by siggi on 11/29/19, 11:48 PM with 172 comments
by tomaszs on 11/30/19, 9:35 AM
For example if you set a budget of 100 dollars per day, Google can, and most likely, will, spend 200 dollars in short campaign per day.
Another thing: in display campaign, on default, most of the budget will be drained by mobile fraud applications that generate fake clicks. And also by video clicks made by babies on YouTube. And Google removed an option to disable mobile apps altogether lately.
Keyword targeting - on default Google uses broad matching including variants etc. Eventually you can pay for clicks for non relevant keywords that will also drain most of the budget.
Another thing: Google advises to put ads on your company name. It is a neat strategy, because you pay for something you had for free. And campaign seems to have better statistics.
Another thing. You wont believe it, untill you see it. Aprox up to 80% of ad traffic are bots. And advertising platforms does not recognize it or refund.
And so on... I am working on Google Ads campaigns for several years now. Always say to my client two things:
1) Google and Facebook will spent every penny you want to spend
2) Spend on ads only such amount on money, you can live without, and keep it running for a longer time without interruption.
3) Optimise often
by tehwebguy on 11/30/19, 1:07 AM
Did you read the fine print? Doesn’t matter, you can’t redline it anyway so it’s take it or leave it.
by oceliker on 11/30/19, 2:31 AM
Clicks outside the US are not necessarily meaningless -- the screenshot in the article shows that they are targeting people "regularly in the US". Just because I left for a couple of weeks does not mean I abandoned everything related to where I live. There's still value in targeting US ads to me, independent of my current location.
by tyingq on 11/30/19, 12:42 AM
Google does provide a CSV with all the AdWords recognized countries: https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/geot...
You should be able to copy the list to the clipboard and paste into the exclusion list.
by asadkn on 11/30/19, 9:08 AM
After spending ~100k, our ads randomly stopped working last month without changing anything. Support took 10 days to reply saying the account was up for a review (no notifications sent, no indicators). Yet, it still wasn't working.
Booked a consultation with one of their so-called "Experts", he couldn't find anything wrong and suggested to contact support again.
After the initial 10 days response, still waiting for a reply from so-called support 20 days later. I'd assume support only exists for companies that spend millions a year.
by emn13 on 11/30/19, 11:35 AM
It appears arguably reasonable that geotargeting isn't exact, nor is it clear that these clicks weren't actually real and valuable. If he's trying to make the point that the trend is disturbing, well, then: make that point with something akin to a real sample (at least 1000 clicks, spread over more than a week?)
by quickthrower2 on 11/30/19, 2:39 AM
by ilamont on 11/30/19, 2:34 AM
If you call them on it, the Google phone reps will say with a straight face, “Let's say people with family in Moldova want to look for something to tell their relatives in the U.S.”
The ethical way for Google to handle this would be to make all U.S. campaigns by default target users in the U.S., Indian campaigns target users in India, Moldovan campaigns target users in Moldova, etc. If businesses want to expand their campaigns to people living in other countries for whatever reason, give them the option but don't make it the default.
I feel especially sorry for the local small business owners trying to counter the SEO garbage and Yelp reviews that clutter the results. They try to set up the campaigns trusting Google's guidance, and they're lucky if 10% of clicks end up being target customers living in the same area. Often they have no clue about what's going on, and wonder why their campaigns are costing so much for only a trickle of real customers.
by cpsempek on 11/30/19, 1:28 AM
1. Buy AdWords ads in countries out of Bing’s coverage,
2. Send these clicks to a page serving your Bing feed’s ads for same/similar keyword search,
3. Realize Bing US CPCs on international AdWords ad buys
by JCharante on 11/30/19, 3:20 AM
by GordonS on 11/30/19, 4:52 PM
My site is focused only on relevant content in a particular infosec niche, and is well written - yet quality scores across the site are 2-4, and have been for the entire site history, which spans almost 20 years. Which means we pay more for ads.
I've been through the usual guides, and I can't find anything actionable - they all basically boil down to "have relevant content" - but I do, dammit!
I've also taken up Google's frequent offers of free help from an expert on 2 occasions. Both times all they did was try to get me to increase my spend (e.g. enabling the search network etc), and parroted about "writing relevant content", even though both agreed that the content seemed very relevant to them.
The site has been rewritten from scratch a couple of times over the years - no change.
I even paid a copywriter a couple of years back, but the tweaked content still resulted in the same 2-4 quality scores.
I'm considering switching to a different domain, closing the AdWords account and opening a new one, but I've no idea if that would actually change anything.
by appleiigs on 11/30/19, 1:09 AM
by Simon_says on 11/30/19, 8:11 AM
I've never watched a non-English video or ever interacted with the non-English speaking web. How on Earth can Alphabet screw up so much? The only thing I can fathom is that Alphabet is optimizing for getting more advertising revenue, long-term effectiveness of their ads be damned.
by james_impliu on 11/30/19, 4:04 PM
For example, Adwords defaults into advertising on every device which now includes TVs. This channel would never work for our business (an app that integrates with GitHub), and I'm sure this would work badly for many other businesses. We only found it by digging into the campaign stats once it had launched.
It also strikes me how long the approval takes for new ads - 48 hours. How many advertisers drop off in that time? That feels like a real value add thing to focus on.
by ben_jones on 11/30/19, 12:42 AM
by JeremyMorgan on 11/30/19, 2:19 AM
Don't get me started about Twitter advertsing. Want some followers for your business? Twitter will gladly send you tons of obviously fake profiles as soon as you get too many impressions without a click. Like profiles without real pictures and timelines consisting only of retweets.
You have to tolerate an accepted amount of cruft with any PPC campaign.
by wolco on 11/30/19, 12:54 AM
But other questions came up.
Why do so many quit google after less than five years?
How does a company who's product is a push notification when someone clicks get funding?
by stinkycatfart on 11/30/19, 2:20 AM
Honestly I think this highlights how divorced eng is from real world usage, otherwise he'd know this shit happens. every.damn.day.
ad tech is a house of cards and makes me reconsider working at Google every day.
by spencey on 11/30/19, 3:43 AM
by izacus on 11/30/19, 8:31 AM
That sounds incompatible.
by moomin on 11/30/19, 10:28 AM
by nartz on 11/30/19, 2:03 AM
by unreal37 on 11/30/19, 2:51 AM
You worked for Google. You should have known this before today.
by ifthenelseend on 11/30/19, 2:15 AM
by Akababa on 11/30/19, 2:17 AM
by paul7986 on 11/30/19, 4:45 AM