Great read. I am in a similar place with a small business. We have a commercial and animation and are considering doing YouTube ads. It sounds like it might be worth doing if the service is profitable enough per user. Really appreciate this detailed writeup of his experience.
What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
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Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#12>But the cool part is that you can also track when someone views your ad, and then a bit later types in your web address to make the purchase without ever clicking the link. >In other words you can track both people who click through an ad directly, or who see your ad and then visit your site a bit later How does this work?
Assuming Google Analytics tying it all together.
And perhaps spying through Google searches and chrome? I guess Google never spies on you except by proxy via analytics - but then, if they correlate views on YouTube with analytic hits, that's not really true.
Anyway, the above, as well as:
> If that still doesn't make your campaign profitable, there are broader exclusions and bid adjustments you can make based on age, gender, device, location, parental status and household income.
Really stood out to me - if anyone needed further evidence that Google is still an ad company, and that the free services are about driving ad traffic.
It'll be interesting to see how GDPR affects this. I suppose the sad truth is that Google/alphabet has built a ton of cash on the back of user data, and now no-one else will be able to that as this particular form of business becomes illegal.
But Google is big enough to shift into other growth markets like media manipulation/lobbying and defence contracts etc.
Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
Assuming Google Analytics tying it all together.
And perhaps spying through Google searches and chrome? I guess Google never spies on you except by proxy via analytics - but then, if they correlate views on YouTube with analytic hits, that's not really true. Anyway, the above, as well as: > If that still doesn't make your campaign profitable, there are broader exclusions and bid adjustments you can make based on age, gender, device, location, parental status and ho…
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Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#14The author can't really be totally certain if they lost money though, since it's entirely possible the ad will make an effect on people long-term. Maybe they'll break even in a few months, who knows.
Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#15People inexperienced in online adversities often think that they can pay for conversions. That is not the case. You’re paying to get your message out. Very very few people will immediately act because of an ad. But if you hit them enough, they may later convert. Tracking those late conversions is imprecise. This does not mean advertising is useless. But it is not generally a game for those with a tiny budget or a sho…
This lesson struck me hard when I was working with a major conference organizer. Even upon surveying them, they'd struggle to establish how attendees had heard of the event first. For the majority of attendees there was no direct way to correlate ticket purchases with ad spend because almost no-one immediately buys a $1000+ ticket after clicking an ad :-)
Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#16People inexperienced in online adversities often think that they can pay for conversions. That is not the case. You’re paying to get your message out. Very very few people will immediately act because of an ad. But if you hit them enough, they may later convert. Tracking those late conversions is imprecise. This does not mean advertising is useless. But it is not generally a game for those with a tiny budget or a sho…
Precisely - "marketers" these days don't grasp the concept of brand building. Just because you can measure directly results it doesn't mean the goal is to get a direct conversion - specially from a platform like youtube where people are actively consuming content - not buying stuff.
The idea of compound investment into brand building doesn't seem to exist.
I don't know if these guys thought that decades of TV advertising campaigns were made by clueless people, with no education, with no market research, benchmarks, that dumped millions to build reach and frequency to try to fill a small spot in the mind of consumers.
Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#17I'm interested if a free spot at the top of hacker news hot articles will end up being better in terms of advertisement than spending ~$14k on youtube ads.
Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#18People inexperienced in online adversities often think that they can pay for conversions. That is not the case. You’re paying to get your message out. Very very few people will immediately act because of an ad. But if you hit them enough, they may later convert. Tracking those late conversions is imprecise. This does not mean advertising is useless. But it is not generally a game for those with a tiny budget or a sho…
Indeed. People are subjected to feel more secure about a brand that is more familiar to them (e.g., Tide).
Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#19> Nope. I lost money. At least your article got on the front page of HN. That should count for something.
I wish he had crossposted it to steemit as well, because I found it really valuable and my upvote there is now worth ~$40.
I wish sites like steemit realised if their front page is all meta content about how good the site/coin/blockchain is, it looks like a scam.
Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan
#20>YouTube allows you to pay to show an ad before a video plays.
Is also the reason why I installed an adblocker.
I do not know if anybody still remembers the time when ads were not intrusive and did not try to hog all the CPU cycles.