Tag: Data

Brand Awareness and Market Penetration – A Marathon, Not a Sprint 🏃‍♂️💨

January 26, 2025 General Management Listen to Podcast Watch on YouTube
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This piece was inspired by a LinkedIN piece and study by Sundar Swaminathan

In the fast-paced world of tech and startups, companies often focus on rapid growth and quick wins. But let’s be real—building a brand that sticks isn’t about sprinting to the finish line. It’s about pacing yourself for the long haul. The story of Uber Eats in 2018 is a perfect example of what happens when a company takes its foot off the gas in the race for brand awareness. While Uber was busy optimizing its ad spend and cutting costs, it inadvertently handed over significant market share to competitors like DoorDash and Grubhub. Today, we’re diving into how Uber’s decision to cut Meta (Facebook) ad spend in 2018 may have backfired, and why building a brand is more like running a marathon than a 100-meter dash. 🏁

Google Trends: Racing Against The Tides 🏁

From October 2018 clearly illustrates the pivotal moment when DoorDash surged ahead of Uber Eats in the US food delivery market. While Uber Eats maintained a stable but unremarkable trajectory, DoorDash experienced a significant uptick in search interest, reflecting its growing popularity and market presence. This shift aligns with DoorDash's aggressive expansion strategies, localized marketing campaigns, and customer-centric approach, which resonated strongly with consumers. Meanwhile, Uber Eats, despite its established brand, showed no appreciable change in search interest, suggesting a plateau in its growth. This divergence in trends underscores the importance of continuous brand investment and innovation in maintaining market relevance, as even a brief lapse can allow competitors like DoorDash to seize the lead. 🚀📈

The Context: Uber’s Meta Ad Spend Cut 💸

Back in 2018, Uber made a bold move to cut $35 million in annual ad spend on Meta (Facebook). The decision came from an internal analysis led by Sundar Swaminathan, who was heading up US & Canada Rider Performance Marketing Analytics at the time. The analysis showed that Meta ads weren’t driving new customer acquisition for Uber Rides anymore—the market was pretty much saturated. Uber’s data suggested that almost everyone in North America who was going to use Uber already was, so pouring more money into Meta ads seemed like a waste. 🛑

On paper, it made sense. Save money, right? But here’s the kicker: Uber Eats, the company’s food delivery arm, was still in growth mode. By cutting Meta ad spend, Uber may have weakened its brand presence in the food delivery space, leaving the door wide open for competitors like DoorDash to swoop in and steal the show. 🚪🍔

Uber Eats vs. DoorDash: The Battle for Market Share 🥊

In 2018, DoorDash pulled ahead of Uber Eats to become the second-largest food delivery service in the US, right behind Grubhub. According to Second Measure, a firm that tracks consumer spending, DoorDash’s market share jumped from 17% in January 2018 to 27% by December 2018. Meanwhile, Uber Eats’ share stayed flat at around 20%, and Grubhub held onto the top spot with 34%. 📊

DoorDash’s Secret Sauce 🍔🔥

So, how did DoorDash do it? Well, they didn’t just throw money at the problem. They built a brand that resonated with both customers and delivery drivers. Here’s how:

  1. Customer-Centric Approach: DoorDash focused on delivering a great experience. They offered a wide variety of restaurants, including local favorites, and made sure deliveries were fast and reliable. Their DashPass subscription service was a game-changer, giving frequent users free delivery for a monthly fee. Who doesn’t love a good deal? 🎯
  2. Driver-Friendly Policies: DoorDash knew that happy drivers meant happy customers. They offered competitive pay, flexible hours, and bonuses for working during peak times. This helped them attract and retain a massive pool of delivery drivers, which kept deliveries speedy and customers satisfied. 🚗💨
  3. Localized Marketing: DoorDash didn’t just blanket the country with generic ads. They ran localized campaigns that connected with communities. By partnering with local restaurants and running region-specific promotions, they built a strong local presence that felt personal. 🏘️🍕
  4. Digital Dominance: DoorDash went all-in on Meta (Facebook) and Instagram ads, email marketing, and even influencer partnerships. While Uber was scaling back, DoorDash was doubling down, ensuring their brand stayed top-of-mind for hungry consumers. 📱💻
  5. Storytelling: DoorDash’s marketing wasn’t just about selling a service—it was about telling stories. They highlighted real experiences from customers and drivers, creating an emotional connection that made people feel good about choosing DoorDash. 📖❤️

Did Uber’s Meta Shutdown Help DoorDash? 🤔

Here’s where things get interesting. Uber’s decision to cut Meta ad spend in 2018 may have indirectly given DoorDash a leg up. Here’s how:

