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by bestatsiege_01 241 days ago
With respect to:

>> they did just clever algorithm and heavy profiling to stole your organic traffic

>Not sure if you had a stroke while writing this, but this makes no sense.

I have only ever been a buyer; so my technical understanding of the back end implementation is incomplete.

However, I think the point OP is trying to make is that the back end of the ad targeting infrastructure ends up attributing "spend" to folks who would have otherwise been organic traffic and found your site anyway. ie placing your ad in effective organic pathways and/or in front of well targeted users.

This of course makes sense. A well targeted ad is going to be presented to lots of people who would have otherwise been organic traffic.

This is just a problem with measuring ROI on ad's in general though. I think what has changed is improved attribution of digital ad's has confused people. They see 10 clicks, $5 spend, 1 sale @ $10 and think a 200% ROAS.

In the old days (and still sometimes for non digital) ad effectiveness was measured as a lift over baseline. Different media had different decay rates.

Depending on your digital property, a similar model may need to be applied to your digital campaigns. As I understand though, this is harder to do in modern times with digital ad's.

2 comments

> Depending on your digital property, a similar model may need to be applied to your digital campaigns. As I understand though, this is harder to do in modern times with digital ad's.

This is insanely important to do now, and the people who know how to successfully do it are old and retiring.

But nobody really wants to know the number of advertising dollars spent to get customers who were already going to spend on your product to ... spend on your product.

No I'm with him it still makes no sense to me. There's a massive assumption that because you fit the profile you'd have heard of the service if there wasn't advertising. A major part of advertising is to find people who like your product. You advertise to let people know about your product and keep it in their minds. Lift over baseline is relevant yes for ROI, but it doesn't imply the service is worthless!