I see a good review, I don't know if it isn't an ad. If I see a bad review, I don't know it's not a competitor's doing.
- lamontcg 5y agoReview sites are probably all ads these days. Its better to search reddit or something like that for recommendations, but of course those can get astroturf'd, but for smaller brands that likely isn't an issue.
- analog31 5y ago
- IAmGraydon 5y agoThere are lots of companies that have no idea what they’re doing in terms of targeting and are just throwing away marketing dollars. The platforms are just extremely accessible to people with no knowledge of efficient targeting methods. They said, it can be done in a way that is extremely effective if you know what you’re doing.
- newscracker 5y agoOne more reason for why you’re seeing the same ads. Buyer’s remorse and post-purchase confirmation: You’re seeing ads for products you bought because the brand or marketing team decided to spend some more money to have you avoid buyer’s remorse and to reaffirm to yourself that the purchase was a good one. This may or may not work, depending on the person and the product, but some of these things are probably not measured well enough to decide who should see the same ad and who doesn’t need to.
- Gustomaximus 5y agoThe ads you are talking about are called "remarketing". Generally they work very well, better than audience category targeting. To work the best you have to set them up so. If they are following you post purchase it often (but not always) means the marketing personal have not built a negative audience on a purchase confirmation flag to exclude this behaviour. It may or may not matter depending on the ad pricing. Some ads you only pay on a click, others on views shown. Obviously the latter wastes more money while if click cost its not such a problem however if volume is great enough to effect your ads likelihood of being clicked it might effect how the ad network displays your campaign. Basically ads are only as good as the product & implementation. And without trying to sound elitist many of the people setting up and running these campaigns are less technical than they should be and a bit useless at their job. In the same way there are amazing coders vs guys that do the bare minimum pasting other people's scripts as all they can do. Odds are these campaigns are still making money overall on following the people that didn't initially convert so the companies are happy to keep them running as is. TL:dr Most likely the ad manger has done a poor setup in remarketing.
- pavlov 5y agoSince everybody on HN never ever sees an ad, much less would actively buy something based on one, let me confess to having spent thousands of dollars on products seen in ads. For example, I have many pairs of awesome Portuguese shoes, and I originally found this vendor via their Facebook feed ad. That’s over $1000 of revenue over several years from a targeted ad which (I assume) cost them a dollar when I clicked on it. I’m genuinely happy I saw that ad and found a shoemaker I like without having to research it. Ads within the FB app still remain much more relevant than the stuff Google shows me on third party sites, which is much more random and often an eyesore. (Yes, I know nobody on HN uses the FB app either. What can I say: I joined at the age of 38 and was surprised that I genuinely like browsing FB because it’s so chill, just old friends and relatives. Nobody is angry or picking a fight, unlike Twitter where that’s 50% of the traffic.)
- georgyo 5y agoInteresting, Instagram ads have convinced me to buy several products. However after 3 bad experiences I have concluded that most ads are for absolute junk. Without a doubt I'm sure there are some ads that are for decent products, but it feels like a gamble to even consider buying something being advertised to me on these social platforms. If you find something you actually enjoyed at random, I think that is the equivalent of winning the advertisement lottery.
- bigDinosaur 5y agoI just don't see how you actually know you're going to get a good quality product without research. Since you have to research to know if the product seen in an advertisement is good anyway, if you do your research well you will come out of it with some good quality products in mind, and can then simply search for vendors. Nobody ever puts the negatives in their ads - why would they - so at best they're triggers to buy a product you probably don't need (after all, otherwise if you needed it you wouldn't wait for an advertisement, you'd be researching, or just buying whatever was at the top of the online store.) Basically I don't see how a targeted advertisement ever helps me. I find myself in these scenarios: - I need a product, say a new pair of shoes. Since I need these, for example in the situation where my current shoes are literally falling apart of inadequate for the weather, I will simply start doing research, asking people, etc. I don't need targeted ads here, and they don't target me based on product quality, so there's no point paying attention to them anwyay. - I don't need a product: well, then I don't need an ad for it either. - I'd like a product, say a new luxury pair of shoes I don't need. Well, why should I trust an ad? Upon seeing an ad I'll just go and research it anyway, since again, nobody will list the negatives of their own product in any advertisement. - I need a product, but am unaware it exists: the only area where a targeted advertisement really makes sense, since it saves me time (I don't know I should be researching it because I'm unaware it exists). But, uh, I've literally never had this happen ever in my life, and I'd be curious if anyone has any examples.