  1. Less Competition for Ad Space: With Uber out of the picture, DoorDash had more room to dominate Facebook and Instagram ads. This meant they could reach more potential customers without competing with Uber for attention. 🎯📈
  2. Increased Brand Visibility: As Uber scaled back its marketing, DoorDash’s continued investment in Meta ads likely boosted its brand visibility. This helped DoorDash capture the attention of consumers who might have otherwise gone with Uber Eats. 👀🍔
  3. First-Mover Advantage: Uber’s focus on cost-cutting may have slowed its expansion into new markets, giving DoorDash a first-mover advantage in suburban and rural areas. DoorDash’s aggressive expansion strategy allowed it to establish a strong presence in these regions before Uber could catch up. 🏞️🚀

Other Players in the Game: Postmates and Grubhub 🎮

While DoorDash was making waves, other players like Postmates and Grubhub were also in the mix. Postmates, known for its “deliver anything” model, grew modestly in 2018, going from 10% to 12% market share. They focused on urban markets and partnerships with local businesses, which kept them competitive but not quite as explosive as DoorDash. 🏙️📦

Grubhub, the market leader at the time, held onto its 34% share but started to feel the heat as DoorDash and Uber Eats gained traction. Grubhub’s strategy relied heavily on its first-mover advantage and its large network of restaurant partnerships, but it struggled to keep up with DoorDash’s aggressive growth. 🍴📉

The Big Lesson: Brand Building is a Marathon 🏁

Uber’s experience in 2018 is a cautionary tale for any company thinking about cutting corners on brand building. Here’s the deal:

  1. Market Saturation Isn’t Forever: Even if your market seems saturated, consumer behavior can change. You’ve got to keep investing in brand awareness to stay relevant. 🔄📈
  2. Competitors Never Sleep: In a competitive market, taking your foot off the gas can give your rivals a chance to zoom past you. DoorDash’s rapid growth in 2018 is proof that maintaining a strong marketing presence is crucial. 🏎️💨
  3. Brand Awareness is a Long-Term Game: Building a brand isn’t a one-and-done deal. It’s a continuous effort that requires consistent investment. Companies that treat brand building like a marathon, not a sprint, are the ones that come out on top. 🏃‍♂️🏆

Conclusion 🎬

Uber’s decision to cut Meta ad spend in 2018 may have saved them $35 million, but it cost them dearly in the food delivery race. By scaling back its marketing efforts, Uber Eats lost ground to DoorDash, who capitalized on the opportunity by building a brand that resonated with customers and drivers alike. The takeaway? Brand building is a marathon, not a sprint. In competitive markets, maintaining a strong brand presence is critical to long-term success. 🏁🍔

As Sundar Swaminathan put it, “insights do not mean action.” While Uber’s decision to cut Meta ad spend was data-driven, it highlights the importance of considering the bigger picture. In the race for market share, companies that prioritize long-term brand building will always have the edge. 🧠📊

References 📚

Facebook and Cambridge Analytica concerns that may impact social and digital marketing

