It is astounding that with all that tracking data ad quality has not actually improved in 20 years. They are still garbage ads that are still rarely relevant.
Most recently for me, it was a plumbing part. Now I have targeted ads everywhere for these parts. Sorry org, I finished my project and I won't be doing something similar, hopefully, ever again.
You buy x at y store, y store has an ad buy with ShadyAdCo. If you see product x in an ad within z time afterwards, it counts as an influence towards your purchase. ShadyAdCo just made money, and y store can give record numbers.
EDIT: typo
It also fails to account for awareness being a major reason to buy ads. Ford want to advertise to everybody (probably including Amish) because most people will eventually buy a car, and it is important that you think Ford then. Even if you bought a car yesterday it is important to them that you not forget that you can buy a Ford - they know you won't buy for a few years, but they still want you to think of them.
"This location tracking ability has allowed Google to send reports to retailers telling them, for example, whether people who saw an ad for a lawn mower later visited or passed by a Home Depot. The location-tracking program has grown since it was first launched with only a handful of retailers. Home Depot, Express, Nissan, and Sephora have participated."
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/05/23...
Ask yourself why Facebook counts "post-view" conversions instead of only post-click like AdWords and most others.
New client had been working off the assumption they were seeing ROAS of around 3 (not terrible). When we showed them how to see just the post-click, ROAS is now at 1. That means even if they are selling a product they received for free or stole, ie COGS = 0, they still only breakeven.
Attribution is the key. All this assumes that ad companies and Facebook are honest in the first place about the number of views and clicks an ad has received. Their behavior does not engender much good will for a benefit of the doubt situation.
It's genuinely bizarre when Amazon does it. They know I just bought a $500 vacuum... surely they've got the machine learning chops to teach their algorithm that means I shouldn't ever see a vacuum as a sponsored product for a couple years?
Like come on, I just sent you a bunch of these!
If you buy something, you might land in one of those buckets. Advertiser can buy impressions to those buckets. The buckets are not refreshed on a daily basis (depending on the audience provider), and therefor can contain stale data.
e.g. you bought a blue striped t-shirt from H&M and it is continually advertised to you by H&M for a few days.
In a completely different context, ads can be used to reenforce status. That was a separate distinct point gp was making. If you want to buy luxury goods, but can't afford them, a well placed gucci ad can act as a brand anchor & keep you yearning.
Your point stands, that the "mega retarget post amazon ads" are a flaw in the system, but as the system gets more data, they will be tweaked to be more effective.
This specific case - "here are some other vacuums you didn't buy" - is one that seems more likely to hurt my brand loyalty and post-purchase feelings than anything else.
Chances being that anything that irks you about your new vacuum are going to be most accutely felt in the initial period.
So reminding you heavily that there are other, greener-grass vacuums out there seems productive in inceptioning "I'll never buy X brand again!" resentment.
They can do that with random data and it'll work just as well. It's called divination and you don't need to track me for it.
I think personal info, what you view, search for etc can be useful to both sides when both sides are seeking each other out.
But when it's one-sided is where things get ugly. When Alex Jones is trying to build a captive herd, the kind of data being misused is not so much your personal info/things you have searched for or viewed, but what I call "counter" type data surrounding the content you produce i.e. likes, retweets, views, upvotes etc.
This type of data is what drives the creation of an Alex Jones or a Kim Kardashian. Cause no sane person is out there searching for these clowns. The clowns come into existence only because these count numbers have an influence on people. 14 year old girls from Ecuador to New Zealand look at these counts for guidance on what is hip and that produces a Kim Kardashian with 110 million followers on Instagram.
These counter numbers need to be removed/hidden/shown less frequently or with delay and automatically the world will be a diff place.
When attacking FB and Google(YouTube), Twitter etc these numbers and their visibility to the uninformed and vulnerable of society is what needs to be attacked.
But what happens is people attack the personal info, search and view histories data collection which is actually useful. And that causes unneeded confusion and defensiveness.
even though the conversion rates maybe low.
The argument is that because the conversion rates are low anyway then the targeting doesn't make a big difference.
The sales/marketing guys are just doing what the hivemind says. Maybe I'm unlucky, but I seldom hear one suggest something against the grain. Usually they just say whatever hubspot says.
Different perspectives, different conclusions.
Hah. You're forgetting that the real customer for these adtech companies are infact the sales and marketing teams.
It’s almost as if their business model’s primary focus is not to connect sellers and buyers. I wonder how Palantir feels about the effectiveness of fb data.
1. doesn't benefit the merchants (by providing better targeting)
2. doesn't benefit the consumers (by providing better targeting)
C. I really don't care if they're running a scam, I'm not on FB nor am I advertising on it.
Then what the hell do they actually need all this tracking data for?!!
All that's left is that it benefits the political influence ecosystem (like you said, Palantir & co).
But! We used to believe it benefits the merchants, too (I don't think we ever honestly believed it benefited the consumer, ever). And for all the same, what if in a few months we'll hear political marketing companies and super-PAC whotsits complain that, also for them, FB ads don't really give a great ROI. That it's so much more effective to cold-call people or go door-to-door and do flabby meatspace stuff.
Then what? Why are they tracking us? Really, why are the big machine learning data centres tracking us? I'm just saying. Anyone who still thinks this century can't get any crazier hasn't been paying attention.
Generally the ad network does not know if you really completed a purchase or dropped off during the funnel. Presumably advertisers could set up a hook to inform the ad network if you did purchase or not, but I guess they don't care enough to do so.
They may have improved.
I just bought a ladder on amazon, what information does that tell them? Since it's the only tool I've bought from them it doesn't tell them much. They now know that I might be willing to buy more tools from them in the future but doesn't help in targeting which kind or how often. Me being a ladder buyer is a very weak signal that I will buy any particular item from them.
If on the other hand, I've bought 15 Aubrey Maturin books from them over the last few months, it doesn't take the most sophisticated model to determine that I probably want to buy number 16 next. Or that I might like to read the Horatio Hornblower books.
The ads drove you to post here and as a result, I'm reminded amazon is an option for white goods.
It's almost as if, because it's rumoured to have powerful, dark & unknowable Machine Learning behind it, people assume it must be doing something reaaaaaally clever, and we're just not clever enough to realise what it's truly masterminding.
But I don't know.
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