- floodle 5y agoThis article argues that it doesn't work: https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h... Discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago>My wife recently got on a new immunosuppressant medication, and now I see ads for that all the time. Great job targeting! But I already spent the money? So what is the point of all this? this might be an example of the targeting knowing you need the medicine but not that you have it, I recently searched for something I would need a medicine for, I already have the medicine which I got during holiday but the online companies have no way of knowing that, thus I get advertisements for the medicine. Great job targeting indeed.
- kirso 5y ago6 years in adtech, lets say advertisers can distribute a lot of budget and waste it just to get 1 sale and cover for the losses so the numbers make sense. I have seen conversion rates increase 40% with purchase intent (if we know that a user added something to basket). So what you see is an adtech tax - partially wastage but people will overlook this if they are still profitable on their marketing ROI.
- Simon_O_Rourke 5y agoYes, yes they absolutely do, although not quite at the levels and extent you might think. I worked with an ad network DSP, who's entire business was figuring out what crap to put in front of what users. All I'll say is that they used pretty low down ways to get to people, one example that sticks out was the amount of targeting that went on late Friday, late Saturday night in APAC when folks would stumble home drunk and go online. Everything and the kitchen sink was thrown at these people, and it often resulted in multi thousand dollar sales, including a few automobiles!
- diffeomorphism 5y agoTwo questions: - if the buyer was intoxicated, isn't that sale invalid? - how is that in any way ethical?
- squeaky-clean 5y ago> if the buyer was intoxicated, isn't that sale invalid? Under what law? Am I not allowed to drunkenly order food at a restaurant? What's the threshold for a purchase that should be invalid?
- diffeomorphism 5y agoLots of laws to pick from depending on the jurisdiction, e.g. see https://www.quora.com/If-you-sign-a-contract-while-drunk-or-otherwise-intoxicated-is-it-still-legally-binding https://www.quora.com/If-you-sign-a-contract-while-drunk-or-... > what is the threshold... Far past the threshold is glaringly obvious, far below as well. If it is close, you do what is always done about any threshold question.
- Simon_O_Rourke 5y agoI don't think selling things to people while they are drunk/high/otherwise is invalid. Otherwise Walmart would have to breathalyze visitors. However, it's massively, objectively, unequivocally unethical, and part of the reason I quit that place. And for the record, selling crap to drunk people in APAC was probably the least morally suspect tactic this company got up too.
- ComradePhil 5y agoThey are targeting users who were at a product page (simply looking) which means they are interested for sure. They can't always know whether the users purchased it. On Facebook, you can let the system know that you have purchased it by clicking Hide Ad => Already Purchased. If companies use Facebook pixels to track orders, Facebook does know whether you purchased it... but maybe not all companies use Facebook pixels for order tracking so Facebook doesn't know. Regarding YouTube, YouTube ads are simply not worth it. Get YouTube premium. You can ofc disable "personalized ads" in these platforms if you don't want these ads to follow you.
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoIt depends heavily on how 'what is being advertised' can be related to 'what people are interested in'. For example, I ran a small business creating posters from cyclists GPS data. I created FB ads that targeted people that used Strava (I'm a little rusty on the exact terminology but it was "had an interest in the strava.com website") and got lots of clicks with people that tried the service. However there are topics - window blinds is a good example - that people aren't (in general) interested in for very long - so once the algorithm comes to the conclusion that you like blinds you've probably already made a purchase. Similarly I subscribe to the economist magazine and keep seeing Economist ads - infuriating. Facebook allows advertisers to remove groups of users (for example those that have purchased a product already) - I don't know why more companies don't use this. You mention charities - I remember reading that most charitable donations come from people that have already donated to that charity before, although I can't find proof.
- giorgioz 5y agoAdblock Plus for Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus-free-ad-bloc/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock-plus-free-... It takes 2 clicks to install, definitely less than writing on Hacker News.
- paradite 5y agoI recently started dabbling in Google ads for my side project. And I have learnt a lot about advertising through actually running campaigns: - Different countries have drastically different CPA (cost per action). You can acquire users easily in low-income countries but not US or Canada. So you have to set different CPA target for different countries. Currently Google ads doesn't seem to do adjustments automatically for app campaigns. - It might take more than one impressions to convert one user. I looked at the conversion paths analysis in Google Analytics and found about 25% of conversions had two or more campaign impressions. Also there's a term called "touchpoints to conversion", basically how many interactions it took for a user to convert. Mine is about 2-3 touchpoints for all campaigns. - Running ad campaign for my app feels surprisingly similar to the experience of hyper-parameter tuning of ML models. Google in fact does use ML to run campaigns internally. That might also be the reason why the initial phase of campaign doesn't work very well with limited training data and bad initial weights.
