10 ms·

Twitter CFO Anthony Noto Privately Analyzes Facebook

143 points by dev1n 11y ago

dmgbrn 11y ago
That grammar tho! This guy seems like a native speaker, do CFOs actually use "its" instead of "it's" and "your" instead of "you're"? That said, all of this business cat stuff is way over my head. I have no idea whether it's interesting or not.
- pen2l 11y ago
  > That said, all of this business cat stuff is way over my head. I have no idea whether it's interesting or not. Same here, someone please annotate this Sony Wikileaks leak on Genius.com or something! I'd really like to understand it. Genius.com would be perfect for such a thing.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - elevensies 11y ago
    I don't see a you're/your error in the original source, but its/it's is a pain to handle on a mobile keyboard. A lot of other apostrophes are handled by autocorrect but that particular one isn't. All caps I don't get, I find it impossible to read. I suspect that people who write all caps must be desensitized to it somehow.
    - albemuth 11y ago
      Surprised no one brought up "than/then". It really throws me off but then again, I'm not a native speaker.
      - bisrael 11y ago
        it throws me off and i _am_ a native speaker.
- serve_yay 11y ago
  Ugh, I knew somebody would be in the comments saying this. Who cares about the ideas on offer, let's evaluate it according to the rules we all learned in third grade.
  - idlewords 11y ago
    and yet for some reason you punctuated and capitalized your comment correctly it rly makes you wonder
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Can't we do both?
    - dang 11y ago
      In practice, no; comments of any kind lead to more of the same.
      - anoother 11y ago
        I'm going to risk moving completely off-topic, because this is fascinating. Could you elaborate further (perhaps in a new topic or blog post)? I often visit threads and see the top-most comments being somewhat incredulous reactions to a (percieved) large number of sentiments to their contrary, so it would certainly be interesting to see at what point threads begin to evolve a critical mass in terms of which 'side' of a discussion a reply is likely to take.
        dang 11y ago
        I wasn't thinking of opinions for or against a position so much as the quality of the discussion. Shallowly provocative comments produce flamewars, nitpicking produces counter-nitpicking, and so on. Threads that begin with a substantive on-topic comment or two do best.
  - legohead 11y ago
    You just explained it -- bad grammar makes you look dumber than a third grader.
- whysonot 11y ago
  Business cat translation attempt: - Facebook makes money on desktop ads and mobile ads - They are making less money on desktop - They are making more money on mobile - They may be seeing trends before anybody else that mobile is where they will make money - So they might value engaging mobile apps more than competitors Thus, as Snapchat, you realize that FB is willing to pay a lot of $$, but also that what you have (the active users on mobile) is valuable and will continue to grow in value. It's interesting because it sheds light on what went into Snapchat's decision to reject the acquisition.
- kgrin 11y ago
  Sounds like speech recognition, actually - I frequently get emails from a doctor who dictates most of his emails (on mobile), and they have a very similar cadence of grammatical mistakes... YMMV of course, but iOS/Android (and Dragon/et. al.) are pretty good at recognizing words, less so entire sentences - and remember, this is 5 years ago, so adjust accordingly (unsurprisingly, consumer-grade speech recognition has improved dramatically in the past half-decade).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- fizzbar 11y ago
  It was so painful to read that I had to give up, but from experience this isn't particularly rare; these dudes are typically so busy that they're hammering out missives like this as quickly as possible, no time to proof read or grammar check. Speed of response and communicating the core concepts is paramount.
- bisrael 11y ago
  and a "than" instead of "then".... ::facepalm::
rokhayakebe 11y ago
Has anyone else noticed there were no commas on the entire email?
- beaner 11y ago
  It read to me more like he was whipping out something casually in short time, instead of taking the time to impress with grammar. The context is missing here. They could've been chatting online or in person and he sent a quick 15 minute followup. Maybe they're friends who have this kind of casual grammar established. I've written things like this before when I knew the person and conveying information quickly was all I really cared about.
  - bisrael 11y ago
