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Recently, I have been using Fullstory to view how my visitors behave on my landing page - and boy does it make a huge difference when that visitor comes from Google or Facebook ads.
Regular visitors from an email that I send out, or from a mailing list, reddit, forums, among others - actually read the content on the landing page. You can see the mouse move across the text as they read in some instances. You can see how they scroll, the breaks they take to digest. Though the clip is 3X faster than usual, below you can see how the scrolling and mouse movements make sense. [Ed. note: Clips are on source page.]
This visitor is very different - it feels like its a paid slave somewhere, or a bot that has clumsy intelligence, or a person that does not read. The mouse rarely moves, it does scroll - though mostly in one direction, and the pace is as if the visitor is not reading the content. Mobile users just scroll and scroll until the bottom and then they leave.
As a result I have stopped all my Google and Facebook campaigns and have focused on growing the service more organically via social sharing and friends. Has anyone else experienced this as well? I'd be happy to share videos or more details, but the difference is clearly noticeable. I'd be interested to see if Fullstory has any high-level analysis of this or if they can verify this behavior.
[...] I am not sure if this is true, but does anyone else experience very, very, very, different click-through and conversion rates on Google and Facebook relative to other organic means?
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 18 2017, @06:20PM
Because... they became fucking ads.
The "fucking" is important. The idea of connecting people to services they might want is a good one. The implementation, though, is to load spammy bullshit no one wants to see onto every single page on the internet, based on who pays for the most space with a half-nod towards "relevance" along the way.
So when I search for something on google, and don't have adblock enabled(and a long time ago that was an idea worth considering, when google ads didn't suck giant balls), I don't get the paid service that's most applicable to my search. Instead I get the vaguely related one who has paid the most cash for impressions and click-throughs.
And that's the problem. It's not that targeted ads can't hypothetically work, it's that greedy assholes will do everything they can to eat as much money as possible regardless of the long-term sustainability of the field. Which has happened with every kind of advertisement until now, so it's not exactly surprising. Fucking advertisement destroys advertisement.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by TheRaven on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:34PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:46PM
Yep, and it's also why I don't trust any "disruptive" silicon valley business. Because they all seem to start with doing things better, making a name for themselves, then immediately bringing back all the evil shit that plagued that industry for years.
If uber doesn't have the same "Grody underpaid angry guy looking for a way to squeeze a few extra bucks out of their customers" reputation that taxis do now in 10 years, I'll eat my hat.
If peoples' reactions aren't "Ugh, I have to take an uber" instead of "Oh, I guess I'll uber today", I'll be astounded.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:39PM
Seriously, I know it's overused as an excuse, but blame Wall Street -- or, more importantly, the attitude toward business that it represents. And then consider the attitude toward investments that it creates. And then consider the way said investors will force businesses to act.
What you seem to want (as do most customers) is a relatively "stable" business. A business that keeps doing the same relatively good work with similar quality year after year. But what customers of a business want is different from what investors demand.
That's not possible if you subscribe to the Wall Street model of a perpetual growth machine demanded by investors. Investors don't chase after companies that basically maintain stable revenue that basically keeps pace with inflation (as would be expected of a solid, stable company that keeps doing the same thing). Rather they want GROWTH. And not in an organic "this year we made a major innovation and will experience some growth with a new product for a year or two, but then we'll go back to stability for several years" way. No, they want big returns every year.
It's worse with tech companies because everything changes so fast. Thus, any new major initiative in Silicon Valley could easily see a huge pattern of growth for its first few years (possibly 5. maybe even 10 years if you're lucky).
But then what do you do to keep investors interested? How do you sustain that record of growth? It's basically impossible to do forever, but that's what the Wall Street myth demands. Even the most innovative companies on the planet can't do it.
So, you start cutting corners. Your product gets cheaper to manufacture or maintain or slightly worse in quality. (Same goes for services.) You ship costs overseas to bring them down. You resort to increasingly desperate methods to keep up the perpetual growth model, and eventually that's going to impact the quality of what you do in noticeable ways. Those exact "corner cutting" possibilities will vary depending on the type of business/product/service, but it happens everywhere.
Uber at least has somewhere to go -- it has plenty of markets to expand to with its main product -- and it's still privately owned. But once it reaches a reasonable saturation of markets or has an IPO and thus needs to start focusing more on short-term growth, be prepared for the bumps to appear. Unless it develops something major to reduce its costs, look for either increased prices or decline in service or both.
Capital investors are great in the early years of a business, but at some point we lost the idea that a business could then plateau after its growth spurt and just pay dividends or whatever. Now investors will just hop to the "next big thing," which is why companies like Google and Apple and Facebook go around DESPERATELY buying up anything that could be "the next big thing." If they miss it and a serious competitor develops, that's potentially the endgame for them.
(Well, there are actually still plenty of "dividend stocks" out there for people who want them, but the excitement is all over the growth. And now its not just rich people and bankers playing this speculation game anymore -- it's an entire machine sold to many Americans about how they can keep beating inflation in their retirement account returns, year after year after year. Everybody wins. Well... until the machine doesn't work that way anymore. Let's just all "keep the faith" in Our Lady of Perpetual Stock Returns. Because if we lose faith in that, it would be a disaster much worse than the Great Depression.)
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday January 19 2017, @12:18AM
Take it one step further, and blame yourself.
Wall street wants high returns, not only because they are greedy, but because their customers have to get great returns to be able to afford to retire. Investment funds need to keep cranking the highest possible returns to avoid being abandoned by you and me... How far do people look into the past when choosing their 401k funds?
Yup, in a wonderful twist of US greedy irony, the job sucks and you'll be outsourced, partially because you are trying to afford your retirement without a pension.