March 26, 2018 Analytics, Data, Digital Strategy, Social Media Listen to Podcast Watch on YouTube
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Sorry about the ominous title but there is a concern around what’s happening in the digital world specifically relating to social media. Furthermore, it’s getting more attention due to the “Trump Bump” and it’s not good, it isn’t just about stocks, and has expanded into just about anything related to Trump as well as some recent news has a lot of people now talking about Facebook. If you're like me, own Facebook stock, recently saw $60 billion get wiped off the books and tech stocks getting hammered then it's important to understand what is going on. Here’s my super simplified FAQ which will source and cover as much of the media as well as bringing in my experience to help you understand just what’s going on. Please pardon the grammar and typos! Who is Cambridge Analytica? Founded in 2013, Cambridge Analytica (CA) is a privately held data research and marketing company that was created as a commercial solution with the goal of supporting US politics. It’s partly owned by the Robert Mercer family who also happens to be a backer of Breitbart.com and Trump. Cambridge Analytica was involved in over 50 US political races since 2014 and have primarily to my knowledge supported hyper-conservative candidates. How did Facebook and Cambridge Analytica start working together? The gist of the Cambridge Analytica relationship began with Ted Cruz in 2015 where he utilized its services during the 2015 Republican primaries and of course lost to Trump. Ted Cruz was supported by Robert Mercer during that time and having a large stake in Cambridge Analytica it shouldn’t be a surprise that Trump’s campaign team, after Cruz’s loss was backed by Mercer. Went with Cambridge Analytica. From there, not surprisingly, Steve Bannon who according to Christopher Wylie, the firm's director of research, wanted “weapons for a culture war” that Facebook would be platform from which the culture influence could begin. So, Steve Bannon, Jared Kushner and Giles Parscale, Trump’s Director of Digital, went to Facebook and partnered with them to create a digital command and control data operation with Facebook’s organic and advertising products at its fingertips. Why was Facebook working with Cambridge Analytica? This part is unclear as of yet but of course the idea of supporting a major candidate, the potential commercial arrangement and the learning certainly would be a fantastic incentive for any large-scale platform. Where did they get the personally identifiable information? First, information about us can be attained across all of the breadcrumbs we leave as we “surf the web” hop between mobile and desktop in fragmented ways – this is nothing new and we marketers know this. Facebook is such an environment where you conceivably are able to track all of the web 1.0 information but add the interests, behavioral, psychographic and social graphs you essentially have a fantastic opportunity to personalize the information to trigger an action or transaction. Typically the personalization is grounded by an advertiser’s 1st party data, such as a first name, last name, email address, phone number, or in some cases a social security number, which Facebook actually collects. They then allow based on their terms of service to match this 1st party data to the Facebook community and create lookalikes or custom audiences that can then be marketed to. The lookalike modeling is standard fare digital marketing on Facebook because it doesn't have the same accuracy of custom audiences and hence it is a bit like targeting a dartboard blindfolded.Digital marketing blindfolded Any smart advertiser knows that simply targeting using Facebook's audiences to create lookalike models isn't as effective, takes a long time to analyze and is extremely costly. In Cambridge Analytica's case, they have admited they used 1st party data and a Facebook executive even claimed they used custom audiences. That's all well and good, however, there is a serious question around how they procured their database of “first party data” without the knowledge of consumers. There is also a big question surrounding how they could have extracted that information from Facebook and stored them in a database without the knowledge of Facebook. This is a highly dangerous situation, whether you are in the US, CA or the EU. Both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica may be in legal jeopardy depending on how the database information was harvested. Based on media reports, Dr. Aleksander Kogan and his GSR (Global Science Research), paid people using Amazon's Mechanical Turk to do a "personality assessment" on Facebook. The code used in the “personality assessment” app on Facebook exposed information of approximately 270,000 people their personal information and that of their entire social graph. GSR then created a database out of that information and shared it with Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica was then able to expand this to approximately 50 million US Facebook users. Dr. Aleksander Kogan has insisted that he had very clear terms of service that allowed him to legally get personally identifiable information from Facebook users. The issue here as we know, as marketers, that even large-scale advertisers spending billions of dollars a year are not able to extract information from Facebook it’s only a push and match. Was Facebook aware of the harvesting of personal information? The answer as of March 20th according to an ex-Facebook insider, reported by the Guardian, data harvesting by 3rd parties was rampant, but executives pretended it didn’t happen. unclear but as advertisers we need to be diligent about how we collect and track information. We should be interested in Facebook’s actions and whether we are satisfied that it resolves the many concerns advertisers and their customers would have. Imagine if your competitor created a simple assessment app, targeted a range of people and were able to ascertain your customer set and conquest them privately? If there is a platform hole technologically or Terms of Service (ToS) related, then it needs to be opened further or closed. It cannot be for selective entities. How will this impact digital marketing and social media? Specifically, Facebook has seen a ~$60B drop in their books because of a decline in their share value. We’re also seeing discussions in scaling back advertising spend while this current issue blows over. While I haven’t surveyed many consumers, we do know that, unrelated to this, many celebrities such as Jim Carey have begun to shutdown Facebook. This could create an inflationary effect on the cost of advertising across Facebook’s ecosystem, something we won’t know for a few weeks. We do know that the agency and DSP worlds have been inundated with transparency, data privacy and fraud issues which many have addressed. However, there is no doubt that many brands will question every decusion related to the usage of Facebook. As a result, I believe this will have a chilling effect on our industry unless Facebook and potentially a third party investigative body gets to the bottom of this. Our industry leaders Internet American Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Adverting Bureau (IAB), International Advertising Association (IAA) should take a proactive step in working together. What steps are being taking to address this from an agency and brand standpoint? At this stage, Facebook has suspended Cambridge Analytica’s accounts, the British government has procured a warrant to seize any available data, software and hardware to assess further damage as well as forensically investigate the situation. In the US, the Massachusetts Attorney General has opened an investigation into Cambridge Analytica. Our Federal Trade Commission is also investigating whether violated any previous privacy orders using Facebook. Yet, we have not heard from Mark Zuckerberg nor Sheryl Sandberg on this matter. We have also not heard from other platforms such as Twitter, Google and Snapchat. The good news is that many of the advertising associations are in the process of providing “rules of engagement” regarding Facebook and a universal checklist essentially a simplified version of the GDPR process which will alleviate any delays into impact to brands and their customers as well the agencies supporting them. The issue of course is limited to the procurement, handling and usage of customer data. The story is unfolding and there are many things not known but such is our business! If anyone has any questions or would like to add any corrections to this piece feel free to let me know. Sources:
  • The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump
  • Digital Guardian: https://digitalguardian.com/blog/what-gdpr-general-data-protection-regulation-understanding-and-complying-gdpr-data-protection
  • The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/facebook-data-cambridge-analytica-sandy-parakilas?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet
  • The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/technology/facebook-cambridge-analytica-explained.html
  • Wired: https://www.wired.com/story/the-noisy-fallacies-of-psychographic-targeting/
  • Facebook ad policy: https://business.facebook.com/policies/ads
  • Money Watch: https://www.cbsnews.com/live-news/facebook-under-fire-the-latest-on-cambridge-analytica-scandal-live-updates/