    i don't think most people use grammar to impress, but rather to accurately convey their thoughts. if a sentence is confusing to read, then the reader can be distracted from the concept and pushed into trying to decipher what they are trying to say. i'd say certain mistakes are worse than others, if the two words are pronounced the same, then the reader can easily read over the error. I think more distracting mistakes like "than" instead of "then" where, not only are they pronounced different, but can be used in the same place in a sentence, but with drastically different effect: > this is great news for Snapchat as you are mobile first and mobile only and if the user base on mobile is bigger than desktop (which I think it is by a magnitude or more) than you will be valued more favorably than before in absolute terms and long term at scale you will be more value than desktop companies at scale he uses than 3 times, one of which (the middle "than") should be a "then", just makes this harder to parse. TL;DR: if your job is communicating, then grammar is not for impressing, it's for doing your job.
hnguy1000100 11y ago
How is he sending the email through @gs.com? He stopped working there in 2010 https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonynoto https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonynoto
- Tarang 11y ago
  He stopped in July 2014 - also listed on that link. Email was sent on April 24, 2014.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
crb 11y ago
In case you wondered, as I did, how an e-mail from Goldman Sachs to Snapchat got to Sony; the author forwarded it to Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman/CEO Michael Lynton.
- arthurcolle 11y ago
  I wonder why
  - narsil 11y ago
    Michael Lynton is on Snapchat's board.
logicallee 11y ago
I'm flagging this because the title says "privately", and I agree that it's a private email. It has no place on HN, and we aren't its intended recipient. you can't blame the NSA for having agents reading your private email and looking through your private Internet traffic, if you are going to turn around and do the same thing at the first opportunity.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  Does the NSA publicly post its archive for anyone to view?
- icebraining 11y ago
  I don't blame NSA just for reading private stuff. I blame the NSA because they abuse their position that allows them to read that, much like I blame whoever leaked this email for having done so. To me, your position is like, as we say in my country, "covering the sun with a sieve". The act is done, trying to oppose it now is futile.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
- sdlfkjsdlkjfl 11y ago
  Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.
- choppaface 11y ago
  This email was released earlier, e.g. on Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel-has-grown-up-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel-has...
danielrakh 11y ago
" Specifically if ads on mobile are more engaging for consumer and more relevant than desk top ads than the addressable ad market for mobile will be bigger than desktop ad market and the valuations of mobile companies will be greater than desktop all else equal on audience size etc etc. Ie this would be a very positive factor for Snapchat If Facebook knows this to be true it would result in them being willing to pay higher valuation for mobile companies than other acquirers because google won't know nor will yahoo msft etc because none of them have scale in mobile to understand these powerful secular trends and in essence they under value mobile vs FB and thus under invest and fall farther and farther behind." Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit naive to assume that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft..etc don't understand that mobile is dominating desktop because they don't have the mobile scale of FB? It seems like an obvious insight in today's world. In fact one could argue that Yahoo REALLY understands it considering the shopping spree for mobile first companies these past 2 years.
- jkimmel 11y ago
  Also it seems a bit odd to suggest Google wouldn't understand mobile advertising value vs desktop. Google controls the #1 smartphone OS by marketshare and serves mobile ads over Google search products (& GMail now) to a large number of users. Unless there is an inherently different value for mobile-social ads than just normal mobile/mobile-productivity ads I'm not sure how this would make sense.
  - kunle 11y ago
    I think the point was native mobile advertising (inside the "feed") vs. just mobile advertising (e.g. banners). Facebook doesn't really have a "banners" equivalent, hence, if Facebook is framing mobile as native advertising, and Google is framing mobile as banner advertising, and the growth rates/click through/ROI on each are different, then he's right that they might value mobile materially differently.
- tim333 11y ago
  > naive to assume that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft..etc don't understand that mobile is dominating desktop... That's not the guys point. He's considering whether the mobile ads are more engaging than the desktop ones which is not clear cut. I use my mobile a lot but I can't even recall reading an ad. I'm sure I've scrolled past some. It's possible Facebook has figured how to get people to read the things and have people buy stuff while the other companies have not yet.
beatboxrevival 11y ago
Give a startup founder a few million and instantly they start writing like Emily Dickinson.