LOL, as they say.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @01:27AM
Whenever I make a similar argument as to why the news industry has faltered, in the US at least, that being because of "You" not wanting to pay for newspapers and insist on running ad blockers and there's no money to actually pay someone to do investigative journalism, I get modded to hell.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @08:52AM
Right, I'll just stop running ad blockers and get infested with malware, be tracked, and have pages slow to a crawl; that seems sensible. There's a reason why people block ads, and it's not because ads are typically reasonable and unobtrusive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 01 2017, @12:22AM
Not sure I agree...I don't run blockers on most of my boxes, and I never disable JavaScript.
Can't recall getting malware. Probably depends on where you surf.
That being said, I do think it is creepy when I see ads for stuff I googled four weeks ago.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:12PM
If ad networks didn't insist on tracking my browsing behavior from one site to another, running proprietary JavaScript programs on my computer, or running video ads on non-video articles, then I wouldn't feel a need to use a tracking blocker.
(Score: 2) by termigator on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:10AM
Yep. And the Wall Street mindset exists in the executive board rooms of large companies. Years ago, I worked for a major tech company that had a history of providing bonuses to employees at end of year if the company was profitable. In my short time there, executives changed the bonus rule where bonuses were only provided if the company exceeds projected expectations. I.e. The company could still record a profit, but if it was not high enough to match or exceed expectations, employee bonuses were not paid out.
Of course, the rule did not apply to executive management.
Serious bullshit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18 2017, @07:53PM
You bring up a point I have posted about several times.
Advertising destroys every medium in which it is used. Ever.
I'll start with Radio and not comment.
TV had a tolerable number of ads. Somewhere during the golden age of TV the ads got more and more. And the quality of ads went way down. It used to be that the ads were somewhat entertaining. Then more and more ads. Lower quality programming.
People fled to cable. The promise of cable was no ads. That illusion didn't last long. But it was tolerable. And programming content was superior. And included the network TV channels if you needed to see a program on network TV. Then the ads got worse. The content got worse. More and more time was spent on ads, and less on content. It got so bad that after an ad, when the content resumed, there would be more ads walking out onto the show you are watching, obscuring things, sometimes important things.
People fled to internet TV. Some of it has ads, some does not. Hulu offers ad free for a higher price, which I'm willing to pay. Netflix is free of ads. When they started considering ads, I wrote them about how this is a slippery slope. Netflix has not put in ads, yet. I also suggested if the did introduce ads, have a higher priced ad-free tier. HBO, Starz and Amazon Prime are free of ads.
Now YouTube has ads. It was okay at first. Now it's getting intolerable. They push YouTube Red. But their ads have gotten so bad, I may just forego ever getting YT Red because I find the ads so offensive.
The web. No ads at first. It was about information. Then ads came. And came and came and came. And ad / malware networks. Then sites where an article was one paragraph per page, and each page had that one paragraph surrounded in dozens of blinking flashing dancing animated seizure inducing ads. And deceptive ads that try to look like an OS window warning you of something. And the advertising networks, and even host web sites were complicit in this. So I have no sympathy for sites complaining about ad blockers. If a site isn't usable with an ad blocker, I never go there again. No site has or ever will have anything valuable enough to overcome this. And since I won't go there, I won't find out even if they did. And I don't care.
Ads are a blight on our cities. And even the countryside. Miles and miles of billboards along roads. It's disgusting.
These people know no bounds. Absolutely none. Phones, tablets, personal computers all spy on us now for the sake of ads! Our cars spy on us for ads. Smart TVs spy on us for ads. IoT devices spy on us for ads.
Once the technology is available, these people will lobby to require ads on the inside of our eyelids. Yes really. Mark my words.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18 2017, @08:27PM
If a site isn't usable with an ad blocker, I never go there again.
Same thing here... Sure, I may miss out on a couple of things but I'm sure I'll cope with that...
It is surprising to me though how many people are not willing to 'miss out on a couple of things' and continue bending over because they don't like the 'inconvenience' of not visiting site X anymore. It really boggles my mind, because sometimes those folks are the most ardent "vote with your wallet"-type.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday January 18 2017, @10:54PM
At first the billboards were just paint on the side of a barn.
Then they were big signs lining every mile of highway.
Then they were lit up to be seen at night.
Now they are these giant LED beacons that wipe out your night vision and cause light pollution.
If you complain about them, you get sued [cbslocal.com] because the government gets paid by the advertisers and guarantees them their business model even if it is unpopular with the people.
Anyone that says "people that use adblock are thieves" can suck my dick. Advertisers are assholes, theives, and scum. They do not deserve anything.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Wednesday January 18 2017, @11:14PM
Venus Inc. by Frederick Pohl and C.M Kornbluth
It explores a society totally controlled by ad agencies. A great read that your comment about ads on the eyelids immediately made me think of.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:13AM
And now Windows 10! Can you believe it! Ads! I pay 100 bucks for a licence and get ads!
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Thursday January 19 2017, @06:14PM
I guess the excuse is that ads allow Windows 10 to be $119, not $179 or so like Windows 7 retail was.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @04:31PM
Eyelids? They will be sent directly into your dreams! [vimeo.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 18 2017, @09:23PM
I serve some small google text ads on some of my pages, and the topics are genuinely aligned with the content of my page - nobody would hit the ads by accident, they are obviously ads, and I honestly believe they are a service to the reader (God knows, I haven't received any payment for them since the click-through traffic in the last 20 years hasn't amounted to $100 payment yet.)
On the other hand, click-bait links embedded in stories, popup images that you click accidentally, what kind of quality of traffic do you think you get from that? Even if you're selling hair plugs and erection pills - you're looking at a few parts per billion conversion rate, I would think - that kind of advertising should go away, not sure how to make that happen, but maybe if sites were Google ranked based on the quality of ads they serve, it might help.
🌻🌻 [google.com]