hownottowrite

Let’s say companies with revenue between 500K and 5M Euro in annual income, but certainly smaller businesses can stand up targeted ads even if they’re just going self-serve.

A couple people here have said "make something useful." Fascinating. So make something useful but then how do you actually get it in front of people without resorting to very expensive and inefficient brand advertising?

But local ads without interest context are really no different than large scale brand ads. What's missing is the information about the users interests, which in turn makes the ads more relevant.

Neither actually. My question is more about downstream impacts on smaller companies.

For example, Apple rolls out privacy controls in iOS 14. The story is about big adtech vs Apple privacy, but the downstream impact is that smaller businesses can no longer target effectively.

GDPR and similar privacy moves in Europe have the same impact.

The result is that smaller companies either evaporate or move to marketplaces because they can no longer acquire customers at acceptable rates.

If anything the society depicted in Star Trek has even less privacy, but ok.

Yes, the VAT structure is particularly painful for retailers outside EU for many reasons.

But if the rules impact a smaller company’s ability to market against larger and better funded competitors isn’t that an issue as well?

Ultimately my question isn’t about compliance. That is relatively simple. It’s about the downstream effects.

With money… lots and lots of it spent on brand level marketing in print media as well as with direct sales reps.

Not at all on either account.

Absolutely a fair point. How do they get your attention though?

Newspaper ads are a fair point. Europe still has a functional local press ecosystem. That’s dead in the US.

The culture for supporting small businesses is a very fair point. Americans talk about it but in practice the support is very weak.

Europe also retains strong local press operations so advertising in newspapers is actually viable. That’s dead in the US.

Lack of accurate targeting leads to lower ROI. If you’re trying to build a direct sales business that would seem to be a rather large impediment.

Sure they are simple to follow. The question I have for you is how do you attract new customers?

This is what I expected to hear. We had similar issues in the US with corporate tech when various financial regulations came down in the early ‘00s

Well, before targeted ads there were blogs and they were well read. Not so much anymore since Google decimated that channel.

But how do smaller companies function in such an environment without being subsumed into larger marketplaces?

Then explain how a smaller company markets goods and services in the EU without resorting the brand level advertising? Lack of targeting data makes it financially impossible until a company reaches a certain size.

I guess it depends on the products and services and where they originate. Many media companies outside the EU have simply opted out of doing business there. I know the same is true of some smaller direct retailers.

I just read your edit. It doesn’t seem like I had a weird reading at all.

But how do smaller companies make you aware of their products if they can’t target you?

So you’re saying yes because you believe the consolidation is happening regardless?

Probably true in Europe. Regulation and taxation schemes are onerous there. Only the large can survive.

General question to EU people: do you enjoy trading data privacy for consolidation of goods/services into larger and larger corporations? After all, they are the only ones can afford such expensive relationships.

Edit: This question isn’t about compliance. That’s easy. It’s about the downstream impact of “missing” data in the advertising ecosystem.

Some posters have pointed out that the EU still has a viable local press and a history of supporting smaller businesses. All true and something that sets it apart from the US.

Also, my original question is a admittedly cheeky, but I am interested in how smaller companies actually compete if their options for targeted marketing are limited.

I receive 10-12 pitches a day and honestly, this is one of the worst. If you have one that is even worse, feel free to drop it in the comments. I'd love to see it, and by love I mean that I want to tear my eyes out.

So this is charting pageviews not sessions. Did those increase as well? I ask because we saw a net uptick in pageviews but sessions were much lower. The issue turned out to be Facebook code on our pages destroying page load times and we assume leading a rise in refreshes.

Most news sites are littered with beacons so I imagine they had similar issues (times 10).

As a small retailer, we probably ended up losing 15-20% of our sales that day.

The technology actually belongs to Dürr. They’ve been building paint shops for BMW for a few years now.

https://www.durr.com/en/products/paint-shop-application-tech...

Small retailer here and I can confirm similar dips. Basically it’s pulling out a channel we can use for discovery ads which just leads us all back to making the same boring stuff to feed into the Amazon/Google searchplex.

Hope everyone enjoys having the same of everything!

Haha! Already downvoted by his army of Renfields. Love it.

The fact that this hasn’t been flagged off the home page over the last three hours is impressive.

Typically Count Dracula posts get the hammer rather quickly.