ripberge 11y ago
The real question proposed in this email remains. Has FB somehow discovered a way to make ads on mobile way more relevant and valuable than desktop? Because that's what props up their stock price. I would bet it's a lot more accidental clicks by users...
- scanr 11y ago
  It is likely that mobile app install ads are far more lucrative than any other kinds of ads and they work particularly effectively on mobile.
  - boomzilla 11y ago
    How do the mobile apps that bought install ads make money? I understand FB is a good distribution channel, but how do the app developers make money when most of the apps are free and the rest sell for .99?
    - titanomachy 11y ago
      They make money by selling ads to other mobile startups, which in turn are funded by venture capital because of the revenue they can make selling ads to mobile startups... uh oh.
    - threeseed 11y ago
      Have you seriously never actually used one of those apps e.g. Candy Crush or Clash of Clans ? Yes they are free. But they gamified in app purchases extremely well. I know of CEOs and accountants who have dropped $50-100 on games like this who have never touched a computer game before. It's pretty amazing to see. It is a "fad" in the same way that Nintendo, Blizzard, Valve etc are fads.
    - snowwrestler 11y ago
      In-app sales.
    - prostoalex 11y ago
      There's an undying belief in the mobile app community that once you have a spot on user's screen, you can cross-promote other products, so the customer lifetime value is higher than 99c. That didn't work for Rovio (with Amazing Alex), but so far "a growing ecosystem of apps" is a business plan for a lot of those startups.
itazula 11y ago
Reading (rather, skimming) this sort of analysis makes me wish that advertising had its own internet -- an anti-matter, separate universe sort of place. Depressing to see technology as a pack horse for advertising.
- grrowl 11y ago
  An internet without Google and apps, Bing, Youtube, Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, almost all big content publishers, Tumblr (as of recently), Twitter... what would be left? of my usage: Apple-owned apps, Spotify (premium only), Vimeo, SoundCloud, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Trello, Reddit.
  - itazula 11y ago
    So at its core (a rather large core), the internet is advertising -- curated, paid spam? Granted, some of it is actually helpful in providing a pointer to a product I didn't know about, but it's interesting how all of these companies are proxies for a salesman.
mbesto 11y ago
> But mobile monetizes better which is rare….a key question here is why does mobile monetize better? I can answer this -> people don't realize ads on mobile are actually ads. FB's recent change of reducing FB Pages exposure on the News Feed affects this big time. For example, if I like Nike and I receive an ad for new shoes, I probably (1) didn't remember I actually "liked" Nike and/or (2) think this is just Nike updating a post on their Page. Regardless, because I like Nike, I don't care since the ad is relevant. FB actually does a fantastic job of providing relevant ads that most people would assume are simply their favorite brands giving them an update. Furthermore, when it comes to conversions for mobile apps install from FB ads, the friction is so low (click "Install Now" on FB, Click "Get" on the iTunes store), that the conversions (and cost per conversion) are impressively high. A bit of background - I've been running a bunch of campaigns on FB recently for an e-commerce site which is not mobile optimized. Our conversion (both clicks and purchases) from mobile massively trumps the desktop.
- jonathanjaeger 11y ago
  I run a ton of ads on Facebook (full-time), and if you target both desktop and mobile newsfeed users, I find that for the same bid I get 90% coming from mobile vs. 10% desktop. I could bid higher for desktop, but that would increase my cost per conversion. It obviously varies from campaign to campaign and client to client, but it's safe to say that I've moved almost entirely to mobile. It was even better when mobile was newer and CPCs were far lower.. but that's another story. The gold rush is over for marketers.
  - hellbanner 11y ago
    Thanks for pointing this out (and parent comment too!). What are you advertising that you see such high returns on?
    - jonathanjaeger 11y ago
      I don't have much experience in e-commerce, app installs. Our clients tend to be in home security, trade schools/education, and other high cost per lead areas. There were definitely fads in the past like daily deals and user acquisition for startups (fashion/chain restaurants). I'm sure some people are priced out as Facebook has gotten more expensive -- I think that happens with any platform (e.g. Google, display).
crablar 11y ago
Is it surprising that there is no mention of ad fraud in the discussion?
Margh 11y ago
...and all I can think is: "It's a lot easier to accidentally click an ad on mobile." Not just in the sense that they are cleverly disguised, a clumsy scroll attempt often ended up triggering an ad click for me.