- rightbyte 5y ago> Running ad campaign for my app feels surprisingly similar to the experience of hyper-parameter tuning of ML models. Maybe becouse most adclickers are bots?
- squeaky-clean 5y agoYes
- lordnacho 5y agoI gave drop shipping a try at one point, just to learn something about the internet. It more or less paid for itself, without much profit, using just FB ads. So basically if some amateur can break even with barely any understanding of how it works, someone with proper marketing experience can probably do well enough to make a living. The thing is the purchase rate was something like 1%. So it may well be that most people by far never buy anything via ads, but the minority is enough to make it worthwhile.
- leobg 5y ago“At one point”. You’re talking 2010? I don’t think an amateur still has a chance of breaking even in 2022. Am I wrong?
- lordnacho 5y agoIt was early 2020. Bought some stuff, made some adverts, saw how the interface works on FB, saw how Shopify works, watched orders coming in and get fulfilled. I still don't really know how to do any of those things properly but it was clear that someone out there was clicking on ads and buying stuff from me.
- leobg 5y agoI’m impressed and surprised. Can you share what the product was?
- lordnacho 5y agoGamer glasses. Reduce blue light kinda thing. There really wasn't much to it, I just borrowed the manufacturer's videos and pics, threw up some ads and then people started ordering.
- leobg 5y agoGeez. Well done! So what made you stop? With so many tweaks untapped, it sounds like guaranteed profits.
- boraoztunc 5y agoMostly no, it does not. Actually there is nothing wrong with targeted advertising, products and ads are meant to target specific people in its nature. But online advertising are a scheme for tech companies to make money. Adtech was created to make the buying and selling of online advertising so much more efficient. Today, about $350 billion dollars is spent on online advertising. 70%+ of it is bought programmatically. And according to the ANA and PwC, 70% of advertising dollars spent on online programmatic advertising never touch a human being. Of $200 billion in annual programmatic ad spend, $140 billion disappears in "ad fees, fraud, non-viewable impressions, non-brand-safe placements, and unknown allocations". See The Programmatic Poop Funnel: https://i2.createsend1.com/ei/d/DD/DB6/ACD/030147/csfinal/ScreenShot2022-01-07at4.14.25PM-990000000005143c.png https://i2.createsend1.com/ei/d/DD/DB6/ACD/030147/csfinal/Sc... I love reading Bob Hoffman about this subject. "The lovely fantasy of online advertising -- in which the same person who was frantically clicking her remote to escape from TV advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with online advertising -- is going to go down as one of the great marketing delusions of all time. It has been undermined by an unfortunate fact of nature -- no one in his right mind volunteers for advertising. By a factor of about a thousand to one, people who can interact with media do so to avoid advertising -- not engage with it." https://www.bobhoffmanswebsite.com/newsletters https://www.bobhoffmanswebsite.com/newsletters
- throwawaylinux 5y agoI can't follow your comment. You say it doesn't work, then you say there's nothing wrong with it, then you list a bunch of things wrong with it. Also, a few things: - Products and services are make to make money for their creators. They generally try to achieve that by creating something of value others will buy. So this isn't really an argument for or against it. A Prius works and it is a scheme for Toyota to make money. - The fact not every ad is viewed doesn't mean it doesn't work. It's just the nature of the delivery. It could be a problem or inefficiency at least, but presumably it's factored into pricing. If one company figured out out how to reduce that waste, they should be able to charge more or take more market share. Not to say it does work, but your post hasn't explained how it doesn't.
- 5y ago
- yosefjaved1 5y agoIf you're doing this from a chrome browser that you're logged into, then it's the advertiser that is at fault. Clearly, if you bought the item, then they should now have you in their system as a conversion. With that information and you not clearing your cookies, they should have setup their campaign to not target you for the same item. It sounds like lazy advertisers. To answer your initial question, it works and it works really well. As advertisers, we see a significant difference in sales when we don't advertise online. This is especially true for search advertising and retargeting. ToFu first touch display advertising doesn't necessarily work as a sale generator. It's the subsequent advertising / display retargeting we do afterwards that works. Unfortunately for advertisers, the days of doing the way we do things will come to an end with third party cookies essentially going away. It'll be interesting to see how digital advertising changes (specifically for open garden platforms like Google ads) without the third-party cookies.
