Alphabet's earnings miss profit estimates as spending grows
There is a lot of anti-ad sentiment here but as someone who runs ads on google and Facebook for clients, I find that google and Facebook have leveled the playing field in some respects for small companies. Now I can definitively show a client that they pay me X dollars per month and my ads for them generated X*5 revenue for them that month. The attribution for these platforms is quite robust, and if you know what you’re doing you can produce positive ROI even on small budgets. Previously when advertising was done on an awareness basis (billboards, newspapers) small advertisers might be shut out of the market because advertising is expensive and they can’t reliably say whether their ads are working.<p>I work mainly in the health&#x2F;wellness space and I’m able to effectively target people who will be legitimately interested in the services the companies we represent sell. There seems to be this idea that advertising is “shoved down our throats” and while I certainly agree in some cases, people who buy from our clients are buying because the products or services improve their lives in some way and they only buy because they want to. I think that google and Facebook (whatever your feelings on their other practices) do provide an unprecedented avenue for small businesses to find customers efficiently and profitably.