143 points by dev1n 11y ago

That grammar tho! This guy seems like a native speaker, do CFOs actually use "its" instead of "it's" and "your" instead of "you're"? That said, all of this business cat stuff is way over my head. I have no idea whether it's interesting or not.

pen2l 11y ago
> That said, all of this business cat stuff is way over my head. I have no idea whether it's interesting or not. Same here, someone please annotate this Sony Wikileaks leak on Genius.com or something! I'd really like to understand it. Genius.com would be perfect for such a thing.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- elevensies 11y ago
  I don't see a you're/your error in the original source, but its/it's is a pain to handle on a mobile keyboard. A lot of other apostrophes are handled by autocorrect but that particular one isn't. All caps I don't get, I find it impossible to read. I suspect that people who write all caps must be desensitized to it somehow.
  - albemuth 11y ago
    Surprised no one brought up "than/then". It really throws me off but then again, I'm not a native speaker.
    - bisrael 11y ago
      it throws me off and i _am_ a native speaker.
serve_yay 11y ago
Ugh, I knew somebody would be in the comments saying this. Who cares about the ideas on offer, let's evaluate it according to the rules we all learned in third grade.
- idlewords 11y ago
  and yet for some reason you punctuated and capitalized your comment correctly it rly makes you wonder
- icebraining 11y ago
  Can't we do both?
  - dang 11y ago
    In practice, no; comments of any kind lead to more of the same.
    - anoother 11y ago
      I'm going to risk moving completely off-topic, because this is fascinating. Could you elaborate further (perhaps in a new topic or blog post)? I often visit threads and see the top-most comments being somewhat incredulous reactions to a (percieved) large number of sentiments to their contrary, so it would certainly be interesting to see at what point threads begin to evolve a critical mass in terms of which 'side' of a discussion a reply is likely to take.
      - dang 11y ago
        I wasn't thinking of opinions for or against a position so much as the quality of the discussion. Shallowly provocative comments produce flamewars, nitpicking produces counter-nitpicking, and so on. Threads that begin with a substantive on-topic comment or two do best.
- legohead 11y ago
  You just explained it -- bad grammar makes you look dumber than a third grader.
whysonot 11y ago
Business cat translation attempt: - Facebook makes money on desktop ads and mobile ads - They are making less money on desktop - They are making more money on mobile - They may be seeing trends before anybody else that mobile is where they will make money - So they might value engaging mobile apps more than competitors Thus, as Snapchat, you realize that FB is willing to pay a lot of $$, but also that what you have (the active users on mobile) is valuable and will continue to grow in value. It's interesting because it sheds light on what went into Snapchat's decision to reject the acquisition.
kgrin 11y ago
Sounds like speech recognition, actually - I frequently get emails from a doctor who dictates most of his emails (on mobile), and they have a very similar cadence of grammatical mistakes... YMMV of course, but iOS/Android (and Dragon/et. al.) are pretty good at recognizing words, less so entire sentences - and remember, this is 5 years ago, so adjust accordingly (unsurprisingly, consumer-grade speech recognition has improved dramatically in the past half-decade).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
fizzbar 11y ago
It was so painful to read that I had to give up, but from experience this isn't particularly rare; these dudes are typically so busy that they're hammering out missives like this as quickly as possible, no time to proof read or grammar check. Speed of response and communicating the core concepts is paramount.
bisrael 11y ago
and a "than" instead of "then".... ::facepalm::

rokhayakebe 11y ago

Has anyone else noticed there were no commas on the entire email?

beaner 11y ago
It read to me more like he was whipping out something casually in short time, instead of taking the time to impress with grammar. The context is missing here. They could've been chatting online or in person and he sent a quick 15 minute followup. Maybe they're friends who have this kind of casual grammar established. I've written things like this before when I knew the person and conveying information quickly was all I really cared about.
- bisrael 11y ago
  i don't think most people use grammar to impress, but rather to accurately convey their thoughts. if a sentence is confusing to read, then the reader can be distracted from the concept and pushed into trying to decipher what they are trying to say. i'd say certain mistakes are worse than others, if the two words are pronounced the same, then the reader can easily read over the error. I think more distracting mistakes like "than" instead of "then" where, not only are they pronounced different, but can be used in the same place in a sentence, but with drastically different effect: > this is great news for Snapchat as you are mobile first and mobile only and if the user base on mobile is bigger than desktop (which I think it is by a magnitude or more) than you will be valued more favorably than before in absolute terms and long term at scale you will be more value than desktop companies at scale he uses than 3 times, one of which (the middle "than") should be a "then", just makes this harder to parse. TL;DR: if your job is communicating, then grammar is not for impressing, it's for doing your job.

