As a marketer I've been fortunate enough to avoid most of the AMP fallout because of the specific makeup of my clientele. However, my colleagues who have to deal with AMP want Google to kill it forever and never bring it back.
Your colleagues are the problem that AMP is unfortunately necessary to solve. There are too many bloated, slow, design-forward and tracker-infested pages that take ten times as much memory and time as is required for the core content to be loaded and presented. This means the core of the user experience in AMP-land is generally much, much better.
It didn't have to be this way. AMP is necessary because the web user experience has become atrocious. There have been many years, flush and bountiful with opportunities to improve this. Most websites remain blessed with this wondrous panoply.
AMP seems to be solving for a problem that doesn't seem to exist anymore. Data is absurdly cheap now. And wi-fi is never hard to find
Broadband access has improved drastically as well in the last one year. I've gone from paying $40/month for a 16mbps connection with a data cap of 80GB to $12/month for a 50mbps connection with no data cap.
It's come to a point where I don't think at all about data usage or my phone bill.
Which is why I say that AMP is a solution in the wrong direction. If India can make data so cheap, it's only a matter of time before other markets follow suit. AMP is a solution to a dying problem, not an emerging one.
Hard to imagine how it could get this bad.
I've lost count of the number of times a page has unnecessarily been rendered unusable because although it had loaded all of the important stuff, it was waiting around for a web font or JavaScript to finish loading and I was going through an area with poor signal.
That's in a developed country with solid, ubiquitous telecoms infrastructure. Most of the world – and most of the people in the world – don't have it as good, so it matters even more for them.
Even if you do find wifi, it's often slow or totally broken. It usually requires you to log in and be tracked. Often the wifi network operator knows every place you visit when they have a network located there, even if you don't deliberately log in at those locations.
It’s a pure negative.
Success often hinges on making something people want. Marketing done well is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data. I don't think I'd ever have been successful without a marketing background.
To take it back to the original point, I will never move to AMP. I spend a lot of time speeding up my pages through simplification, caching, and any other trick that makes sense (deferment, lazy loading, minification, combining, etc.) But there are a lot of reasons to not want your link to start with amp.google.com when someone shares my page.
* Any links to that URL rely on the good graces of the search engines to "count" for rankings and continue sending traffic. This is especially worrying if I decide to change standards. Will my rankings tank? Will the crawlers get totally confused and think I have a bunch of 404s? Both have been reported. These are not risks I'm willing to take with my sites that took so much work to build and promote.
* When someone shares my page I want my URL to be clear - not some google.com URL. That's both confusing for the user and bad for building a brand. Even if it was a cname to my own subdomain I'd feel better, e.g. amp.mysite.com
* Aside from the reason above, the lock-in is philosophically problematic. I intentionally use cross-platform apps on my phone because I don't want to be locked into an ecosystem. I don't foresee switching to Apple, but I didn't foresee switching to Android either. The point is that I could. This freedom is important to me.
* I don't trust that Google is committed to me and my content. Just look at the YouTubers getting screwed over by Google's lazy copyright policy. What makes you think they're going to suddenly staff up and/or care more on web content?
Anyway, as a writer, marketer, business owner, and web developer: fuck AMP.
This * million. The only thing I can reliably trust google is that when I type a search query, results will be meaningful.
Regarding them keeping my data secure, not selling out to NSA, dropping support for things on a whim, kicking users out of their platform, I can’t really trust them.
Google or anyone else.
It’s just not their core business. They don’t really make much money from AMP. It feels like some VP’s pet project to get a big fat stock bonus.
If you run a serious business. Stay the hell away from AMP.
Even that is pretty dicey these days. Search for `keyword1 keyword2 obscure_but_important_keyword3` and `obscure_but_important_keyword3` will just get dropped from your query.
Often. It seems sometimes I get selected for an A/B test where they just ignore parts of my query even if I use doublequotes and verbatim option.
