[playing_colours]

Hyped industry, sort of hyped name, wasting money on FB ads. It seems like they were “hacking” their way to quick success instead of focusing on delivering a proper product - exactly like Paul Graham described in his recent essay http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html

[vkou]

> It seems like they were “hacking” their way to quick success instead of focusing on delivering a proper product

Generally - not specifically - speaking, in a world where your competitors can throw away millions of VC dollars into hacking their way to quick success and market share, this is a valid strategy. It may, in fact be the optimal strategy.

Of course, if you don't have said millions of VC dollars to throw into that game, then you're not going to meet much success by trying to play it.

[mtgx]

It might be better using other advertising channels if your competitors are pissing away VC money drastically raising bids and making it virtually impossible for any "proper" business to do well in digital advertising utilizing the same channels.

You can notice this even within sub-segments of Google Ads and Facebook Ads where there is a propensity for advertisers to just throw millions at the channel without expecting to be profitable right away (or ever).

But the good news is that if some channels are over-saturated with "free money", then chances are there are other channels are that undersaturated.

[manigandham]

That's assuming those other channels aren't also saturated by the same companies.

Organizations spending millions aren't going to leave a big opening in another medium that's able to reach the same consumers.