Is this the second Dot.com bubble?

[Indiana]

Indiana: It's a bit crazy all of that data mining. However, if someone came up to me in the street and tried to sell me something, even if it was something I might be interested in, I'd immediately tell that person to leave me the hell alone and go take a running jump. I'm the kind of person who will deliberately not buy anything from those annoying trucks that drive around with the recorded messages here in Taiwan precisely because they have disturbed my peace.

What I meant was computerized facial recognition that recognizes who you are using cameras as you are out in public and shows ads accordingly. For example, imagine you are walking down a street or in a shopping centre and a billboard shows an ad with your name in text or through audio to get your attention...I would be more surprised if this didn't happen than if it did. Data collection is such a massive enterprise right now and sites like Facebook make it a dream to companies who deal in such information!

[Belgian Pie]

People must be doing some serious ad clicking then. Wow. I didn't realise how compulsive people are. How much do they get per click?

Using Google Adwords as an example, my company (high tech) pays between NT$28 and NT$117 per click, depending on the quality of the keyword, of which Google gets somewhere between 40% and 60%. Some really in-demand keywords can go much higher. There's gold in them there hills.

Who gets the remainder?

[Belgian Pie]

How many people use adblock or similar ... I do do and can see only cats ... no ads!

[Indiana]

I figure I'm probably every marketing executive's worst nightmare though.

Not at all if you have a Facebook account, have ever registered for an e-mail account, use any Google services (YouTube, Flikr, etc.), or even visit websites. Companies know more about you than you probably realize and cookies from sites you haven't even registered for are planted on your computer all of the time. You're being tracked and profiled...even if you don't buy anything, your data is being sold and bought by various companies dealing in personal data. We really can't avoid it nowadays.

[Taffy]

Who gets the remainder?

The site where your ad appears. Of course, if your ad is clicked from a Google search result, then Google get the whole pie.

[headhonchoII]

That's interesting information, however I'd like to understand if 'likes' translate into sales.

With Google Ads, I have one shot to sell someone a product. Eg. They click on my ad and visit my site's landing page. If they like what I have there, great. If they don't, I may have lost them forever. With Facebook, in addition to the much more targeted advertising options (eg. by city, by interest, by gender etc.), by getting them to Like a page, I now have the option to communicate with them beyond the first instance. So now, future posts will show up in their stream and I can see which posts get the most responses.

I just plugged some numbers into Facebook's ad creator and a simple ad targeted to the main markets I license work in, and selecting only people who've listed photography as an interest, gives me a potential reach of 5.7 million people. That's a powerful tool.

Exactly. And that type of targeting, in addition to the opportunity to interact with your fans gives them a huge edge over Google. This is why Google is worried and investing so much into Google+.

Well explained, but is there a point that ads reach saturation level, or will the market find the median level,just playing devil's advocate here. Depends on what you are willing to pay I guess and the end result garnered. I have a friend in the home country who paid Euros per ad for alarm installations. I'm not sure if he still does that or not.

[headhonchoII]

I figure I'm probably every marketing executive's worst nightmare though.

Not at all if you have a Facebook account, have ever registered for an e-mail account, use any Google services (YouTube, Flikr, etc.), or even visit websites. Companies know more about you than you probably realize and cookies from sites you haven't even registered for are planted on your computer all of the time. You're being tracked and profiled...even if you don't buy anything, your data is being sold and bought by various companies dealing in personal data. We really can't avoid it nowadays.

This is spot on. Just last week I had a training exercise with an online marketing company which identifies companies when they click on your webpage. They track the IP back to individual companies and it even gives a telephone number to call. It doesn't give somebody's name but I'm sure there are companies who do this too.

[headhonchoII]

I guess I'm different to a lot of people then. I'm quite disinterested with, and desensitised to, advertising. I tune out advertising so much that I had to actually go and specifically look for the ads on my Facebook page. I rarely impulse buy, I generally take ages to actually go and buy something (even if I've already decided that I want or need it), and I specifically seek out purveyors of goods (I don't like them seeking me out at all).

Indiana: It's a bit crazy all of that data mining. However, if someone came up to me in the street and tried to sell me something, even if it was something I might be interested in, I'd immediately tell that person to leave me the hell alone and go take a running jump. I'm the kind of person who will deliberately not buy anything from those annoying trucks that drive around with the recorded messages here in Taiwan precisely because they have disturbed my peace.

I'm also the kind of person who really dislikes wearing anything with a logo or brand name on it precisely because I think it's a massive scam that people pay clothing companies to be their walking billboards. Surely, it should be the other way around and these companies should pay ME if they want me to advertise their wares.

To me, it doesn't make any sense at all why people would want to engage in all of this weird economic activity of letting people know everything about themselves so they can open themselves up to additional hucksters. I figure I'm probably every marketing executive's worst nightmare though.

Most people are culturally desensitised to the marketing and branding that infiltrates their lives. Most people are also not fully aware of the amount of information being collected about them and how much it is worth. I would agree with the part in bold, want to make money off me and my data, pay me!

My idea for business would be co-develop the product/service with the customer i.e. show where things can be improved, tell the deficiencies honestly and take feedback on your website. Make them part of the story. I think this should work well for environmental conscious goods in particular but it is just a more honest way of doing business and I think people will buy into it on a human level.

[Adam_CLO]

Is there a point that ads reach saturation level, or will the market find the median level,just playing devil's advocate here. Depends on what you are willing to pay I guess and the end result garnered. I have a friend in the home country who paid Euros per ad for alarm installations. I'm not sure if he still does that or not.

Ads won't reach saturation, since consumers would revolt when that happens. How you define an ad will change though. For example, if I see that my friend has liked a particular brand or page, does that constitute an ad? With social media, the idea is that recommendations from your friends are worth more than standard ads directly from companies you've had no prior interaction with.

Ads (however you want to define them) are part of life, if we want free stuff. Companies like Google and Facebook are making billions of dollars from giving away free stuff.

[headhonchoII]

Yes they are providing a service although it is not free as we know from above.