Also this becoming standard means Google have taken a(nother) step backwards since 2009.
Which might be a good thing in the long run. It means competition has even better chances. :-)
The one thing I really miss is insta-results for things like 'population of USA'. On the other hand, I think Google was going a bit too far with that and started giving insta-results that at times were subjective, or even simply wrong.
I've been using findx.com as my default search engine lately. I still use the find on google option often though, since it's not nearly as good as DDG (There is a search on DDG option next to the Google one as well).
> Regarding them keeping my data secure [...] I can’t really trust them.
Really? I trust Google more than pretty much any other company to keep my emails secure, for example. Very curious what companies you would consider trustworthy from a security standpoint, unless by security you misspoke and really meant privacy.
I also have a gmail account. Google is upfront about stating they read my email through gmail. Many times I’ve seen Google use dark UI patterns to hide their tracking and snooping. E.g. location tracking on Android or the way they ignore thr Do Not Track header.
Even though they might not sell data directly, they are insistent on gathering it for their own hidden interests.
I don’t trust Google.
/jk
If that's true then why are they dedicated to harvesting and processing all your data?
Even this is getting less reliable, image search at least.
Reverse image search (from what I can gather from using it) used to try and match the image to existing images it knew, then tried to tell you where it came from and what it was based on data it gathered from the page it came from.
Today it appears to use a machine learning to decide what the image is, then show similar images of the same object with the same visual appearance.
The difference to the end user is before if you searched using a still of a film it would almost always successfully identify it and provide links related to the film and the location of the still in particular.
Today if you do the same then Google will identify the picture has a woman in it using ML and return a search for the word "woman" with just random stock photos of women in similar images then the search listings will just be links to Pintrest boards containing the searched image.
Follow-up question: Do you think the impact of marketers on people’s lives globally is net positive, or net negative?
Do you need them to just announce to the world that your product exists and solves a particular set of problems? Or do you need them to break through the noise caused by all the other marketers? ;).
It's a self-sustaining industry. If you squint, it's basically rent-seeking.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-year_plans_for_the_nation...
You can't buy a product/service you don't know exists.
Product discovery should involve me consciously, purposefully looking for a product, not all possible products trying to come to me all the time.
How do you win your first few mouths?
> I could walk around the shop and discover a new product on the shelves.
What is the shop owner incentive to promote your product this way before he can be sure that he will sell some of your stuff.
> Or, pick up a catalog with local companies.
Your local car manufacturer?
> pick up a magazine dedicated to companies announcing their products in particular domain.
Without ads, how would those magazines be monetized?
> Or these days, Google for a solution to a particular problem.
SEO = Marketing
Family, friends, people living in the neighbourhood of your business. If it's any good, it'll spread. If it isn't, it doesn't deserve to spread.
> What is the shop owner incentive to promote your product this way before he can be sure that he will sell some of your stuff.
It can be either way for the shop owner; your product might turn out to be a flop, or an overnight success. Stocking shelves is an active process, an exploraition vs. exploitation problem.
> Your local car manufacturer?
Word of mouth. Regular (i.e. not rich) people don't buy cars off adverts, they buy off experiences of other car owners. This works well enough in practice already.
> Without ads, how would those magazines be monetized?
Companies would pay to be put in them, obviously. Also, without ads being prevalent everywhere, people might even be inclined to buy them. The difference is, it would be people who choose when they see ads, not the advertisers.
> SEO = Marketing
SEO == fucking up the Internet by greedily exploiting imperfections of search engine ranking algorithms. It is indeed marketing, and something I'd love to see disappear. I hate SEO, and have been on the receiving end of SEO practices (i.e. blogspam) in the past.
Actually, it is. What do you believe is the purpose of ads? More importantly, how do you interpret the fact that any product release is based on an advertisement campaign?
I don't think this is the real root issue you're thinking of. I don't believe HN has a simplistic view of marketers (to contrast, I'd say it seems to have a simplistic view of management). Many people here, myself included, would never deny that the job of marketer is difficult, challenging, and has a lot of depth. The issue we have is with the job itself.
