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Microsoft Says Not All Ad Clicks Are Created Equal
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Feb 25, 2008 01:05 PM
from the more-tracking-bloat-coming-to-a-site-near-you dept.
from the more-tracking-bloat-coming-to-a-site-near-you dept.
kyle6477 writes to share that Microsoft is hoping to change the way advertising is thought of, and ultimately valued, online. Their new Engagement ROI tool tries to track a user's ad clicking habits and distribute the credit over all of the ads that led to an eventual sale as opposed to the last ad clicked getting all the credit. "Say a consumer sees an ad for a product in a video ad one day, and then clicks on a text ad to visit the retailer's site the next day, and then eventually sees a banner ad that leads to a purchase. All of the monetary credit tends to go to the text link that was clicked on."
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Equal ads (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Equal ads (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Equal ads (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Equal ads (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Equal ads (Score:5, Interesting)
- I don't care that you use AdBlock. If it's an ask slashdot about how to block ads, by all means post in response to that.
- I also don't care about all of you that don't even have a tv but must comment on every tv story.
- Nor do I care that Go is deeper than chess unless we're already discussing both of them (not just one).
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You thief! (Score:4, Funny)
I keed, I keed, you guys are great, don't cancel my account please.
Parent
How does this degrade? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm fine with ads on the internet if it means that I don't have to pay for the content and that the hosting fees are covered with the earnings. But if it's an obnoxious
Unfortunately for marketers, that means that I don't see most of the ads, because the site that "hosts" the
My guess (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that perhaps click through addds are a means to an end, in that they don't sell any product themselves but create awareness.
Once again tho, who are the people that actually buy something from a click through add, exempting porn of course, which everyone buys.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm pretty sure the overwhelming majority of people who use the Internet for porn do not pay for it. It's not exactly hard to come by.
Re:My guess (Score:4, Funny)
That is all.
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Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps that was a typo, but if so it was a rather clever one on several levels.
Re:My guess (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:My guess (Score:5, Informative)
That's probably what's going on.
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Just an exuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just an exuse (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Just an exuse (Score:4, Interesting)
Some sort of spyware would be built into the OS/Sivlerlight/whatever - it would be a "selling point" to get vendors to require the end user to accept such a thing in order to use the website.
Parent
Wasted Effort (Score:5, Insightful)
To put it another way, if one ad is generating a lot more revenue than other ads, there's a reason for this. Whether it be placement, timing, appropriate context, better design, or whatever. If none of these things are the case, then I submit that the ads should all be generating equivalent revenue.
In short, Microsoft is developing a solution in search of a problem. Either that or it's just another attempt at tracking the consumer's every last act, hidden under a patina of equitable distribution of ad revenue.
Re:Wasted Effort (Score:5, Insightful)
This is in fact an issue we, as advertisers, have been dealing with for a long time. One ad does not sell a product or service, rather it takes multiple avenues to get a message across. If this tool helps up view thread within an ad campaign and at what points the campaign has different levels of impact, it would allow us to tune our ad-spend to a very granular level.
Things like Adwords is a large toilet that we used to flush money down. Anything that makes our $$$ go further we are all for.
Regards,
Parent
This is why people block ads (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember hearing about a study where people rated one of two identical breakfast cereals as tasting better, simply because it came in a more attractive box. We are not as objective as we like to think.
Yeah, I agree that packaging matters. So much so, in fact, that knockoff brands tend to use packing similar to the brand they are imitating. I would say a real renegade would buy his breakfast in the bag instead of the box that the overpriced General Mills or Post stuff comes in. That said, I like Cheerios and Honey Nut Cheerios because of its taste and it usually has a more reasonable price than most other stuff (about $0.25 per bowl of cereal). And everytime I buy knockoff brand Cheerios, I am disap
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You've posted the very incorrect raw material cost analogy. Raw material cost != actual cost to create: if I distill a CPU to just some bits of metal & silicon it's cost will be hardly anything. If I distill a skyscraper to just buying a quantity of raw concrete and metal, it's cost will be just a fraction of what it cost to put it up (we'll ignore the window drapes, elevator
Re: (Score:2)
The customer (the company advertising) will have better metrics. Let's say you've got two banner ads (A and B) and a video ad (C). It turns out that out of all the combinations, having the ads viewed in B-C-A order is most succesful. Now the advertiser can model future campaigns on this one. In the past, they may have thought the "A" ad was the best, but they didn't realize it was
Re: (Score:2)
Or perhaps the ads that create an impression that results in a purchase are measurably distinct from the ads people click on. In that case, advertisers would like to data mine to see which ad impressions correlate with purchases and such.
Of course, there is the whole privacy / tracking issue...
Like sports, person who passes ball gets an assist (Score:5, Interesting)
Like in sports, the person who passes the ball/puck/etc does not do the scoring but they do get credit for the assist. Doing so in advertising does make logical sense, and it also seems to be a more fair system. Be careful that you are not against a good idea merely because it was from Microsoft, if Google had suggested this would you have had the same reactions?
Either that or it's just another attempt at tracking the consumer's every last act, hidden under a patina of equitable distribution of ad revenue.
To continue in the theme of the above question, does it bother you that google is actually doing so? Mining email, etc?
