4 ms·
Digital media budgets for almost all companies are essentially put into three buckets (larger companies might have a local publisher/programmatic/digital TV buc
by crowcroft 3y ago
Digital media budgets for almost all companies are essentially put into three buckets (larger companies might have a local publisher/programmatic/digital TV bucket as well).
1. Google Search
2. Meta/YouTube (maybe TikTok)
3. Other platforms/bets
Bucket three is basically all of Reddit/Snap/X/Pinterest/LinkedIn etc., they are all sub scale, and they all perform worse than the other platforms in almost every single niche. None of them work particularly well, everyone knows they don't work super well, but we all keep throwing a few dollars their way because the idea of business performance being at the whim of two companies is frightening. They're all fighting over scraps though.
I'm probably being a little hyperbolic, but probably not by much.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- MichaelZuo 3y agoThere's option 4: offer the absolute best value for money in your niche and don't have a digital media budget, rely on word of mouth instead. e.g. Costco, Tesla itself in the early 2010s, etc...
- amadeuspagel 3y agoCostco relies on membership, not word of mouth, and this is also how amazon got past google (amazon prime).
- ttymck 3y agoHow is membership a marketing channel?
- jwestbury 3y agoMembership is a hook -- once you have a member, they're more likely to buy from you. It's not really a marketing channel, per se, but it is a method of increasing sales. "Marketing" gets kind of murky at the edges, really. Consider Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle, who are famous for their fish-throwing, but have never actually spent anything on advertising -- are they marketing or not?
- ttymck 3y agoWhat? How do you increase membership?
- crowcroft 3y agoWord of mouth and PR are zero-sum games with even fewer winners than advertising. Nice if you can get it though.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoNot really? Sam's club is doing fine competing against Costco. And I doubt their 'digital media budget' is anything significant either.
- crowcroft 3y agoGroceries in the US is one of the largest and most competitive markets in the world. Two companies are absolutely the exception to the norm.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoWhy would being 'one of the largest and most competitive markets in the world' make it inapplicable as a counter-example? If anything, the higher the competitiveness, the better a counter-example it makes.
- crowcroft 3y agoI think we're probably coming into this from very different contexts which don't make for a conducive discussion online. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_type=all&country=US&view_all_page_id=20582642681&sort_data[direction]=desc&sort_data[mode]=relevancy_monthly_grouped&search_type=page&media_type=all https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=all&ad_t... https://adstransparency.google.com/?region=US&preset-date=Last+30+days&domain=costco.com https://adstransparency.google.com/?region=US&preset-date=La...
- MichaelZuo 3y agoYour second link doesn't make sense? Why would other companies advertising on costco.com relate to Costco's own advertising practices elsewhere?