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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   35215 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Because if Twitter advertising could deliver measurable, immediate value, someone would advertise.

Web advertising is patronage, not about measurable outcomes.. Once twitter slipped from the grasp of the managerial regime, the advertisers were told to back off.

All the old big company ads disappeared after the the takeover, and some large companies came back months later, but in a greatly diminished number.

Do you truly think Raytheon ads on MSNBC, ads by a company which doesn't sell anything civilians can buy, is using ads as anything but patronage?

Most web advertising is for products or services you can purchase, though. And there are so many different products for accurately measuring the effect of your ad spend. This seems facially false.

Most web advertising is for products or services you can purchase, though

I've read accounts claiming online advertising is mostly a sham. That is, there are really little reliable metrics, all the power is in the hands of those selling the ads, etc.

I may post about it if I find the relevant write-up.

Most web advertising is for products or services you can purchase, though

That someone can purchase. I've been on twitter for years. I'd estimate maybe 5% of ads I saw were ever relevant - most were irrelevant trash. I mean, job offers for software devs? It's hard to tell how bad their ad targetting was.

Rest complete trash I'd not even glance at or would block immediately like say, ads for Pepsi.

Facebook seems slightly less bad at showing irrelevant stuff, but it hasn't even figured out that as a far-right type I'm not going to buy liquid food substitutes. So online ads are really kind of meh, if even supposedly some of the best companies cannot figure out how to target ads.

I've read accounts claiming online advertising is mostly a sham. That is, there are really little reliable metrics, all the power is in the hands of those selling the ads, etc.

Note that the following is a much worse argument than it should be - I should just go through a big advertising product's offerings here and explain how they work.

Advertising is a massive industry. I don't doubt this is true for some buyers and sellers in some areas, but others effectively measure the impacts of ad spend. Teams put a lot of effort from very intelligent people into measuring it, and from what I have seen it works well.

Examples to consider: Some google search terms are much more expensive to advertise on than others. Why? Well, they're terms like 'Insurance', 'loans', 'mortgage', 'attorney', where people are looking to purchase expensive services. How would that price be maintained if they didn't work?

Another example: Multiple small online business owners have told me that advertisements get them most of their customers.

That someone can purchase. I've been on twitter for years. I'd estimate maybe 5% of ads I saw were ever relevant - most were irrelevant trash

Twitter's advertising has always been terrible (i i r c), I'm referring to internet advertising in general.

but it hasn't even figured out that as a far-right type I'm not going to buy liquid food substitutes

You may also just be in a hard-to-target demographic, most of us are outliers. I have never intentionally clicked and will never intentionally click on an ad unless I'm investigating advertising itself, and whenever I notice an ad for a product I think 'this is trying to manipulate me ... I better be extra sure to never buy this!', I use ublock origin, half the sites I spend a lot of time on have no ads, I'm not interested in almost all advertised products, and the weirdness of my internet habits mans ads are poorly targeted at me. If advertising was like that for everyone, very little about the ad industry would be recognizable. But most people are not like that.

I agree!

"We need all these employees for X, Y, Z reason" - FALSE!

"We spend all this money on advertising because it works" - ALSO FALSE!

So proveth Elon the Shatterer of Sacred Myths. (For the record I believe that Elon is not playing 4d chess here and is just shooting from the hip with poor results).

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