Parent
Re:Wasted Effort (Score:4, Funny)
That's what marketers do. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. Some ads can even make a product's suckyness a selling point. Consider these automobile ads:
At Pontiac, we build excitement! (Brakes are bad and teh handling sucks)
Chevy, like a rock (damned thing won't start)
At Ford, Quality is Job one! (they have their work cut out for them)
-mcgrew
(speaking of ads, here's one: new journal today. It's about the eclipse last Wednesday. There are no hookers or sex in it, but it does feature a violent lunatic)
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People Who Buy Products Because They Saw A Banner. (Score:2)
I don't know anyone who's ever been surfing a website, saw an ad for a gadget, or a shirt, or anything, and said "Wow, I just found out I need to buy that!"
Re:People Who Buy Products Because They Saw A Bann (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know anyone who's ever been surfing a website, saw an ad for a gadget, or a shirt, or anything, and said "Wow, I just found out I need to buy that!"
Advertising doesn't really work like that. Much of advertising is just an attempt to create familiarity. So when you DO suddenly decide you "need to buy that!" you'll at least have a passing familiarity with the product that was advertised to you.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Then again, I'm probably not the target audience. If I want to buy something, I don't click banner ads... I research the different products that are out there, go directly to the site that has them, and buy the best
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If a banner ad is indeed bogging down "an entire website" I propose to you that it is your browser/computer that is being bogged down, and needs to be replaced. go ahead and click on that Dell ad.
Honestly, one add is killing the website?
One ad.. perhaps not, but half a dozen ads being delivered from a server that can barely keep up? most definitely yes. I've seen it countless times. The text I want loads, the web site graphics load, but the ads are still chugging along and will eventually stop. The worst ones are the ones that don't allow the rest of the page to load until they have finished. It must be even worse for those who have a dial up connection.
Yes (Score:2)
Ooo! Was that the first Orwell reference for this article? Do I win an iPod?
Flawed Logic? (Score:2)
Track across browsers? Cookie cleaning? (Score:2)
This seems to me like yet another boondoggle...
Counter-productive (Score:4, Insightful)
1) I am already interested in that product
2) I would like to kick back a little money to the site I'm currently surfing. (I frequently have no other way of supporting them)
(OK, I also occasionally click on ads by accident -- especially those annoying ones that hover over the text and have really tiny "close" boxes)
If I'm no longer supporting the site I'm on by clicking an ad, then I lose all motivation to click on them. At that point, I start remembering how annoying ads are, and start considering an ad blocker.
Furthermore, it defeats the efforts of conscientious site hosters like Penny Arcade and Something*Positive (both webcomics, oddly) who are careful to only pick ads for products/sites they can support, and tailor the ads to be useful to their readers. As a result, I strongly suspect that their ads lead to more clicks and more purchases. A scheme like Microsoft's would add a whole lot of free-loaders to their hard work and make it no longer worth while (financially, anyway -- they still have their reputations, of course)
Counting clicks (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's occurred to me that this business about measuring an ad's value by counting clicks is BS.
The same marketers that think an ad is worthless because not enough people visited their page don't think that television or newspaper ads are worthless because not enough people snapped off the TV and called the company.
They get no feedback from TV or newspaper ads - other than a rough estimate of how many people viewed them. Yet from an Internet ad, they expect potential customers to drop what they're doing and rush to the company's website.
For instance, the ad at the top of this slashdot page right now says "A golden opportunity to make Java apps richer... click here". It includes a meaningless picture of some golden eggs. No mention of the company name, product name, or anything that might stick in our minds for later. From their perspective, either we click now or the ad was useless.
They'd never run that ad on TV or in the paper ("blah blah blah, call now."), then cancel their TV ad because nobody called. They'd include some company and product info, and hope we remember them.
So why do they expect so much more from Internet ads?
If you don't click on ads, then what? (Score:3, Insightful)
RS
Why oh why? (Score:2)
Microsoft's strongest markets are the corporate desktop market and games markets.
Sure, there's money in advertising. But why spend to much effort in these markets while your desktop OS is in crisis?
Three Year Old News (Score:3, Interesting)
What an awful way to track ads. (Score:3, Insightful)
People click on ad's displayed on a site mainly because of how the ad is displayed; mainly though good ad placement, or relevent content. Just because it was displayed on a half dozen other sites the person may have visited dosen't mean they should receive some of the payment. The fact that a user DIDN'T click on the ad on the other sites should infact punish the publishers as their ad's are aparently not specific to their customers visitiing the sites.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:New Marketing Strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:New Marketing Strategy (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:New Marketing Strategy (Score:5, Funny)
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Dear Sir/Madam (Score:5, Funny)
The Society finds your comments repulsive. Associating Vista with snails gives said snails a very bad name.
Contrary to your misinformed opinion, some snails are capable of very high speeds, up to 12 inches per minute (15 with a good tailwind). I think we can all agree that this is far faster than Vista.
We therefore request that you withdraw your hurtful comments.
Yours in slime,
S. Cargo
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Re:New Marketing Strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost every computer sold comes with Windows. The deals OEMs make with Microsoft vary--Dell probably pays about $50 per copy. At millions of machines sold per month (239 million sales in 2006, estimated 264 million in 2007), it's going to add up. Then you start talking about the volume licensing that Microsoft does, and the copies that they sell off of the shelf (at much, much higher prices, but to an ever growing market of Mac users who want to virtualize) and I don't think that it's fair to call it just "leverage."
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Re: (Score:2)
Your opinion seems just as rediculous as Microsoft's spyware-ish opinion, just in the opposite direction.
Re:New Marketing Strategy (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm just getting sick of how ubiquitous they are now, thanks to the increase in advertising I pretty much stopped watching TV and going to sporting events, since the actual events have pretty much turned into a mere advertisement for the advertisements. The event is only a way to get you to see ads, and thus has as much content as the ads themselves, none.
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