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Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

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Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#321

Post by phicoh »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #25
abalashov wrote: post #23

I really thought I was crazy when I thought that a 99% bounce rate is unreal, even for my highly specialised product sites which cater to a very niche audience. But I ultimately came to a similar conclusion; no matter what ads I come up with, it's money down the drain, and I've never had a single conversion that came through the door that way. I've spent untold thousands on paid ads. I learned a great deal about whic…

We, as users, have been oversaturated and desensitized. There is so much crap shoved in our faces, that we've learned over the years to ignore all ads. Speaking for myself, I have an almost visceral negative reaction with ads. I would (and do) pay dumb amounts of money for a service if that means I'm not served ads.

I'm always surprised how bad ads are on some systems. I usually like ads in specialty paper publications. It is nice to know what vendors are around, what new products they have. And you can skip an ad in a fraction of a second.

Before I installed Privacy Badger, my experience was usually ads for stuff I really didn't care about, unrelated to the subject of the website. Then I start searching for something, find what I want to buy and buy it. Then for months I get ads everywhere for the product I just bought. Never for example for accessories.

Of course, ads have to be as obnoxious as possible. Not just being there if you want to give them some attention, no they have to destroy your reading experience.

I once gave a news site a nice donation. By sheer coincidence right after that they changed the layout to the point I stopped visiting. Of course, my donation could easily be seen as a reward for the articles I read there before, but it didn't feel right.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#322

Post by biesnecker »

somid3 wrote: post #96
davidgerard wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What proportion of your prospects do you guess are running an adblocker?

Thats irrelevant since I'm analyzing clicks from Google and Facebook and then looking at their movements via Fullstory. How does an adblocker alter that process?

It segments the audience. The people that are coming to your site aren't running adblocker, and might behave differently than those who do.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#323

Post by cconcepts »

In the contract economy, imagine that all of us, with our small contracting companies and associated specialities, are day labourers standing at the dockside waiting to be hired.

The dock manager (Google) opens a gate to the strong looking fellows allowing them into the dock company's holding area. If they are not in this area (front page of appropriate SERPs) then they aren't considered by the task master who later comes to the holding area, scans the candidates that the dock manager has selected, and takes his pick to get the days work done - from which point it is finally up to the individual and their abilities to prove their ongoing worth.

Imagine if you needed to be an SEO, adwords and general internet marketing guru just to get the dock manager to look at you so you could get paid....

EDIT: Clarity

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#324

Post by maverick_iceman »

dajohnson89 wrote: post #25
abalashov wrote: post #23

I really thought I was crazy when I thought that a 99% bounce rate is unreal, even for my highly specialised product sites which cater to a very niche audience. But I ultimately came to a similar conclusion; no matter what ads I come up with, it's money down the drain, and I've never had a single conversion that came through the door that way. I've spent untold thousands on paid ads. I learned a great deal about whic…

We, as users, have been oversaturated and desensitized. There is so much crap shoved in our faces, that we've learned over the years to ignore all ads. Speaking for myself, I have an almost visceral negative reaction with ads. I would (and do) pay dumb amounts of money for a service if that means I'm not served ads.

Why not just use adblockers? It's free.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#325

Post by erikpukinskis »

cconcepts wrote: post #323

In the contract economy, imagine that all of us, with our small contracting companies and associated specialities, are day labourers standing at the dockside waiting to be hired. The dock manager (Google) opens a gate to the strong looking fellows allowing them into the dock company's holding area. If they are not in this area (front page of appropriate SERPs) then they aren't considered by the task master who later…

In the contract economy every one of the dock workers has an agent whose job it is to make sure they have the support they need to provide ongoing worth.

Right now most agents won't take someone who can't immediately bill invoices in the high thousands of dollars. In a contract economy the agent services market would have a low end. Tools will emerge to help agents take on large volumes of low dollar value clients.

Double digit percentages of the entire unrepresented labor market are up for grabs. The current setup is unstable.

Unions are different in that they represent a class not an individual and they don't take a percentage of earnings.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#326

Post by patrickk »

ar15saveslives wrote: post #113
usaphp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your product specialized to technical users? I've noticed that businesses with more technical clients have harder time getting customers via ads, because most technical users don't click on ads

I sell an OSX app for advanced users, and as you said, they don't click on ads and it would make more sense to heat my house with $20 bills instead sending them to fb/adwords. However, I ran 2-day flash-sale and it went unexpectedly good. I never thought devs and tech-savvy people visit websites like that.

