[babs474]

Facebook style ads CAN convert in a tight window, the problem is people are looking in the wrong place for them. Nobody checks out their timeline, sees a coke ad and immediately clicks to buy. Those ads don't "convert".

What does happen is the cumulative effect of those ads put your brand (coke) top of mind. Later when somebody is searching for "snacks" on google and paid search ad comes up, that person is more likely to chose Coke than RC Cola.

You need to look at effect your "brand" advertising is having on your paid search conversion rates. The industry is trying to solve this with "attribution" schemes ie figure out which ads every converted person has seen. (shameless-plug) But my company, Optimine has a much cooler and simpler approach using incremental modeling.

Here is a white paper that I think does a decent job of explaining. http://optimine.com/assets/pdfs/Measuring_Cross_Channel_Valu...

[toomuchtodo]

How does this model work when people block ads entirely online?

Disclaimer: I'm 31, block all ads online, and don't own a TV. I haven't seen a TV commercial in years.

[WaterSponge]

You are accounted for and not the off the grid.

You are influenced by your friends and culture. Brands try to penetrate both. You have just offloaded some of your choice/reference to friends and internet when your ready to look. They they get you.

[toomuchtodo]

> You are influenced by your friends and culture. Brands try to penetrate both.

Not so much. I have few friends, and their opinions don't influence my buying decisions. I could care less about brands. Show me the money (cheapest option of greatest quality, based on independent research usually wins).

I understand I'm an outlier. I'm just looking at it as an older millennial who doesn't use the radio or TV (paid pandora, video is all consumed online through mediums with no ads) and who is phasing out the use of Facebook (and rarely, if ever, logs into Twitter).

[smacktoward]

The thing is, everybody thinks they are impervious to advertising. Everybody thinks they always choose the "cheapest option of greatest quality, based on independent research." They're just mostly wrong, is all. They either don't understand the way their purchasing decisions actually get made, or they choose to tell themselves they are made differently than they are.

Which isn't to say that you're not the exception, just that generally speaking everybody thinks they're the exception. So how you think you buy things doesn't mean much; you'd have to have someone outside your own head look at your purchasing patterns to know for sure.

[babs474]

A single data point is too small to reason about. But lets say there was an ad campaign that was blocked at a high rate, or even just placed poorly where nobody was seeing it or something. Our scheme would assign those impressions a low value, ie it would come out that cranking impressions or lowering impressions isn't effecting conversion rates anywhere else, so why not turn the ad off.

[the_watcher]

I don't think you can block News Feed ads with Ad Block, although I am not 100% sure about this. I thought they functioned like a native ad.