> Success often hinges on making something people want. Marketing done well is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data. I don't think I'd ever have been successful without a marketing background.
This is perfect. This is exactly what marketing should be! Problem is, it's rarely it.
The marketing as we usually encounter it, on the receiving end, isn't about "making something people want". It's about "making people want something". This simple transposition of words is the point at which marketing turns from objectively valuable into malicious and exploitative, and ultimately the source of hate against the whole field.
You wrote that marketing done well "is hugely helpful in determining both what people want and whether they perceive a product as a solution to their problems, and it can help guide product development with marketing analytics and other user data". Yeah, sure. Except it's motte-and-bailey again, because we all know that's not what's going on. The data isn't used to optimize the product to deliver better value, it's used to optimize the product to trick the buyer into purchase. And analytics aren't just guiding product development (in either direction), they're also resold on the side, so that someone else can better trick the buyer into purchasing something else they don't need.
The social contract between the individual and the firm is: the individual gives the firm money, in exchange for the firm delivering value. Marketing, as implemented in practice, is the art of maximizing the money received while minimizing the value given back (because value costs money to make). Hence the hate.
Also products are definitely getting better all the time. Feedback is a part of marketing and personalization to predict consumer needs is the next wave. Tricking users is not a viable business model for any legitimate company.
Just yesterday I saw a documentary (in German TV) about magazine ads for overprized health products with little to no actual health benefit (like a shoe insert which, literal quote, "instantly cures 100s of chronic ailments"). These ads always have testimonials from doctors, but when the journalists tried to find those doctors, they always turned out to be stock photo models.
That's marketing at its worst. But also the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of marketing.
Maybe marketing is similar to infrastructure. When it's good, it's invisible; so you only notice it when it fails.
I'm not sure if you're trying to disagree with my comment or making a different point...
It matters if they didn't want the product before your marketing campaign, and started to want it after. Desire itself is not a bad thing. Inducing desire in people is a completely different topic.
> I'd much rather people have agency over their decisions
Sure. And marketing as an industry mostly works to override people's agency. That's what all the tricks from Cialdini's book do. That's why the industry is so keenly weaponizing research from psychology and cognitive sciences.
> Also products are definitely getting better all the time.
That's a tangential topic (and a big one), but I very much question the thing those products are getting better at. It somehow never is about maximizing value to the buyer. Quite the opposite, actually - everything from white goods through tools, clothing, cars, to software, is getting less useful, more disposable, less repariable, of worse quality, and locked behind DRMs and service-instead-of-product schemes.
No, agency is not overridden. That's a crazy stretch. The most advertising can do is create desire, but a person still has to make the decision to act. Otherwise you're talking about mind control and if we had that then the world look very different.
Re: product quality, you're just making quite a lot of subjective statements so I'll skip it.
Not all marketers sell snakeoil and used cars, you know
Marketers are the single most destructive force impacting the lives of anyone using the internet nowadays, whether from attacks on privacy to manipulating democratic elections.
I really expect more nuanced comments than this on HN.
There are categories of company. Yours has a dedicated team taking care of cluster, even has enough resource to make it k8s-as-a-service. Whatever hype rarely affects companies that have resources (money, human, time etc.)
But hype doesn't choose companies, it spreads and kills approaches that are more proper than k8s to a lot of companies. I'd love to see how many SMEs even need servers clustering.
Edit: Removed "Is it different than advertising?"
I've worked in large companies with 20+ person Marketing/PR departments and I'm not actually sure what their day to day job entails, and would totally be curious to know more. It's a major part of society these days, whether we love it or hate it. We all know IT has phone support roles, application development, system admins, project managers, etc... but I couldn't really tell you what all the different roles are in marketing.