- noduerme 5y agoIt worked on me. I was looking for shoes one day and after 3 months of wasting money, they finally showed me an ad with shoes I liked.
- angarg12 5y agoI work on the engineering side of ads. Yes, targeted advertising consistently produces higher conversion rates. Your personal experience might have been "poor", but in aggregate it works.
- dathinab 5y agoThere had been more then one or two stories about ad "not getting delivered to the target audience" and companies not noticing it through changes in sold products. (Not delivered in the broad sense, from accidentally not bought over misconfigured audience to problems with ad networks.) So I'm but sure about the (micro) targeting aspects. What I'm sure about is that ads work, especially if you do them well. And it's hard to keep the quality separate from the delivery method, as you can't do clean a/b testing or similar (as things like "seen before" or even other ads can have noticable effects as far as I can tell).
- smileybarry 5y agoI turned off ad targeting wherever possible, but Meta is one of the few that don't allow you to and I still see targeted ads on Instagram. I've been thinking of getting a new backpack, and I got backpack ads. However, while I get "ads" -- plural -- they're all from the same single vendor selling a "last bag you'll ever need" that doesn't look all that good. It's frustrating more than helping, the exact reason why I turned off ad targeting in the first place. Years ago I turned targeting back on in Google, and it just meant I got spammed with Pebble ads (>50% of the banners everywhere were Pebble) because I kept checking their website for a sale (at the time they did occasional 2-3 day sales without advertising them, weird given the banner budget). I just turned it off again after that experience.
- can16358p 5y agoYup. I've discovered and bought things on Instagram countless of times from ads. I can't say the same for YouTube or Google: all ads I see on Google and YouTube are crap. Ads I see on Instagram/Facebook are actually high quality. YMMV.
- wruza 5y agoI run adblockers for the same reason. I’m not against ads or supporting sites via ads, and I actually want something new to try. But all ads I see fall into two categories: already bought it for a couple of weeks. Or completely irrelevant, which I never click. They have everything on me: my age, sex, social state and circles, location, life habits, profession, work hours, sleep hours, movie and porn preferences, which non-entertainment topics I’m interested in, which medical issues I have, and probably 50 more properties I never thought about. But I never clicked on any nonsense they tried to advertise to me. I see nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing relevant to my life in ads. None of my new interests ever came from these flashy boxes.
- reilly3000 5y agoYou are being targeted with a type of ad campaign called Retargeting or Remarketing. It uses cookies to inform ad networks that you have recently a page with a particular retargeting campaign ID. Its popular among advertisers as it shows that you are "in the market" for a particular item, which is much more specific and valuable than a random person. If you would like these particular ads to stop, simply clear your cookies or click on the encircled I icon inside the ads to configure them to not target you. Alternatively you can block all ads. It's worth noting that some retargeting matches on the cookies of anybody sharing the same public IP, ie router/ISP, so others in your household may have to do the same. Also, often there are retargeting pixels set for multiple ad networks, so you may have to opt out multiple times. People often ask why they are targeted after they have made a purchase. This is because of limitations of tracking. Merchants can add trackers that show on their checkout pages to associate ads with sales, and stop targeting browsers that have made purchases. Sometimes this works, but often either A. advertisers don't correctly configure these systems or B. limitations with 3rd party cookies make it so the "I've already bought it" signal never makes it back to the ad network. What I don't understand is why consumers aren't offered a choice by ad companies to actually just tell them they bought it. I would assume a marketer would love to know feedback from buyers like when/where/why the purchase took place as well as commentary on the product, vendor etc. It seems like a missed opportunity to make the advertisee more empowered and advertiser more informed.
- just_visiting 5y agoI have learned to ignore ads in general, except when I use a search engine and the top results are ads. When that happens, I spitefully avoid clicking the sponsored links, even if they are pointing to where I want to go. I will intentionally scroll down further and click into the unsponsored links. Maybe I'm just weird, but at the very least, I'm confusing the algorithms.
- apostle36 5y agoYes. I run ads for some clients on Google and Social media and they have amazing results. If you know what you are doing with targeted ads you can make a big difference. What you refer to is called re-marketing to people who visited the website, engaged with ads, but did not buy. The problem is that there are lots of advertisers that do not exclude people who already bought their products and this is bad marketing because people getting bombarded with ads for products that will never re-purchase.