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Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

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341–350 of 382 posts

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#341
I recently ran a campaign to validate an idea. Ultimately I dropped the idea, but out of 300 impressions, i got 10 clicks.. and 6 of those clicks left their email address. Not bad.

I then clicked the "optimize my campaign" button. Suddenly my clicks went up, and my impressions went up... but no one left their email. I think the trick to advertising on Google is to target niches, and scale up "manually". I also think there's something to targeting the long tail keywords rather than the fat popular keywords. "Sofa" might get 50k clicks, but the people searching for "Black modern leather sofa" will probably be a better match.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#342
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL I have a site that is totally and exclusively devoted to Study Skills. My quality score for the keyword "study skills?" 1/10 Now, I understand what's happening. I haven't loaded up the tags and stuff. I'm appealing to the people who might be looking for something like this. It's very different from selling umbrellas, but we are forced to fit the same mold. I think the general conclusion is sound: Having such a do…

In large it doesn't matter what you're selling anymore for the most part. People are used to thumbing through search results and every company competing in the space is at their fingertips with a single click. It's not like you're the only study site they found, they probably have ten open right now. You need to have the most appealing intros or people will simply hit X on the tab and move on to someone that does. In…

Thanks for the tip! I don't use Google for advertising at the moment, but I'll keep these in mind if I go back to them.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#343

I've got a long history here, stretching all the way back to 2007. At that time 80% of my traffic was organic, and most importantly, was spread equally between MSN, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. I paid for ad's through HotScripts, and this was a solid source of leads. This mixture, along with a fast, secure, easy to use site and great word of mouth lead to an annual growth rate of around 30%, ending up in 2011 with a mont…

Google at least has the organic option.

"If your content is fresh and linked to from reputable sites, we'll promote you in the search results... for free."

Facebook is purely pay-for-play. Paying for boosted posts is the only way to cut through the noise (unless your content goes organically viral, which only has a 24 hr shelf life).

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#344
post #99

I recently started writing a book on programming and set-up a landing page for it, to do a pre-launch campaign and I set up some ads on Facebook. Fortunately, I work in the Analytics industry, so I set-up scroll tracking on my website using Google Tag Manager and started noticing the same patterns as the author as well. Just so to add on to the author, I even excluded the top fraud-prone countries (Egypt, Bangladesh,…

Wouldn't 90%+ of your target market ad block your ad?

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#345
post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In large it doesn't matter what you're selling anymore for the most part. People are used to thumbing through search results and every company competing in the space is at their fingertips with a single click. It's not like you're the only study site they found, they probably have ten open right now. You need to have the most appealing intros or people will simply hit X on the tab and move on to someone that does. In…

Thanks for the tip! I don't use Google for advertising at the moment, but I'll keep these in mind if I go back to them.

another tip is that if you don't sell a product Adwords is not for you. Pure content sites will be vaporized by the cost vs the revenue you get from people seeing ads on your site :)

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the dream of the open Internet already dead? At most, the dream of ad-funded websites might be dead. (I wish!) This dream created a lot of value by providing free services to Web users. But it also created a lot of harm by enticing those users into closed gardens full of surveillance, which service providers created to gather data to drive ad revenue. I think on net the harm is much greater; we'd have a much mor…

> At most, the dream of ad-funded websites might be dead. (I wish!) What you are wishing for is a world in which access to things like Google Search which we take utterly for granted now are forced to become paid services. What are the implications of that, particularly for the world's poorest?

How much does it cost Google Search to support an extra user on the margin? I don't really know, but I'd wager much less than $1/year - because it's very implausible that the extra ad revenue it gets today from an extra user is more than that.

(The world's poorest people are a really bad target audience for ads - they have very little discretionary income!)

Meanwhile, the cost of Internet access for the poorest people is at least an order of magnitude bigger, maybe two orders of magnitude (since the cost to Google probably is much less than $1). Also, poor people's main or only Internet access is often via smartphones, and mobile data costs much more per GB than landline ISPs.

On the margin, some people who can afford Internet access today would not be able to also afford (as many) paid services. I'm willing to pay this price, in exchange for everyone who could afford access and services (including most of the poor people who can do so now) getting much better and more varied service and much less surveillance. Also, a paid model would enable people who publish blogs and other sites, and various services.

Finally, if you treat Internet or Web access and services as very important and maybe a human right, then governments should provide it or subsidize access or regulate prices. Absent that, for-profit corporations paid by users would be much better than the same corporations paid by advertisers.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not an unfair conclusion. However, our retention rate after the first order was spectacular, and we slowly gathered a core group of users who were using our services exclusively. Unfortunately, despite providing a ubiquitous business service, we couldn't gather customers fast enough to float the boat.

Sometimes we fail even if the stars are aligned. It sucks, but the market is irrational.

Pretty much. And much of the time, we will never know if it was the stars, or the unavoidable missteps that we make.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#348
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Technical information is usually downloaded in PDF white papers.

I have seen a lot of companies do this and it's terrible. You get SEO mostly from long form in depth articles and dumping it into a PDF will tank something that would be page 1 to page 5. Google will prefer a well setup blog over a file download ten times out of ten. Unless your whitepaper is a unicorn the search results will go to someone else

From personal experience Some bosses I've had preferred to share them when selecting providers

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot escape the influence of advertising. To think otherwise is self-deception bordering on ignorance.

My consumerism seems to be restricted to a few kind of products for which I feel about for very specific reasons. I'm still subject to influence, because I have eyes, but it's mostly negatively, advertising is a cheap trick void of information to me. I can't buy something because a handsome male pretended to use it in a video. Even those with informations are often lying to put a spin on their product. Health product…

I would bet the influence is not significant to you — you would get the same product for the same cost either way in most cases, but it is significant for the brand you end up arbitrarily choosing.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to find someone who'll say "off course ads work on me" is about as difficult as finding s/o admitting to be a bad driver.

How do other people respond when watching ads ? Do they think - "meh it's all bs ..." - "hmm I'd like that! can't wait to go to the mall and get one" - "oh I didn't know this, it could help me " ? I recall feeling 3) once in my life, it surprised me because that was my first deep positive reaction to an ad. Even though I've seen similar products all my life. Does marketing count on negative bias in their theory ? "he…

They respond with a vague feeling of familiarity to a brand or product.
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