If I am in Turkey and I google “chicken USA”, I should get shown chicken ads from the USA. And when I click, those chicken producers should pay.
Only if the person who was paying for the ads wanted to show them to you in the first place?
Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
41–50 of 181 posts
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#42If I am in Turkey and I google “chicken USA”, I should get shown chicken ads from the USA. And when I click, those chicken producers should pay.
If I don't do business in Turkey, and I pay for the clicks, I should easily be able to exclude Turkey (without having to write a blog post and consult an inside source that most could never reach)
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#43I mean it says right there that they may also be people regularly in the US. I don't see why I'm less of a marketable audience for a SaaS when I'm abroad.
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has adblocked everything since my teenage years, the whole ad industry seems to be making orders of magnitude more money than it should. I just don't understand how anyone comes to buy things shown in ads. Are ads really effective? I don't buy advertised products. Do we really trust ad tech accounting? They've been caught inflating numbers over and over again. The whole house of cards seems like it cou…
It's well known in business that ads are generally dubious at best and likely mostly a fraud. Unfortunately, there isn't an alternative than doing all the work in-house. And, if you're good enough to do it in-house to make it a business, you'll easily figure out that you can cheat other people. IMHO, ads should be treated as a national resource with open accounting and a non-profit goal. This would instantly force co…
Honestly, everything after your first sentence is completely incoherent. I'll stick to the first sentence.
>It's well known in business that ads are generally dubious at best and likely mostly a fraud.
You're using the phrase "it's well known" in an attempt to support a consensus that you completely fabricated. I spend over $100,000 every year on digital advertising, and I can assure you there is a very measurable return. Colleagues who manage much larger (and some smaller) marketing campaigns are also making measurable returns. You clearly have no experience in what you're talking about. So why talk about it?
There are lots of unsophisticated business owners and marketing "professionals" who think they can just throw money at digital and it will magically return. These same people don't understand how to effectively measure, so they may not even realize they're burning money. Like any failed venture, that is THEIR fault. In no way does that make advertising "generally dubious at best and likely mostly a fraud".
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their whole ad empire is desperate for a massive audit. Google had to be sued to deliver a $400,000 refund they owed but later claimed couldn't be delivered, claiming 3rd parties had been paid the funds when it was their own platforms. It turned out Google had accidentally kept $75 million. https://marketingland.com/class-action-lawsuit-accuses-googl...
As someone who has adblocked everything since my teenage years, the whole ad industry seems to be making orders of magnitude more money than it should. I just don't understand how anyone comes to buy things shown in ads. Are ads really effective? I don't buy advertised products. Do we really trust ad tech accounting? They've been caught inflating numbers over and over again. The whole house of cards seems like it cou…
To my surprise yes ads are very effective. Without getting too specific, my close relatives run their own business as home improvement contractors. In the early days, before they had their reputation built, I setup a google adwords campaign for them — having never run an ad campaign before.
It was a simple PPC campaign that included keywords in google search results and geofenced it to the SFBay. Here are some numbers and findings:
- PPC costs were about $1-2.50/click with a ~$15/day max spend
- Selected cities by hand to fit the service area
- We did in fact get clicks outside of the zones we selected. Many if them were B2B trying to sell their services.
- Customer acquisition costs specifically for the google ads campaign was ~$70 (clicks/conversion)
$70/customer sounds like a lot except these home improvement contracts were typically thousands of dollars, so the campaign was a fantastic ROI. Furthermore, we dialed down ad spend as the reputation was built, and now most leads come via referrals and review sites.
In the end all that mattered was that customers were signing contracts so even if there was some funny business going on it was still worth it for our particular case.
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who has adblocked everything since my teenage years, the whole ad industry seems to be making orders of magnitude more money than it should. I just don't understand how anyone comes to buy things shown in ads. Are ads really effective? I don't buy advertised products. Do we really trust ad tech accounting? They've been caught inflating numbers over and over again. The whole house of cards seems like it cou…
Yes. As an advertiser, who traces each ad, I can say that advertising has demonstrably made me thousands upon thousands of dollars. However, 80% of ads are trash peddled by blind men leading blind men. There are very specific advertising techniques that work consistently, but most "marketing types" optimize for flashy artistic ads that have literally ZERO selling power. In fact, in some studies, ads actually REDUCE s…
Basically you just rattled off everything I, as someone who never worked in that industry, assumed was going on.
There's just a shit ton of money to be made pretending it's 1955. I went into the wrong business.
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#47This type of behavior allows for a known ad arbitrage strategy. Bing’s PPC network, for instance, use to not have the same geo coverage as AdWords, and when they received traffic from a geo they weren’t serving ads in they would send the search to their US ad network. The strategy then is 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/simil…
But how much is your conversion rate for the transferred users. It is not like it is 100%. If it is 5%, you'll need x20 times the CPC to break-even.
Of course, CTR is apart of the profit formula and cannot ignored as you correctly note. It’s not a trivial task to find those verticals or geos where this will be a successful strategy.
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#48[deleted]
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#49That's the Google AdWords way ... by default , include people "interested in" the United States with no end date. So, lots of junk clicks at high CPCs from India, former Soviet Republics, and other places where the local language may not even be English. Turning these settings off requires drilling down into some obscure Google Ads interface ... it used to be AdWords Dimensions > Geographic , but not sure what it is…
I had to do this for my midwestern US shed manufacturing business. Since we deliver up to 350 miles away, I set the geographic target to a radius around my business location.
Seemed to eliminate most of the junk clicks.
Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US
#50OP, how did you track location? If it's IP address then it could be someone in the US using a VPN. If I'm on T-mobile my IP says I'm in Seattle so DFP will show me ads for Seattle but I'm in SF.