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

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

#171

Post by ganeshkrishnan »

tiborsaas wrote: post #114
tomaszs wrote: post #94

Google changed it lately without any special notification. Unfortunately. There are more things to watch out. 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 ba…

> if you set a budget of 100 dollars per day, Google can, and most likely, will, spend 200 dollars in short campaign per day. How is this possible? It sounds like a bug, but it's probably not, so what's their justification? Launching an ad campaign feels like rocket science now mixed with a good amount of woodoo magic. 80% down the drain by default? That's a number I could believe, but freaks me out how to market my…

It's not a bug per se and is designed this way. The ad budgets are calculated on 30 days basis. So if you set the budget to $100 per day, Google will display ads with monthly budget of 100*30 or $3000. The objective is to suck out as much money as possible from the advertiser very quickly.

The only assurance is that your monthly budget won't exceed $3000

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

#172

Post by ganeshkrishnan »

hnick wrote: post #165
jakobegger wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure fixing bugs that make money is on the very bottom of the list of priorities....

They don't need a bug fix as a stopgap. The fair thing to do would be refund the excess. If I set a limit and they display ads and exceed it, why should it be my problem?

Excess is calculated at end of month not daily

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

#173

Post by asadkn »

edmundsauto wrote: post #167
asadkn wrote: post #90

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 co…

Is it possible that your experience is an outlier, and not generalizable as advice?

I have read similar stories all over the community in general. The support simply doesn't exist or takes 2 weeks for a simple, useless response, generally.

Given your vested interest in Ads and Google in specific, I am sure you know this already.

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

#174

Post by edmundsauto »

asadkn wrote: post #173
edmundsauto wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that your experience is an outlier, and not generalizable as advice?

I have read similar stories all over the community in general. The support simply doesn't exist or takes 2 weeks for a simple, useless response, generally. Given your vested interest in Ads and Google in specific, I am sure you know this already.

What percentage of serious inquiries are responded to outside the SLA? What percentage of those fail to resolve the user's problem?

Without that kind of information, reading stories after having a bad experience will turn your brain into a petri dish for confirmation bias.

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

#175

Post by solarkraft »

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."

This is how almost any business deal works. If you get more money out than you put in you do it.

Sure, the partner may be hard to work with, but so is almost any big tech platform provider (... Apple ...) and it can be quite profitable to put up with.

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

#176

Post by csa »

Simon_says wrote: post #82

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…

Maybe optimizing their ad impressions for folks like you doesn’t justify the engineering costs to implement it.

I’m not sure where you are, but I imagine that folks like you are a very tiny percentage of the market.

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

#177

Post by pas »

nl wrote: post #127
pas wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barriers to entry (network effects) :/

There's no obvious network effect in search. Google does have brand and distribution though.

Not in search, in ads. The ad network itself. Many many many sites integrated Google Ads (AdWords, AdSense, Adwhatever).

Plus the sheer volume and reach that Google has. (It pays millions - if not billions summed up for every little channel they pay for - every year to be the de facto "internet" for many users, many kinds of devices.)

It's basically unimaginably hard to compete with this for newcomers. Sure, they can carve out a niche, and so on, but that's just that.

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

#178

Post by jbc1 »

jrobn wrote: post #131
tomaszs wrote: post #94

Google changed it lately without any special notification. Unfortunately. There are more things to watch out. 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 ba…

So why even use a platform that so easily throws your money away for nothing? With those points you laid out I would be better off keeping my money. Facebook is the same way with all of this crap too. I’ve seen more success with the hard way, networking and getting content made about me and distributed in magazines or online blogs from people who get to use my service for free.

Because the money it doesn't throw away for nothing more than covers the expense.

Sales aren't some abstract thing that can't be quantified.

Site gets no traffic -> Spend $X on google or facebook pointing traffic to site -> Y Amount of traffic -> $Z amount of sales.

You now know how much revenue $X worth of ads buys you. You also know how much each amount of revenue is worth to you in profit. As long as spending that $X makes profit, you're gonna do it. No matter what crap is mixed in by the ad company.

If something you want is bundled with something you don't want and is priced such that you're willing to buy the thing you want at that price, you don't turn it down. You buy it and ignore the thing you don't want.

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

#179

Post by asadkn »

edmundsauto wrote: post #174
asadkn wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have read similar stories all over the community in general. The support simply doesn't exist or takes 2 weeks for a simple, useless response, generally. Given your vested interest in Ads and Google in specific, I am sure you know this already.

What percentage of serious inquiries are responded to outside the SLA? What percentage of those fail to resolve the user's problem? Without that kind of information, reading stories after having a bad experience will turn your brain into a petri dish for confirmation bias.

Ignoring the red herring, and the assumption I read these stories after a bad experience, let me address, yet, as a consumer, all that matters is the vocal user experience.

If there are 100 bad stories out there, that's enough of a failure of a company irrelevant of its size. And I have personally conducted the support experiment multiple time over the years to have the first-hand experience.

Either way, since you clearly have a vested interest in Ad companies from your HN comment history, I shall engage no more.

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

#180

Post by [deleted] »

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."

[deleted]
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