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Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

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Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#11

Post by punjabisingh »

Some of the mobile games definitely use questionable ways to present the ads. If anyone has ever played Subway Surfer (on Android), they can probably remember the countless amount of times one may accidentally click on the ads. On top of that, the ads load in such funny ways at times that it is hard to avoid clicking the ad.

As an advertiser and publisher myself, I feel bad for the people spending money on advertising in that game, because the 99% of the time that I have clicked on an ad in that game is because it was a mistake.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#12

Post by jscheel »

Everything in adwords seems designed to dump more money into google than you want to. Ads going to wrong places, "enhanced" campaigns that make it impossible to ignore mobile and tablet traffic, questionable quality score rating, etc. I've had my fill of it. Better to hire a firm to let them handle the mess.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#13

Post by cvos »

k1w1 wrote: post #7
nekitamo wrote: post #3

We had a similar problem with mobile search ads. The vast majority of clicks we got were misclicks, which is very painful when you're bidding $5+ click. We fixed the issue by putting a -90% bid on mobile ads. Now once every few months someone from Google calls us and tries to convince us to remove that -90% bid, assuring us the traffic is good and will convert. Pretty sleazy.

In our account penalizing the bid for mobile ads didn't help because it looks like Google treats 'mobile' and 'tablets' separately. So we prevented ads on phones, but you can't penalize the bid for tablets so that doesn't work to prevent games on iPads. The Google support person told me they can't tell the difference between tablets and desktops, but I don't believe that for a second. Our own analytics clearly showed…

If you do not sell a mobile product you probably want to disable in app advertising.

I have found it brings nearly 0 conversions for regular websites.

To do this paste "adsenseformobileapps.com" in the “Placements” section of “Campaign Exclusions” from the Display Network tab.

More info on how to disable in app adwords advertising is here https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/1722057?hl=en

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#14

Post by sheetjs »

jscheel wrote: post #12

Everything in adwords seems designed to dump more money into google than you want to. Ads going to wrong places, "enhanced" campaigns that make it impossible to ignore mobile and tablet traffic, questionable quality score rating, etc. I've had my fill of it. Better to hire a firm to let them handle the mess.

It's similarly frustrating on the other end, where google will sometimes show adult ads even when you tell them not to show that content on your sites

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#15

Post by jcampbell1 »

k1w1 wrote: post #7
nekitamo wrote: post #3

We had a similar problem with mobile search ads. The vast majority of clicks we got were misclicks, which is very painful when you're bidding $5+ click. We fixed the issue by putting a -90% bid on mobile ads. Now once every few months someone from Google calls us and tries to convince us to remove that -90% bid, assuring us the traffic is good and will convert. Pretty sleazy.

In our account penalizing the bid for mobile ads didn't help because it looks like Google treats 'mobile' and 'tablets' separately. So we prevented ads on phones, but you can't penalize the bid for tablets so that doesn't work to prevent games on iPads. The Google support person told me they can't tell the difference between tablets and desktops, but I don't believe that for a second. Our own analytics clearly showed…

There is an option to exclude all in-app banner ads (I think).

It is experimental, and called "GMob mobile app non-interstitial", and it is under "Site Category Exclusions".

GMob - I think this is Google internal term for the AdMob business they bought

non-interstital - I think this is a fancy word for "banner" ads.

If you put it all together, excluding "GMob mobile app non-interstitial" as a Site Category, should stop your ads from running in mobile app banners.

If you do this when creating a campaign, then you can still target tablets without getting killed by flappy bird on the iPad.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#16

Post by jscheel »

sheetjs wrote: post #14
jscheel wrote: post #12

Everything in adwords seems designed to dump more money into google than you want to. Ads going to wrong places, "enhanced" campaigns that make it impossible to ignore mobile and tablet traffic, questionable quality score rating, etc. I've had my fill of it. Better to hire a firm to let them handle the mess.

It's similarly frustrating on the other end, where google will sometimes show adult ads even when you tell them not to show that content on your sites

Blugh, that would be unacceptable. I'm guessing the advertisers are doing some shady crap to get past the filters, but still...

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#17

Post by ariwilson »

k1w1 wrote: post #7
nekitamo wrote: post #3

We had a similar problem with mobile search ads. The vast majority of clicks we got were misclicks, which is very painful when you're bidding $5+ click. We fixed the issue by putting a -90% bid on mobile ads. Now once every few months someone from Google calls us and tries to convince us to remove that -90% bid, assuring us the traffic is good and will convert. Pretty sleazy.

In our account penalizing the bid for mobile ads didn't help because it looks like Google treats 'mobile' and 'tablets' separately. So we prevented ads on phones, but you can't penalize the bid for tablets so that doesn't work to prevent games on iPads. The Google support person told me they can't tell the difference between tablets and desktops, but I don't believe that for a second. Our own analytics clearly showed…

Isn't it also the case that you can restrict your ads to Google search only which should avoid these in app ads? Or are you looking for placements on the display network as well (or only)?

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#19

Post by jcampbell1 »

ariwilson wrote: post #17
k1w1 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In our account penalizing the bid for mobile ads didn't help because it looks like Google treats 'mobile' and 'tablets' separately. So we prevented ads on phones, but you can't penalize the bid for tablets so that doesn't work to prevent games on iPads. The Google support person told me they can't tell the difference between tablets and desktops, but I don't believe that for a second. Our own analytics clearly showed…

Isn't it also the case that you can restrict your ads to Google search only which should avoid these in app ads? Or are you looking for placements on the display network as well (or only)?

This only applies to the display network. If you restrict to Search, you don't have to worry about game banners, or banner ads at all.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#20

Post by ScottWhigham »

dperfect wrote: post #4

It's been a little while since I've used it, but doesn't Google let you do placement optimization based on meaningful conversions or other user-defined goals? It sounds like the problem here was just Google's ad placement optimization looking for CTR alone as opposed to something that means more for Aha! (e.g., clicking past the landing page). In that case, the solution isn't so much in excluding certain platforms as…

Yes, that's true. When you set up the campaign/ad group, you can choose to optimize for clicks, or optimize for conversions, and at least one other optimization. I burned through a few grand choosing optimize for clicks myself...
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