hnguy1000100 11y ago

How is he sending the email through @gs.com? He stopped working there in 2010 https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonynoto https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonynoto

Tarang 11y ago
He stopped in July 2014 - also listed on that link. Email was sent on April 24, 2014.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

crb 11y ago

In case you wondered, as I did, how an e-mail from Goldman Sachs to Snapchat got to Sony; the author forwarded it to Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman/CEO Michael Lynton.

arthurcolle 11y ago
I wonder why
- narsil 11y ago
  Michael Lynton is on Snapchat's board.

logicallee 11y ago

I'm flagging this because the title says "privately", and I agree that it's a private email. It has no place on HN, and we aren't its intended recipient. you can't blame the NSA for having agents reading your private email and looking through your private Internet traffic, if you are going to turn around and do the same thing at the first opportunity.

jsprogrammer 11y ago
Does the NSA publicly post its archive for anyone to view?
icebraining 11y ago
I don't blame NSA just for reading private stuff. I blame the NSA because they abuse their position that allows them to read that, much like I blame whoever leaked this email for having done so. To me, your position is like, as we say in my country, "covering the sun with a sieve". The act is done, trying to oppose it now is futile.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
sdlfkjsdlkjfl 11y ago
Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.
choppaface 11y ago
This email was released earlier, e.g. on Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel-has-grown-up-2014-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/snapchat-ceo-evan-spiegel-has...

danielrakh 11y ago

" Specifically if ads on mobile are more engaging for consumer and more relevant than desk top ads than the addressable ad market for mobile will be bigger than desktop ad market and the valuations of mobile companies will be greater than desktop all else equal on audience size etc etc. Ie this would be a very positive factor for Snapchat If Facebook knows this to be true it would result in them being willing to pay higher valuation for mobile companies than other acquirers because google won't know nor will yahoo msft etc because none of them have scale in mobile to understand these powerful secular trends and in essence they under value mobile vs FB and thus under invest and fall farther and farther behind." Am I the only one who thinks it's a bit naive to assume that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft..etc don't understand that mobile is dominating desktop because they don't have the mobile scale of FB? It seems like an obvious insight in today's world. In fact one could argue that Yahoo REALLY understands it considering the shopping spree for mobile first companies these past 2 years.

jkimmel 11y ago
Also it seems a bit odd to suggest Google wouldn't understand mobile advertising value vs desktop. Google controls the #1 smartphone OS by marketshare and serves mobile ads over Google search products (& GMail now) to a large number of users. Unless there is an inherently different value for mobile-social ads than just normal mobile/mobile-productivity ads I'm not sure how this would make sense.
- kunle 11y ago
  I think the point was native mobile advertising (inside the "feed") vs. just mobile advertising (e.g. banners). Facebook doesn't really have a "banners" equivalent, hence, if Facebook is framing mobile as native advertising, and Google is framing mobile as banner advertising, and the growth rates/click through/ROI on each are different, then he's right that they might value mobile materially differently.
tim333 11y ago
> naive to assume that Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft..etc don't understand that mobile is dominating desktop... That's not the guys point. He's considering whether the mobile ads are more engaging than the desktop ones which is not clear cut. I use my mobile a lot but I can't even recall reading an ad. I'm sure I've scrolled past some. It's possible Facebook has figured how to get people to read the things and have people buy stuff while the other companies have not yet.

beatboxrevival 11y ago

Give a startup founder a few million and instantly they start writing like Emily Dickinson.

ripberge 11y ago

The real question proposed in this email remains. Has FB somehow discovered a way to make ads on mobile way more relevant and valuable than desktop? Because that's what props up their stock price. I would bet it's a lot more accidental clicks by users...

