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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

#441

Post by dzonga »

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…

this is why people are going native / retail media. & some people i.e those with a lot of money are going to CTV as well.

search ads have negative ROI.

Facebook/Instagram & linkedIn work to a certain extent.

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

#442

Post by calmworm »

mitxela wrote: post #434
calmworm wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t. Please see original comment.

Well this discussion about getting YouTube premium is clearly aimed at people who use YouTube but without premium, not people who don't use YouTube at all.

Follow the thread all the way up for the full context.

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

#443

Post by jfil »

moeadham wrote: post #431
jfil wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in different parts of the online ad industry for years. This is correct: fraud is a systemic and convenient part of the business model. The victims are the advertisers, who's in-house marketers don't know enough to detect/call out fraud. Google itself forces advertisers into fraud-friendly products like PMAX. Then, when you detect the fraud, the hapless account rep says "ummm... maybe try using IP exclusi…

ugh PMAX is such a scam. I can’t believe there is a PM somewhere getting paid good money to completely light Googles’ reputation on fire.

PMAX is particularly awful because it incentivizes the scammers to actually book meetings with our Sales team, and waste their time with a no-show.

(For anyone unfamiliar with how the PMAX scam works: PMAX will send more ad traffic to sites that perform well for an advertiser. So scammers who own a network of fraudulent sites will fill out that advertisers' forms, register a great conversion rate, and get a lot of ad traffic directed to their network of bot sites. When you spot the fraud, Google will say: "um, maybe put their IPs on the ad blocklist?" like its 1998 and the most sophisticated click fraudsters are the ones who can click their mouse the fastest. Enshittification Endgame.)

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

#444

Post by emdash »

jiggawatts wrote: post #275
emdash wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory that there are far fewer genuine users on Reddit at this point than you'd expect.

I'm fairly certain it's true. Here on YC News, even a minor comment a few lines long might get at least one or two upvotes (or downvotes). I'll get a reply about 50% of the time. On Reddit there are posts with apparent huge volumes of "user interaction": thousands of comments, thousands of upvotes per top comment, etc... but if I comment on one of those posts... nothing. Zero up or down votes, zero replies, just... s…

Sometime you should look and see how many of those comments you made on reddit are instantly shadow removed.

You don't get any up votes because nobody ever saw those comments to begin with.

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

#445

Post by jfil »

piker wrote: post #405
jfil wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked in different parts of the online ad industry for years. This is correct: fraud is a systemic and convenient part of the business model. The victims are the advertisers, who's in-house marketers don't know enough to detect/call out fraud. Google itself forces advertisers into fraud-friendly products like PMAX. Then, when you detect the fraud, the hapless account rep says "ummm... maybe try using IP exclusi…

Has anyone ever had any success building a digital products business with pay-per-click ads? We're always tempted and dabble, and every bit of traffic seems accidental, completely disinterested or obviously a spammer clicking around trying to collect the "conversion".

Yes, of course people have built a successful promotion engine with PPC. But if there was a repeatable method I could describe to you then, well, I'd be a very rich man!

I always recommend focusing on Sales first, and coming up with a steady, repeatable way to move people from "being aware of your product" to "deal won". With people. Manually.

Only then, when you have a sales funnel that's economically viable, you can start paying to bring more people into it through PPC.

As qingcharles commented, PPC is a fast easy way for big players and fraudsters to fleece you. There is a lot of domain knowledge to build on the path to effective PPC advertising. Here is one piece of practical advice: every ad network has an "opted-in by default" gotcha. Your job is to discover it before you give them a dollar. Sometimes it looks like "relax my targeting criteria for broader reach" that will bring in irrelevant visitors. Sometimes it is "also run my ads on partner sites/off network", those sites will have extreme fraud. Sometimes it looks like "automatically pick the right landing page URL to promote, so I don't have to think for myself" which will drive paid conversions to your Contact Us form.

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

#446

Post by eadler »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #218
crooked-v wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless, of course, the terms of service require mandatory binding arbitration and bar you from the recourse of the legal system entirely.

I agree these clauses suck, but consumer mass arbitration is also a thing.

Until the terms start including "mass arbitration" provisions limiting consumers ability to even use the psuesocourts the companies force.

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

#447

Post by yowayb »

bluegatty wrote: post #56
G3nD wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are pretty much all ecommerce brands wasting their money on Meta ads? Seems hard to believe.

yes, they are wasting money, they know it, but caveats: famous saying 'i'd cut my ad budget in 1/2 if i knew which 1/2 to cut' 'attribution' is the holy grail of hard thing in marketing. so they know for sure the channel spend is iffy. but it's hard to measure, esp. for brand and indirect campaigns. so as a 'starting point' - it's a very 'noisy channel problem'. the next wild idea is that ads come from a marketing bu…

great explanation, thank you!

aside, re: 'socialism', Moscow has no ads, and I have to admit it certainly helps with aesthetics.

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

#448

Post by ventana »

mitxela wrote: post #111
yunusabd wrote: post #87

My favorite story: 1. Dev publishes app with Google Admob integration to the Play Store. 2. Buys Google Ads to drive traffic to the app. 3. Google Admob bans his account for invalid traffic. https://www.reddit.com/r/admob/comments/1vzg3fu/i_paid_googl...

Lawsuit time!

Here's a quote from their terms and conditions:

  Governing Law; Venue.
  All claims arising out of or relating to the AdSense
  Terms or the Services will be governed by California
  law, excluding California's conflict of laws rules,
  and will be litigated exclusively in the federal or
  state courts of Santa Clara County, California, USA,
  and you and Google consent to personal jurisdiction
  in those courts.
Okay, I do indeed live in Santa Clara County, California, so if I ever get in a situation where I might want to sue Google Ads, I might as well try and see how local courts work, especially if the claim is small enough for the small claims court. For those who do not live here, it might be a prohibitive requirement.

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

#449

Post by robertlagrant »

MrSkelter wrote: post #437
robertlagrant wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friedman was a very smart man. I think he knew what a customer is.

That’s just unfounded hero worship. You need to provide evidence he was right.

It's not hero worship to think he knew what a customer was. It's pretty basic, and given he won the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, he probably knew more than the basics.

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

#450

Post by necovek »

MBCook wrote: post #430
necovek wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did partially, which is why I have the second part — even if we applied the same rule, it's not really apples-to-apples.

It isn’t. But it should be. I find online advertising crooked as hell. Google charges by the impression and knowingly allows huge percentages of fake impressions. How is that anything other than fraud? It’s not because it’s online advertising. And that sucks.

I am not disagreeing it's outright fraud. I am disagreeing it's the same thing as water company not testing the water they distribute on purpose (or hiding the negative results).
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