Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their ad spend

Re:Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their... by addicted on Sunday January 03, 2021 @02:33PM (#25624410)

Playing devils advocate, couldn’t this just be reflective of the fact that Ubers brand reach us strong enough that there is very little advertising that gives them a marginal benefit?

Uber owns taxi services as a brand as much as Google does search.

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Re:Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their... by adrianmonk on Sunday January 03, 2021 @03:39PM (#25625012)

I guess there are 3 reasons why reducing ad spend might not show a negative effect:

(1) Due to fraud, the money wasn't actually going to ads.

(2) You didn't need the ads. You were over some saturation threshold and the law of diminishing returns kicked in hard.

(3) The ads were valuable to you but not in an easily measured way. Maybe you could coast on brand awareness inertia for 6 months or a year before it affects sales.

This case seems to have decent evidence for at least part of it being #1, but not necessarily all of it.

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Re:Uber discovered they’d been defrauded out of 2/3 of their... by acfou on Sunday January 03, 2021 @06:07PM (#25626152)

you are right; some of the biggest brands need to do the least advertising

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