[HN Gopher] Digital Advertising in 2022
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       Digital Advertising in 2022
        
       Author : feross
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2022-02-08 14:17 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
        
       | jsnell wrote:
       | This is not thinking big enough. I fully expect Apple to add
       | propietary client-side ad targeting into Safari, use that to
       | power their own web display ads network, and not grant
       | competitors any access to it. All of this will be justified by
       | claiming it'll improve privacy, security and battery consumption,
       | of course.
        
         | franczesko wrote:
         | Once that happens, website owners will have to pay Apple a 30%
         | commission from traffic coming from the Safari browser. If you
         | think the idea is ridiculous, it's pretty much happening with
         | apps on iOS right now.
        
       | fumar wrote:
       | My Gell-Mann Amnesia effect tingles reading this post. I've spent
       | my entire career in adtech. I have a few notes below. Outside of
       | those, Stratechery skews FB positive, and it makes it hard to
       | take his commentary at face value.
       | 
       | 1. He argues that FB is able to succeed with something like Reels
       | which are better than search at driving consumer behavior. This
       | is not how marketers view the ad ecosystem. Early on the article
       | he claims that the marketing funnel is compressed down to a
       | single impression in some cases. That is where fortune 100
       | advertisers would disagree. They use multi-touch attribution to
       | understand the value of each impression. In addition to
       | incrementality tests to validate the change in consumer behavior
       | from ad exposures. I see this as a major jump in logic to defend
       | FB's business.
       | 
       | > ... far more important form of advertising than search ads:
       | yes, there are scenarios where a firm can surface something that
       | fits exactly what you are searching for, but oftentimes search
       | ads feel like a rake on organic results that would have given you
       | what you were looking for anyways.
       | 
       | 2. He goes onto an anti-Apple take regarding Apple's own data
       | collection policies. He loses the plot on why
       | AppTrackingTransparency exists. It prohibits apps to collect user
       | data and link that data to 3rd party sources without user consent
       | (opt-in). App developers can continue to user their 1P data
       | within their properties. That is the bare minimum amount of data
       | restrictions our daily smartphones should have. This is a
       | generally a good thing. FB can continue to monetize itself using
       | a breathtaking large amount of data from both opt-in users and
       | opt-out users while respecting ATT policies. Why did FB fail to
       | ready its ad products years in advance? Apple provided plenty of
       | notice. FB could've easily bucket tested each one of its
       | solutions with limited data and prepared accordingly with modeled
       | or panel based approaches. I see this as a FB failure or a
       | coordinated approach to play victim. Either way, keeping data in
       | silos is better than sharing data from users across data players
       | which consumers know nothing about. In this respect, Google's
       | approach to Privacy Sandbox at least grants it air cover when it
       | comes to consumer trends. FB has chosen to do nothing and they
       | are out of ideas.
       | 
       | Lastly, from I've gathered Apple struggles with its own ad
       | business because of ATT.
        
         | dillondoyle wrote:
         | The 'collapsed funnel' direct response ads are a pretty big
         | market even if not the Coke & Pepsi's of the world. To the tune
         | of a good chunk of 10BB..
         | 
         | The article - which I think is on point I agree with almost
         | everything they wrote - mentions online only brands which are a
         | great example.
         | 
         | I don't think a lot of these brands could have been created or
         | grown without effective DR digital ads and FB was the best by
         | far at roas.
         | 
         | I get tons of ads for expensive athletic shorts (which are
         | total gay bait eye candy so that's probably why I get them
         | despite not buying any except patagonia lol).
         | 
         | I see the 'Ten Thousand' brand at the gym all the time so
         | people really do buy from instagram ads and IG shop. I just
         | googled 'athletic short' and they were the top sponsored
         | results there too, goes straight to a purchase page. I have not
         | seen them on youtube doing branding videos though.
        
       | cloutchaser wrote:
       | I see two practical ways out for facebook:
       | 
       | 1. Many advertisers will revert back to using pixels instead. I
       | wonder if you can even redirect people from an app post signup to
       | a website with a pixel and track them that way? (or do the Apple
       | ToSs not allow that?)
       | 
       | 2. Alternatively Facebook need to build a tool where you can
       | create your entire apps signups process inside facebook, so all
       | tracking still takes place inside the facebook app, which post
       | signup redirects via a magic link to the targeted app? So you'd
       | basically have something like Facebook leads but built for actual
       | signups.
        
