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Microsoft Says Not All Ad Clicks Are Created Equal
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."
Microsoft are wrong, I don't have any ads to click, so they are in fact all equal to me.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
I barely trust javascript from Google, I trust even less stuff from Microsoft, so how well would their algorithms work without client side scripts?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
To track all of your traffic.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
This really seems like a wasted effort. Presumably, it is either the case that the ad that was clicked on was more convincing than the other ads, causing the purchaser to finally cave in, or it was no more convincing and just benefited from the luck of the draw. If it was the case that this individual ad was what convinced the consumer, I see no reason it shouldn't get all the credit. If it was not the case that this individual ad was more convincing, then when you take the total ad revenue on average, none of the ads should be getting more revenue than any of the others.
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.
I gotta better one! Instead of spending time trying to beat Google at their own game, they could concentrate their efforts at improving their core products. Like, say, operating systems!
My blog
This would make me far less likely to click on ads. Right now, I only click on ads for two reasons:
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)
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.
AccountKiller
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 they made Vista-brand snails or vacuum cleaners, they'd sell like mad.
Yeah, google's text ads are perfectly reasonable, and those flash-based ones are atrocities. What's kind of interesting is how people pretty much block them out subconsciously after a while, especially if they become used to the site after visiting it numerous times. I guess that's why web ad companies suggest people move them around and try to make them look as much like actual content as possible.
-mrxak
Onions Will Kill You
In short, Microsoft is developing a solution in search of a problem.
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?
That is all.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
bah, who needs a vacuum cleaner that blows?
Actually, the answer probably lies somewhere between these extremes.
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."
Do you have the pre-fetch option on in Firefox? If you do, it might be requesting the page and therefore the cookie in the background. When on the Google results, it Firefox pre-fetches the first few links.
That's probably what's going on.
By not watching ads, you are stealing from the hard working website owners and operators like CmdrTaco here. I mean, due to lack of funds the poor guy has obviously had to hire brain damaged chimpanzees as editors.
;)
I keed, I keed, you guys are great, don't cancel my account please.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
I can't even do this anymore. Even before AdBlock ubiquitous ads (noise) caused my brain to automatically filter the header of websites, the same with the 2 minute blocks between television shows. With AdBlock the topic is invalidated of course, since I never deal with online ads. But with television sometimes my family/friends comment on an ad that was just on, and I have no awareness of what the hell they are talking about. If you were a young ape in the forest you couldn't survive being aware of every useless detail (noise), thus you filter them out unless they are actually useful.
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.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
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
Engineering is the art of compromise.