Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US • Hacker News Board

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#81

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 7:52 AM UTC

echelon wrote: post #20

benologist wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#82

Post by Simon_says » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:11 AM UTC

I'm really skeptical of the narrative that Alphabet et. al. have brilliant, super-precise targeting of ads. I'm an American who only speaks English, but I'm currently living in a non-English-speaking country. Youtube constantly serves me videos in a language I don't understand. Mostly, I don't even understand what product is trying to be sold to me, and for the minority where the product is clear, I don't understand the arguments, and I'll never buy these things, anyways.

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.

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#83

Post by quickthrower2 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:18 AM UTC

bitcoinbutter wrote: post #60

JCharante wrote: post #43

I 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.

The problem is, it also includes anyone who has ever logged into a US VPN. There is no doubt that this will catch some Americans who are abroad, but if you are getting 3-4 non-US clicks to get 1 American abroad click, you are effectively paying 4-5x for that one useful click.

So is everyone else, so in theory the auctioned price per click should be less to compensate.

People don’t pay for clicks, they pay for results. Clicks are an intermediate measure. If I make $100 from $50 spend via 1000 or 100 clicks it’s pretty much the same thing.

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#84

Post by izacus » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:31 AM UTC

So HN wants Google not to track prople but still exactly and completely accurately know the location of each and every one of them for Ad targeting?

That sounds incompatible.

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#85

Post by chmod775 » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:31 AM UTC

ohazi wrote: post #78

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 number…

That's not exactly a shining endorsement... "Yeah, Google was robbing us blind and kind of scamming us with their geofencing shenanigans, but we were making enough money that it wasn't worth fighting, and eventually we figured out how to stop buying ads from them."

I don't think it was supposed to be an endorsement.

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#86

Post by iagovar » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:34 AM UTC

jyu wrote: post #72

fnord77 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

just out of curiosity, what are some specific advertising techniques that work consistently?

No specific tactic works forever. There is no "1 weird trick." You need to set up your advertising and sales funnels to track as prospects become customers, and continually experiment on the message and the channels. This is where most startups start and a lot of them get it wrong. If you have boatloads of VC money, you can run a lot of bad experiments until you hopefully hit paydirt. Paydirt is +ROI ad campaigns on…

So... using voluum?

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#87

Post by pfortuny » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 8:40 AM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #6

Google bundles bad clicks like a pile of stinking, rotten subprime mortgages and then peppers them with some good clicks and sells them to you like JP Morgan in 2005. Did you read the fine print? Doesn’t matter, you can’t redline it anyway so it’s take it or leave it.

This is exactly the right comparison. Thanks for it!

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#88

Post by trilliumbaker » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 9:01 AM UTC

JCharante wrote: post #43

I 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.

I manage campaigns for a local, independent contractor. The business runs ads with a meager budget, For those who are outside of the service area it's less than A SaaS business is a different case, but this issue is persistent and getting worse.

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#89

Post by trilliumbaker » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 9:05 AM UTC

JeremyMorgan wrote: post #27

So glad I'm not involved in PPC anymore. We used to catch junk clicks all the time, from many different countries. One company I worked with was local and wanted very targeted local clicks. Nothing I could do could stop clicks from other states and countries, which were useless to them. Don't get me started about Twitter advertsing. Want some followers for your business? Twitter will gladly send you tons of obviously…

The cruft is getting worse as Google takes away control from managers and turns it over to AI. It's like how exact match no longer means exact match.

Re: Google AdWords charged me for clicks in Istanbul while location-targeting the US

#90

Post by asadkn » Sat, Nov 30, 2019, 9:08 AM UTC

Never rely on Google Ads to be honest. They are unlikely to respond at all.

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.