scanr 11y ago
It is likely that mobile app install ads are far more lucrative than any other kinds of ads and they work particularly effectively on mobile.
- boomzilla 11y ago
  How do the mobile apps that bought install ads make money? I understand FB is a good distribution channel, but how do the app developers make money when most of the apps are free and the rest sell for .99?
  - titanomachy 11y ago
    They make money by selling ads to other mobile startups, which in turn are funded by venture capital because of the revenue they can make selling ads to mobile startups... uh oh.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    Have you seriously never actually used one of those apps e.g. Candy Crush or Clash of Clans ? Yes they are free. But they gamified in app purchases extremely well. I know of CEOs and accountants who have dropped $50-100 on games like this who have never touched a computer game before. It's pretty amazing to see. It is a "fad" in the same way that Nintendo, Blizzard, Valve etc are fads.
  - snowwrestler 11y ago
    In-app sales.
  - prostoalex 11y ago
    There's an undying belief in the mobile app community that once you have a spot on user's screen, you can cross-promote other products, so the customer lifetime value is higher than 99c. That didn't work for Rovio (with Amazing Alex), but so far "a growing ecosystem of apps" is a business plan for a lot of those startups.

itazula 11y ago

Reading (rather, skimming) this sort of analysis makes me wish that advertising had its own internet -- an anti-matter, separate universe sort of place. Depressing to see technology as a pack horse for advertising.

grrowl 11y ago
An internet without Google and apps, Bing, Youtube, Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, almost all big content publishers, Tumblr (as of recently), Twitter... what would be left? of my usage: Apple-owned apps, Spotify (premium only), Vimeo, SoundCloud, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Trello, Reddit.
- itazula 11y ago
  So at its core (a rather large core), the internet is advertising -- curated, paid spam? Granted, some of it is actually helpful in providing a pointer to a product I didn't know about, but it's interesting how all of these companies are proxies for a salesman.

mbesto 11y ago

> But mobile monetizes better which is rare….a key question here is why does mobile monetize better? I can answer this -> people don't realize ads on mobile are actually ads. FB's recent change of reducing FB Pages exposure on the News Feed affects this big time. For example, if I like Nike and I receive an ad for new shoes, I probably (1) didn't remember I actually "liked" Nike and/or (2) think this is just Nike updating a post on their Page. Regardless, because I like Nike, I don't care since the ad is relevant. FB actually does a fantastic job of providing relevant ads that most people would assume are simply their favorite brands giving them an update. Furthermore, when it comes to conversions for mobile apps install from FB ads, the friction is so low (click "Install Now" on FB, Click "Get" on the iTunes store), that the conversions (and cost per conversion) are impressively high. A bit of background - I've been running a bunch of campaigns on FB recently for an e-commerce site which is not mobile optimized. Our conversion (both clicks and purchases) from mobile massively trumps the desktop.

jonathanjaeger 11y ago
I run a ton of ads on Facebook (full-time), and if you target both desktop and mobile newsfeed users, I find that for the same bid I get 90% coming from mobile vs. 10% desktop. I could bid higher for desktop, but that would increase my cost per conversion. It obviously varies from campaign to campaign and client to client, but it's safe to say that I've moved almost entirely to mobile. It was even better when mobile was newer and CPCs were far lower.. but that's another story. The gold rush is over for marketers.
- hellbanner 11y ago
  Thanks for pointing this out (and parent comment too!). What are you advertising that you see such high returns on?
  - jonathanjaeger 11y ago
    I don't have much experience in e-commerce, app installs. Our clients tend to be in home security, trade schools/education, and other high cost per lead areas. There were definitely fads in the past like daily deals and user acquisition for startups (fashion/chain restaurants). I'm sure some people are priced out as Facebook has gotten more expensive -- I think that happens with any platform (e.g. Google, display).

crablar 11y ago

Is it surprising that there is no mention of ad fraud in the discussion?

Margh 11y ago

...and all I can think is: "It's a lot easier to accidentally click an ad on mobile." Not just in the sense that they are cleverly disguised, a clumsy scroll attempt often ended up triggering an ad click for me.