Anecdotally, I never click ads (they're all blocked with years) but I do respond to "deals" site in my local market. If it's something I vaguely though I'd like, seeing it recommended on a deal site is sometimes enough to make me buy it. Something worth noting for those selling to a HN type demographic.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#327

Post by blueside »

ubernostrum wrote: post #236
reefoctopus wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to disavow the bad links. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

Why is it that someone else gaming Google's algorithm becomes my problem and requires me to solve it rather than Google?

I strongly agree with this sentiment; the fact that "competitors" can penalize you, the back link component should be removed from the ranking algorithm all together.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#328

Post by PeterisP »

somid3 wrote: post #172
soared wrote: post #36

OP is simply doing it wrong. Advertising works, and the title's claim only shows how inexperienced op is. I work at a digital ad agency. Ads work if you do it correctly, but it's incredibly easy to waste money. People like op are why google and Facebook make buying ads overly complicated - if it were easy you wouldn't have to spend so much money. If op is reading this, I'd be happy to hop on a phone call and help you…

@Soared, aside from the self-marketing of your firm how about you put your money where your mouth is. Let's use the same landing page - I'll make a campaign, you make a campaign, we each spend $500 and we track conversions in a specific period of time. The one who converts more for less will owe the other $1000 - we can make the accounts public so that (1) the world can see your "expertise" and (2) how "confused" I a…

The landing pages (most likely multiple, targeted and tailored differently for different incoming traffic) are a big part of doing things right - for many people in this thread, a big part of what they are doing wrong is where they send the traffic. Many successful ad campaigns would have negative ROI if they simply sent people to the product home page.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#329

Post by Gustomaximus »

WalterSear wrote: post #53
Gustomaximus wrote: post #24

I see these posts all the time of DIY Adwords/FB and then a claim it doesn't work. This would be like me, a non-carpenter, trying to build a house, seeing how bad it looks and then claiming building materials suck. There is reason companies spend ~$70 billion on Adwords annually. So because Adwords/FB didn't work for you doesn't mean their traffic is 90% useless. And dont get me wrong, I completely acknowledge there…

At my last company, we worked with Google's in-house team to build adword campaigns, eventually spending the better part of a million dollars over the course of 9 months or so, with free assistance from them in the development of campaigns and with their ongoing guidance and advice. From our meetings with them, they were quite confident that our strategy was appropriate, that there existed an audience that we could r…

Using the Google team...there is your mistake. They always approach reasonable spending accounts to try and offer account optimisation sessions. But their motivation is to make you spend not perform better, albeit they are better these days.

I used to have a team account team constantly approach myself and my boss and say I could be doing account management better. My boss started to question my credibility as Google people must be the best at Google.... so I offered them to set up their own separate campaigns rather than mess with mine. The results were atrocious. They do what the manual says to do vs what actuly works. To get the best out of Adwords you need to twist the system to suit your agenda, not Googles. Seriously get an independent professional in to manage Adwords. Try a few if you dont have experienced PPC marketing people in the office as there are many snake oil salesmen in this area. Also watch out for agencies that pitch you with their experienced guy but then put the junior in charge of running the account. Always ask to interview the person that will be hands on with the account and having direct contact to them. Adwords type platforms can be awesome when used well but you can't just throw money at it and expect results.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#330

Post by PeterisP »

beejiu wrote: post #20
javitury wrote: post #8

Was it a Search or a Display Campaign for Google? I could understand that adsense webmasters used clickfarms. However finding out that google is using clickfarms for Search campaigns would be uncovering the greatest scam of the Internet.

Interestingly the behavior is similar to what I have observed with Mouseflow recordings for organic Google+ and Facebook posts. The page is opened, the mouse never moves and the 'user' scrolls a couple of times. I wonder if these records could just be the regular reviews that Google and Facebook do; their visits do not show up on Google Analytics but Mouseflow is able to take recordings.

Isn't that how legitimate mobile or even laptop trackpad users look ? If I don't intend to click anywhere, the "mouse" cursor never moves - the page loads, I scroll, and go back by keyboard.

With a mouse, you get slight movement even while scrolling or pressing buttons, but with a trackpad or on a mobile device you don't, there's "mouse movement" even if you explicitly do some aiming before a click.

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