90% useless is still better than most of the alternatives.
Seriously though, it's hard to track success.
If I'm showing an ad wanting people to rush out and buy sneakers... it's rare that it will hit the right person at the right spot in their sneaker purchase decision journey.
But what I want is to bombard them with information so that when they are ready to buy sneakers, they think positively of the sneakers I am selling.
I don't care if they don't follow a perfect path on my site... if they click around and click off... they most likely aren't going to click and buy on the spot. I'm OK with this.
How do I know if my advertising is working? Well... tracking users is one way, but just asking users is something a lot of stores don't bother with. A simple "how did you hear about us?" or hit them up with a customer satisfaction survey after the purchase with a few questions -- incentivized with a coupon. You'll get some great metrics that will help you understand if you marketing budget is being well-spent.
Agreed. You definitely have to do retargeting campaigns too so you can stay in front of them and help drive them to convert when they are in the consideration phase.
However, if you are bidding on keywords showing purchase intent (usually on Google Adwords), the user's should be more engaged. If the Google PPC traffic isn't engaging you may need to optimize your landing page and do some A/B testing.
Facebook is quite different because the user isn't expressing intent at the time they see your ad (usually interest/demographic based targeting) and are having to jump off FB to check your site out. So your landing page has to be really compelling and quicker to digest for that audience. You have to try and capture an email and drop a FB retargeting pixel for sure.
The strategies should be different based on those channels because of the context and frame of mind the user is in.
Correct. This is the main point of the claim, and that their CPM is a fabricated stream of visitors with a specific mix of "active" vs. "non-active" users - which they control.
Which you tell Google/Facebook how much you want to pay for it. The better quality they deliver the more you (and your competitors) will be willing to pay.
True. Early on when I used the Google Keyword tool it told me it could drive 400 clicks with a max bid of $0.50 per click. In reality I can get 10 clicks for $1.25 per click -- and that is when the conversion rate is an order of magnitude worst.
For me that means I am paying 100X more than what I had expected.
The case I am making is I believe Google & Facebook mix "active" and "non-active" users to create an artificial stream of users such that paying by impression is always worst than CPC.
Sorry man, but you're not experienced enough to make these claims. Search, display, and social are entirely different channels and have completely different strategies. Display is for awareness, you shouldn't be trying to get clicks.
You get charged for misclicks so maybe that's what you are seeing. But cpm bidding generally isn't for driving traffic anyways. Cpc is usually more expensive because it is way more targeted and is intent based.
Correct, this is not a statistical trial or anything official. In fact, my data is not significant. After years of using Google and Facebook ads that I have never seen CPM out beat CPC.
This whole thread is horrifying to me. And I'm saying that as someone who has been online for 35 years, and who (I cringe to admit) worked on the first web-based advertising in 1993. It's like watching a child grow up to be a cruel dictator.
For the latter: I worked on Global Network Navigator [1] from 1993-1995. GNN was the first commercial website, published by O'Reilly & Associates. I was the technical director of GNN. We experimented with various types of financial support, including what today would call sponsored content. My first gig at GNN in October 1993 was coding the HTML for the the initial sponsored content article (for a Bay area law firm). Around the same time, Wired (as HotWired) invented banner ads -- I lay no claim to that! ;)
For the former: I think systems like FullStory are incredibly intrusive. Why would I want my personal scrolling & clicking actions captured, played back, and analyzed? How have we come to accept this as normal? I realize most people don't think about this, but that's because they don't realize the level of information that is accrued. I know when I've tried to explain how much information is gathered, my non-techie friends are horrified themselves. Sure, it might be anonymized (or might not); regardless, it's just fucking creepy.
Reading this thread made me double-check my ad-blocker/anti-tracker settings, clear all my cookies, and think again about just disabling Javascript entirely.
Seriously though, it's hard to track success.
If I'm showing an ad wanting people to rush out and buy sneakers... it's rare that it will hit the right person at the right spot in their sneaker purchase decision journey.
But what I want is to bombard them with information so that when they are ready to buy sneakers, they think positively of the sneakers I am selling.
I don't care if they don't follow a perfect path on my site... if they click around and click off... they most likely aren't going to click and buy on the spot. I'm OK with this.
How do I know if my advertising is working? Well... tracking users is one way, but just asking users is something a lot of stores don't bother with. A simple "how did you hear about us?" or hit them up with a customer satisfaction survey after the purchase with a few questions -- incentivized with a coupon. You'll get some great metrics that will help you understand if you marketing budget is being well-spent.