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
#2> I’ll report back on the refund.
Good luck on that. I have sympathy for OP, but running ads is really hard. It's why most people set targets for things that happen in the app (OP updated to a target of winning a game, not just installing), and why companies have entire teams dedicated to monitoring Google/Meta/X ads. Trial runs are often thousands of dollars, and it's easy to evaporate money. I've made the same mistakes, and its why y-combinator strongly recommends against running online ads, especially in the beginning.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#3this is unfortunately very common - I kept running very small ads regularly over many years (~10 years by now) and the % of bots has been steadily increasing, and Google doesn't really have any system to report those reliably to them. In fact, it's contrary to their incentives to investigate & fix these problems - unless they feel some pressure from competition...
From time to time, Google ads sales reps call me and are trying to convince me to increase the ads spend. I complain about bots, and none of them had any suggestion on what I can do to appeal it etc. I mean I can appeal on some specific instance, once - but there's no process to communicate back to Google the cases where I'm 99% certain about bots on regular basis.
And these bots get increasingly more sophisticated. They used to just click on ads. Then they started installing the app. Then running the app once and do nothing in it. Then they started tapping on the app screen & actually try to go through some initial app steps. When they do it in a spiky way, it's easy to detect them. But when they do it through some distributed device farms, below noise, it's very hard.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#4> I’ll report back on the refund. Good luck on that. I have sympathy for OP, but running ads is really hard. It's why most people set targets for things that happen in the app (OP updated to a target of winning a game, not just installing), and why companies have entire teams dedicated to monitoring Google/Meta/X ads. Trial runs are often thousands of dollars, and it's easy to evaporate money. I've made the same mist…
Thanks, and agreed. The in-app goal was the lesson, and I'd rather have learned it at $220 than at a trial-run budget. The part I found interesting is that Google's count wasn't wrong: there really were 21 installs. You only saw the problem by looking at which version of the app they installed. The YC advice is roughly where I've ended up too. And fair point on the refund, I'm not holding my breath, but I'll report back either way.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#5What is the incentive for the bot owners? Why do the bots download and install the apps? It has some (very small) cost to them, and I don't understand the value for them.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#6When you are talking to your VC, they are just "installs"
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#7What is the incentive for the bot owners? Why do the bots download and install the apps? It has some (very small) cost to them, and I don't understand the value for them.
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 channel owner.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#8If you have their IP addresses in your dashboard, go to Google Ads > Admin > Account Settings > IP Exclusions. Then, add the entire network/data center range there (i.e. 123.4.5.*). In 99% of cases, these bot networks are not run from residential providers. You can confirm IPs at https://ipgeolocation.io/
After running Google Ads for a couple of years, our current exclusion list has over 4000 networks just in the US.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#9What is the incentive for the bot owners? Why do the bots download and install the apps? It has some (very small) cost to them, and I don't understand the value for them.
One reason: It helps makes the bot accounts look more legit. It's why Facebook bot accounts like random legit pages.
Re: I spent $220 on Google app ads and 60% of the installs were robots
#10this is unfortunately very common - I kept running very small ads regularly over many years (~10 years by now) and the % of bots has been steadily increasing, and Google doesn't really have any system to report those reliably to them. In fact, it's contrary to their incentives to investigate & fix these problems - unless they feel some pressure from competition... From time to time, Google ads sales reps call me and…
"Bots? In my ecosystem?"