Even with advertising alone there is 1) buying it, 2) concepting the brand message 3) writing the specific content 4) creating how it looks 5) creating the material and 6) Placing it 7) project managing the process 8) analysing the results - all as separate fields.
And within above people can specialise in specific categories like online, above the line (e.g. billboards), below the line offline (e.g. snail mail), TV, sponsorship etc
And that's just getting ads live....
I googled 'types of marketing jobs' and read about 5 articles and they all have different guides about what makes marketing roles and none seems to cover it.... One article put sales in marketing which is a common misunderstanding of what marketing is, and several times I've seen companies put top sales management in charge of marketing because 'they can sell' which does not work as its a surprising different skill set.
But here's a couple of articles to cover the common areas;
https://www.localwise.com/a/313-21-types-of-marketing-jobs-t...
https://marketingwit.com/types-of-marketing-jobs
Or you could go with the sometimes tech view... the guys that play with crayons and waste money :)
What is "the line"?
> Below the line (BTL) advertising is more one to one, and involves the distribution of pamphlets, handbills, stickers, promotions, brochures placed at point of sale, on the roads through banners and placards. It could also involve product demos and samplings at busy places like malls and market places or residential complexes.
http://www.theadvertisingclub.net/index.php/features/editori...
I would include that as above the line. My understanding is ATL is for mass viewing. While BTL directly or reasonably targeted to the individual. I say 'reasonably' as often EDM/DM (emails and mailers) have broad targeting cohorts & elements but are considered BTL.
As a terminology aside online retail sales still uses “hard lines” and “soft lines” as product & organization categories!
Of course this definition is not exactly correct or exhaustive anymore, this is just the origin. Now it’s understood as defined by the other commentators.
https://muddlesintomaxims.com/2016/02/27/verbing-weirds-lang...
For your original question, the difference between this and advertising is an advertiser receives a brief and builds creatives appropriate to whatever channels they and the marketer choose.
This is my experience and a few marketers have disagreed with this - obviously it varies between companies.
A marketer would find your marketable database of potential customers, work on messaging that appeals to the needs of the different audience types, find ways to target these audiences through channels like email, search marketing, content/SEO, social, etc., allocate budget broadly to test the different channels, and then turn dials accordingly dependent on where marketing budget has the best return.
The daily tasks of this can be anything from producing new marketing collateral, testing new channel tactics, adjusting lead flow and lead distribution to a sales team, managing agency support, cozying up with PMs/engineers to get product features added, calm a sales manager who is pissy about why leads aren't flowing or being properly distributed, etc.
It's a kind of wealth distribution, nothing more.
I've had jobs in the past where I've been paid more for doing less. I've also experienced the exact reverse. I think a lot of people are in denial because they haven't had the life experience where they can say the same?
If this is truly how you feel, why not try to add value for your clients instead of just taking the money and not contributing? I work in digital marketing and what I do, among other things involves:
- conducting split testing experiments to evaluate which types of marketing copy or site UX lead to better conversion
- evaluating client's web properties to improve SEO, things like semantic content layout, redirect types (301 v 302 etc), accessibility, logical information architecture
- writing code for custom event tracking, implementing schema-based markup for better search engine discoverability
- creating outreach campaigns via email, social and paid search channels, each of which requires has its own KPIs and require a fair amount of domain knowledge to implement and measure effectively
- analyzing search trend data to figure out if the product copy language is similar to what users are searching for
Advertising - digital, physical
Analytics - web traffic, roi analysis, data-mining, segmentation etc
Brand marketing - ads, identity / messaging, etc
Content - creating new content for the business around product/service to support promotional activity
Email - "subscribe to my newsletter", but at enterprise scale and managing content for the millions of subscribers you have
Product marketing - often a function in large enterprises, may be involved with things like messaging within a product
Web - website, seo, design, architecture, UX etc all fall under marketing
There's also a lot of functions that support many of these marketing roles, like the tech that powers all this, keeping things working smoothly, including integrations, compliance with stuff like GDPR, CASL etc