Comment by Rebelgecko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Rebelgecko | Hacker News Reader

What is the strongest signal that someone will be buying blinds the near future?

a) Someone recently bought blinds

b) Someone bought blinds 5 years ago

c) Someone hasn't bought blinds ever (maybe they're renting, or just tape newspaper to their windows)

Turns out, on average, the answer is a. Either because you're returning blinds you don't like and are in the market for replacements, or because you're doing a home remodel and once you fix up one window you'll need blinds for the next one. Even if most people who bought blinds won't be buying new ones in the next week, those are still better odds than advertising to someone who will never buy blinds in their entire life.

I often wonder how various products sort out on this question because while this example makes sense, other ones would not. A common example is ladders. I might buy more than one because you need two lengths, but I can't imagine many people are frequent return customers for ladders the way they may be for blinds, and I can't think of any instances where they would be back in the market for a ladder that are also realistic (e.g. probably not a lot of people buying all their friends new ladders).

Back of a napkin calculation: showing OP 100 ads of blinds probably costs 0.1$ in the US. The cost of a blind is 100$ (I have no idea, don't live in the US). So if the probability of buying a second blind is at least 0.1% it was worth running the campaign.

The fact is, online ads are super cheap.

You can target ads in US at $1 CPM?

Where does this data come from?

What do you think if you included the option d) Someone recently made a search that included the word "blinds" ?

A person in category a probably also searched. The thing is just that a recent purchase isn’t a strong enough signal to not retarget. It’s a too big risk to take because the probable recent buyers are fewer so it’s not worth filtering them out. At least that’s my impression of how it works.

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