
Google Will Pay Publishers for ‘The Night of the Yellow Ad’ - potench
https://adexchanger.com/online-advertising/multimillion-dollar-oops-google-will-pay-publishers-for-the-night-of-the-yellow-ad/
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ginko
Made me think of an art project in a shopping street in Vienna over 10 years
ago where all advertisements and logos were covered by yellow foil. I remember
quite liking it back in the day.

[https://www.fontblog.de/fontblog-
archiv/C1716572149/E9454162...](https://www.fontblog.de/fontblog-
archiv/C1716572149/E945416216/Media/EntschriftungQTVR.jpg)
[http://dativ.at/fotos/panoramas/neubaugasse.html](http://dativ.at/fotos/panoramas/neubaugasse.html)

~~~
Erwin
Sao Paulo made that into law, banning outdoor advertising:
[https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-
secret...](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao-
paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/)

~~~
superlopuh
Moscow introduced a similar design code in the city centre, it's
unrecognisable from 5 years ago: [http://www.artlebedev.com/moscow/design-
code/](http://www.artlebedev.com/moscow/design-code/)

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isostatic
2 cents per advert and the would explodes. That’s what your mental health is
worth chaps.

~~~
Phemist
One thing I find consistently underwhelming is how much money is actually
being paid for individual ad locations, both digital and especially physical
space. Ie, a sizeable city's public space being fully plastered with (nowadays
animated) ads _might_ add 1% to the city's spending budget, but even that
number seems high, and the proportionality is totally screwed between the
public benefits and downsides.

~~~
JCharante
I just wanted to add that the grass is always greener on the other side. I've
spent a decade in Maine where advertising is mostly non-existent, and I loved
traveling to Boston or NYC where I got to see the result of giant advertising
budgets.

~~~
johnkpaul
Do you mean for the novelty or because you actually enjoyed the advertising?

~~~
JCharante
I love how billboards (which are essentially banned in Maine) add to the major
roads. I love seeing giant ads slapped on the side of buildings, reminding me
that the second season of 13 reasons why is now on Netflix. I love seeing
advertisements for SaaS companies. It makes me feel like I'm in civilization,
and it reminds me of my childhood in Peru.

~~~
ouid
I had no idea that anyone on earth felt this way.

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bochoh
What's amazing to me is that so many people clicked on what would otherwise be
an ignored ad space.

~~~
tossaccount123
Extremely high click-through-rate isn't good generally. I can make something
very vague and get high CTR but the conversion will be awful and a waste of
money. For an awareness or cost per impression campaign it would be good
though.

Compared to the average display ad the bright yellow grabs attention and "The
night of the yellow ad" makes you curious

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homero
So what was the mistake? Why pay full price when it's worth the lower bid that
would have won anyway?

~~~
londons_explore
Googles ad market is a 2nd price auction - ie. the winner of the auction pays
the price of the runner up.

Many auctions only have a single bidder, and in this case, the price is a
'reserve' price set by the publisher (website). That is common in ad slots
which have strict targeting criteria banning nearly everyone else from being
eligible.

In those cases, often the advertiser sets a super high bid, just to make sure
they win the auction. Assuming the eligibility criteria keep all other bidders
out, that's not an issue.

It looks like what happened here is the 'Yellow Ad' found a way to be eligible
for far more auctions than normal, and had a very high bid. That meant it was
now a 2nd bidder in lots of auctions where the price was normally set by the
'reserve' price, and the final hammer price was much higher.

~~~
deckar01
Thanks for the insight. I still don't fully understand the point of the
article. It seems to be focused on publishers getting to keep the extra ad
revenue. Does that mean the advertisers don't get a refund for their
overpriced ads?

~~~
erichurkman
I took it to mean that Google was covering the advertiser's cost to the
publishers that showed the ad mistakenly.

~~~
elliekelly
I read it that way too which was interesting to me. What about Google's
_actual_ clients: the advertisers who lost out on clicks/traffic because a
fake ad took their place. I guess I'm surprised Google would bend over
backwards to keep the platforms happy but shrug off the impact of the error on
the people who ultimately pay them. Perhaps it's indicative of where the power
lies in the internet advertising chain: whoever it is that can generate
clicks.

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tehlike
Nothing newsworthy. This is part of day to day operation, just another
postmortem for someone.

~~~
potench
Saw a huge spike in CPM metrics yesterday and freaked out because it was timed
near a deployment. Team chased it down to Triplelift network bidding $26 CPM
over millions of impressions but Adx winning 90% of the auctions anyways,
presumably with the same creative.

Anyways, I found the article very informative because we weren’t sure what
happened, it was such an anomaly we thought all our data was bad for the day,
but it turned out to be an early Christmas present I guess.

Postmortems of things that affect a ton of businessses and people seem
newsworthy to me. And while this isn’t a very detailed one, it’s more
information than I could find anywhere else - we assumed it was a costly fat
finger mistake.

~~~
dabei
It's funny Triplelift was even bidding that much. Maybe some publishers have
detected the issue before it was known and milked it with ad networks.

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gcb0
"google" will pay? or google will take their fat share from all their
advertising clients who will pay the extra price since the floor price
suddenly jumped to $20 across the board?

seems like an elaborated scam within google to bump q4 revenue. someone really
wanted their bonus I guess.

~~~
phailhaus
Are you suggesting that Google decided to risk the trust they've built over
decades (worth billions) for a one-time infusion of a few million dollars?

~~~
gcb0
no. and not conspiracy. just belive that they did the math and found out they
can get the PR and a profit :)

~~~
phailhaus
This is the funniest explanation I've ever heard. Google is one of the biggest
companies in the world worth hundreds of billions of dollars, their name is
literally a household verb for searching, and you think they need PR?

Sorry, this was obviously an accident that cost them ten million dollars. They
are not going to orchestrate a stunt that makes them look incompetent.

~~~
JetSpiegel
> They are not going to orchestrate a stunt that makes them look incompetent.

Speaking of the other Google story on the main page as we speak...

[https://www.blog.google/products/messages/latest-messages-
al...](https://www.blog.google/products/messages/latest-messages-allo-duo-and-
hangouts/)

~~~
phailhaus
Yeah, that whole debacle does not look good for them. This is damage control.

