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I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

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Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#321

Post by gunalx »

mitxela wrote: post #306
adamtulinius wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I too reported it a long time ago, with the predictable response that it’s not breaking any of Google’s rules. It also tells me how primitive Google Ads are, when they keep showing me an ad I reported.

> It also tells me how primitive Google Ads are, when they keep showing me an ad I reported. Why wouldn't they? They still get paid for it, and if you could block an ad by reporting it, you'd just report every ad until there were no ads.

There is too many ads to report all of them. But a don't show me this, that also affected on report as a negative signal to reduce the possibility of that specific ad to you.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#322

Post by Anon1096 »

dd8601fn wrote: post #213
mitxela wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those work. You'll remember that brand if you ever need that product.

Well… I’ll remember that I never want to give Liberty Mutual a single dollar. I was never going to give any of the woo-woo secret health nonsense hucksters any money, though.

Before the ad, you had no brand awareness at all of Liberty Mutual. Now, you know their name enough to call them out specifically in a Hacker News comment. Your propensity to buy has improved a lot just based on that fact, regardless of whether you consciously want to avoid them now.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#324

Post by prepend »

wilbo wrote: post #27
Sayrus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bot owner is also providing "ad space" to Google. Author pays Google to show the ad. Bot owner gets paid by Google to "display" that ad and for conversion. The bot themselves aren't getting paid for installing the application. In a normal scenario, the provider of ad space would be a website or an application. Google would pay the owner of that space. On Youtube, that would be an ad served by Google paid to the c…

I'm trying to confirm that I understand what you mean: Bot farm is operated by a company that displays Google ads. This bot farm fakes traffic to the bot farm owner and simulates conversion Google wants to see. Google sees the high conversion and happily serves more ads to the bot farm owner. Bot farm owner is paid by Google for displaying the ads. The person paying for the ad gets screwed.

And I suppose Google has very little interest in stopping this, even though they should be able to detect it with their advanced “AI.”

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#325

Post by chadgpt3 »

jfoster wrote: post #224
weare138 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing this same story over and over. It's starting to sound like that's just Google's business model.

I keep hearing it too. The bit I don't yet understand is, wouldn't it be in Google's interest to not do this? They ban on both sides of the market for seemingly no reason. Wouldn't maximizing all legitimate participation be much better? Also seems a lot more possible to do now with AI to check all campaigns, landing pages, etc.

When you want to keep your house warm, you ordinarily should not burn the rafters. However, when the house is about to collapse anyway, it is cheaper to dismantle the roof and to burn the rafters than to buy firewood.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#326

Post by chadgpt3 »

baxtr wrote: post #268
tokioyoyo wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a good chunk of businesses, ROI tracking is really not that hard. It gets harder as your business becomes larger, or oriented more towards B2B, or in specialized niches, or online only businesses. I know first hand small/medium businesses (whom I've helped myself in the past) that basically survive on traffic coming from ads. Obviously it all depends*. But I just wanted to chime in that it's not all totally usele…

Google makes a ton of money. It has to come from somewhere… so yes definitely agree that even though it’s hard to imagine for some people in the HN bubble, ads seem to be working for most people.

They are working meaning people keep buying them. This has nothing to do with ROAS. This developer gave Google $220 of revenue.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#327

Post by chadgpt3 »

gunalx wrote: post #321
mitxela wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also tells me how primitive Google Ads are, when they keep showing me an ad I reported. Why wouldn't they? They still get paid for it, and if you could block an ad by reporting it, you'd just report every ad until there were no ads.

There is too many ads to report all of them. But a don't show me this, that also affected on report as a negative signal to reduce the possibility of that specific ad to you.

Unlikely. The effectiveness an ad has on you is related to the amount you think about that ad - and nothing else. It doesn't matter whether they are positive or negative thoughts.

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#328

Post by mitxela »

dwedge wrote: post #305
mitxela wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what's the catch? Has anyone ever been arrested for proxying a fraudulent credit card transaction?

Probably not. But do you really want the hassle of explaining the proxy to the police when they get a report of CSAM content uploaded from your IP?

Has that ever happened?

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#329

Post by [deleted] »

weare138 wrote: post #186
dangero wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happened to us. We were large enough to have an admob rep who reached out to the IVT team for help. After our first appeal was rejected, our rep negotiated a second appeal attempt but he said “This time make sure you take full responsibility for the IVT getting through. Funny part to me was Google was the only network bidding on these bots while others must have detected something and stayed out. We submit…

I keep hearing this same story over and over. It's starting to sound like that's just Google's business model.

[deleted]

Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots

#330

Post by neom »

bluehatbrit wrote: post #318
neom wrote: post #277

I've been in go to market for the better part of 20 years now (anyone remember the DigitalOcean youtube ads of the 2012-2014 era?), paid online advertising has basically gone to shit, it started about 6 years ago, but over the past 3-4 years outside of linkedin it's effectively pointless, over 55% of Americans run ad blockers now and around 40% globally - on top of that, what you do get it mostly just... bots. In Jan…

So beyond LinkedIn, what sort of channels are you using now? Is it basically all about paying influencers?

Well... I've always believed that a good go to market should be extremely multi channel with paid being gravy anyway. I think DigitalOcean was successful because we did a combination of: Actually useful content marketing + being where your customer actually is (so attend&host event/conferences etc) + genuine community outreach and interest in what your customer base is all about (I spent time every day during DO on HN making sure if anyone had a problem it was solved) + for devtools (at least back in my day) I think supporting OSS meaningfully was also incredibly important. To a degree in DevTools, DevRel can basically be the same as paid influencers, I had Mikeal Rogers (rest in peace) working for me and his mission was "Do whatever you want as long as it's net positive to the nodejs community, have fun!" so I guess "paying influencers" can mean few diff things. With youtube a lot of people use sponsor blockers now too so paying someone to shill your shit in the middle of their video is probably not as effective as it once was, tho I doubt the sponsor blocks are as widespread as ad blockers.

If you're just getting started I think the best thing you can do by a mile is just attend conferences/events where your ICP is and try to bootstrap PLG with it.

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