Re:How SEO Ruined the Internet
by FridgeSeal on Monday April 06, 2020 @09:56PM
(#22799708)
I used to work in Ad Operations (literally buying ad space and running campaigns) and can attest to the accuracy of this.
Clients were clueless: they had their metrics and they looked at them often, but from my interactions, deep understanding of those metrics and the realities behind them was lacking. The chain of technologies was patchwork and would rarely support all the required features from ad-serve back up to agency: click and view attribution was especially flaky and inconsistent. The adserving environment we worked in (in app) often had issues with view attribution, and we'd tell clients that, but we knew for a fact that some of our competitors didn't and clients would always ask us why our view attribution numbers were worse.
Combine that with more suspect behaviour from suppliers and competitors than you can poke a stick at (questionable traffic sources and campaigns that were probably outsourced from under you, suspect and plausibly forged numbers, etc) means that most of the metrics are plausibly poisoned with illegitimate data to a degree that is difficult if not impossible to nail down, which more or less makes lots of those metrics worthless.
> So my personal view on the industry is that it's mostly self-reinforcing bullshit. Doesn't change the fact that it generates stupid amounts of money, though.
Clients were clueless: they had their metrics and they looked at them often, but from my interactions, deep understanding of those metrics and the realities behind them was lacking. The chain of technologies was patchwork and would rarely support all the required features from ad-serve back up to agency: click and view attribution was especially flaky and inconsistent. The adserving environment we worked in (in app) often had issues with view attribution, and we'd tell clients that, but we knew for a fact that some of our competitors didn't and clients would always ask us why our view attribution numbers were worse.
Combine that with more suspect behaviour from suppliers and competitors than you can poke a stick at (questionable traffic sources and campaigns that were probably outsourced from under you, suspect and plausibly forged numbers, etc) means that most of the metrics are plausibly poisoned with illegitimate data to a degree that is difficult if not impossible to nail down, which more or less makes lots of those metrics worthless.
> So my personal view on the industry is that it's mostly self-reinforcing bullshit. Doesn't change the fact that it generates stupid amounts of money, though.
Couldn't agree more.