         | dillondoyle wrote:
         | #1 on pixels. No. Especially if Chrome finally roles out the
         | restrictions they keep pushing back.
         | 
         | A workaround right now is FB allows you to upload 'offline
         | conversions' but you can just upload your own digital
         | conversion data...
         | 
         | And you can always just use unique links to track actual
         | purchases/donations direct from ads.
         | 
         | But even the offline conversion doesn't work for a key part of
         | my business, which was raising money for politics & non profits
         | from FB ads. FB doesn't seem to optimize on the offline
         | conversion data as well as it used to pixel data even though it
         | says the match rate is high.
         | 
         | #2 could possibly exist in a wechat type of way. I like the
         | idea!
         | 
         | FB actually used to have a ton of use of those in fb browser
         | games. Like that farm click game. They are trying to do
         | something like this with messenger, payments, instagram store,
         | marketplace. But they still own all that.
         | 
         | I would love to see if they could further open up messenger to
         | more immersive 3p apps.
         | 
         | Or like steam have a platform to built apps within messenger.
         | 
         | But isn't that the vision of Meta too?
         | 
         | I wish we could take donations for political campaigns via FB's
         | processing but it's not allowed
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | Option 3: Regulatory pressure forces Apple to give up the app
         | store monopoly, which gates 50+% of personal computing that
         | Americans do behind a taxation straitjacket.
         | 
         | I'm no fan of Meta, but Apple wields too much power over every
         | single industry. Just today it became clear they're gunning for
         | the payments industry... Good god. Movie studio, car, 50+% of
         | American computing. Standard Oil and then some.
        
           | 1123581321 wrote:
           | Much of those are free apps, and fewer than half of iPhone
           | users use the App Store.
        
           | fumar wrote:
           | How is the App Store a monopoly? It is a service only on iOS
           | and MacOS devices which are not the majority of hardware sold
           | globally.
        
             | hansel_der wrote:
             | > which are not the majority of hardware sold globally.
             | 
             | they are a majority in individual countries thou, which is
             | the context that consumer protection agencies usually care
             | about.
        
               | fumar wrote:
               | https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-
               | held... 52% that is on the cusp, but sure in the US they
               | have technically the majority. If I manufacture the best
               | X device, should I be limited because its better than the
               | rest? This isn't like oil right? Oil is a derived from
               | earth and you can control it by owning more land and
               | supply. The next IT device could come from anywhere in
               | the world and any manufacturer.
        
         | typest wrote:
         | Your second suggestion is not possible. iOS Apps must be
         | installed through the App Store. Hence, Ben's point in the
         | article that Apple has ultimate control over this process.
        
         | whiplash451 wrote:
         | Option 3: Facebook builds its own online store.
        
           | antihero wrote:
           | Which would require people to jailbreak the phone?
        
       | kristintynski wrote:
       | Speaking as an agency owner, I've seen a massive shift of
       | marketing budgets away from advertising and into content
       | marketing. Adding value through content has always been the most
       | predictable, sustainable way to build inbound customer
       | acquisition.
       | 
       | Businesses are now realizing the ROI of paid channels continues
       | to diminish (if it was ever really there at all given how fake
       | many of the reported metrics seem to be). Instead they are
       | finally understanding that their role isnt to shove marketing
       | messages down peoples throats, but instead to earn their
       | attention via the value their content can add to existing needs.
       | 
       | Content + PR will become the defacto way most companies market
       | themselves, where PR is just multi-channel distribution of the
       | content being created by the brand.
        
         | cm2012 wrote:
         | For many B2B companies its a mix - promoting gated content
         | through paid ads is the most ROI efficient way to make ads work
         | at scale.
         | 
         | Source: Own a fast growing B2B ads agency.
        
           | kristintynski wrote:
           | Content distribution through paid channels can definitely
           | work well, especially if what you are running ads on are
           | earned media placements talking about you/your content. Gated
           | content can work exceptionally well if it is valuable enough,
           | and not just an obvious attempt to grab contact info.
        
         | jklinger410 wrote:
         | This is a net positive for advertising agencies which will
         | gradually be unable to "prove" their ROI. Going back to the old
         | days of spots and Nielsen ratings.
        
           | YXNjaGVyZWdlbgo wrote:
           | Thats the wrong fallacy advertising agencies know that online
           | advertising numbers are bullshit but the marketing people on
           | client side really like big numbers to impress their bosses.
        
         | ohazi wrote:
         | So meaningful search results are going to get even worse. Ugh.
        
           | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
           | Yes. "Content marketing" is also called "paid shilling". Not
           | a win for the consumer or for ethics.
        
           | marcosdumay wrote:
           | Think of them as contextual advertisement, instead of
           | tracking one.
           | 
           | In other words, digital advertisement is moving into a shitty
           | badly designed copy of the form it had at the time it used to
           | bring exceptional ROI.
        
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       (page generated 2022-02-08 23:01 UTC)