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We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

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Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#101

Post by EdwardDiego »

pc86 wrote: post #95
ryguytilidie wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do recruiting consulting and it blows my mind how every time I ask a startup how they differentiate from other startups and what specific advantages they want me to discuss, they give me a bunch of meaningless phrases. Its like founders are being taught a different language that they think provides value but makes no fucking sense.

I'm curious how often you push back on that and say "no, 'full stack adaptive delivery' doesn't really mean anything. Tell. Me. What. You Do."

When I've done that, people get defensive - if you're doing cool shit, you'd say so. When you're doing something simple you say something that sounds grandiose and enterprisey - we're doing "Full stack adaptive delivery" because you're worried people will realise that "you upload media to us, and can use our system to convert it if you want, and then we serve it via Akamai" will make people think that about 2/3 of your offering is rather pointless, and you could probably get the last 1/3 direct from Akamai for cheaper.

I feel bad shitting on a startup, but reading their docs I'm struggling to see what value they add beyond abstracting S3 and Akamai.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#102

Post by EdwardDiego »

stef25 wrote: post #52
franciscop wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is trying to learn and some day launch something like this, thank you so much for this advice! I've been known to complicate descriptions on my OSS packages but still achieved moderate success, so I'm thinking on how to convert this knowledge into revenue and these comments are super helpful. Question: how do you manage to both keep it simple but relevant for SEO? Isn't SEO a lot about keyword stuffing…

Keywords rarely involve complex jargon. The search volume for "Full stack adaptive delivery" is probably 0

Speak for yourself! I am routinely trying to find adaptive delivery for my full stack!

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#103

Post by mojuba »

gdubs wrote: post #84
threeseed wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The target audience is other founders. And so just like you wouldn't remove the jargon from a medical journal not sure why you would want to in this case.

In every field there’s usually a few brilliant minds who can boil complex ideas down to simple words. Even if your audience is very technical, they’ll still appreciate when a writer takes the effort to find the clearest way to say things, keeping the “jargon” to the bare minimum. The eraser is the writer’s friend.

> The eraser is the writer’s friend.

I'd say pretty much everybody's :)

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#104

Post by TeMPOraL »

ses1984 wrote: post #97
TeMPOraL wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the immediate target audience are still technical people. Business people dealing with business problems indeed don't think about stuff like this. But the tech people that solve business problems for business people - they absolutely do. And they're the ones that select tools and design architectures for the solution.

"Filesystem as a service" can mean too many different things to technical people, that it's basically meaningless. Even if I was squarely in the target audience, if I saw that, I wouldn't necessarily know it applied to me. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

Yeah, it's still too generic to tell you exactly what happens - but it's a starting point. It either piques your interest or lets you filter out early. It's a major improvement over "full-stack adaptive delivery".

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#106

Post by EdwardDiego »

code4tee wrote: post #33

There is a winter coming for the online ad model when more people realize, as this author has, that most online ad spend was probably a total waste. That combined with the increasing crackdown by the consumer on blocking data tracking raises serious questions on the long term viability of the business models of some big players in the industry.

I'm in adtech and godddamn, I can't wait for the industry to wean itself off user tracking, shaking and crying like a heroin addict.

For years myself and other engineers have been warning the product owners that third party user tracking's life span is very much finite - Firefox was going to block 3rd party cookies by default several years back, but walked it back because Google weren't ready for that and threatened to withdraw the money Mozilla makes from them, but it was the sign of the end times.

Now that Google can identify you with reasonable probability without using cookies, they won't hold Firefox back, they don't need to, and it suits them to roll out the third party blocking in Chromium, alongside browser cache partitioning to avoid the classic circumventions - ETags, steganographed PNGs etc. as first implemented by Safari. UA strings, often used in fingerprinting, are also not long for this world.

And of course, now that Google has a solution that doesn't require cookies or fingerprinting, Chrome is all about that privacy lol - the fact that it hurts Google's competitors is merely happy circumstance.

The amount of panic in adtech companies now is hilarious because they chose to mimic an ostrich until the browsers left them no choice - but they're still flailing around and demanding devs try to find alternatives to 3rd party cookies.

The cookie based user tracking paradigm is dead, but there's a shit ton of people, especially in DSPs and DMPs whose salary relies on them not believing that.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#107

Post by hvs »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #101
pc86 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how often you push back on that and say "no, 'full stack adaptive delivery' doesn't really mean anything. Tell. Me. What. You Do."

When I've done that, people get defensive - if you're doing cool shit, you'd say so. When you're doing something simple you say something that sounds grandiose and enterprisey - we're doing "Full stack adaptive delivery" because you're worried people will realise that "you upload media to us, and can use our system to convert it if you want, and then we serve it via Akamai" will make people think that about 2/3 of yo…

I'm not digging into their offering, but "making things easier" can be a great value proposition. They just need to be upfront about it.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#108

Post by EdwardDiego »

hvs wrote: post #107
EdwardDiego wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I've done that, people get defensive - if you're doing cool shit, you'd say so. When you're doing something simple you say something that sounds grandiose and enterprisey - we're doing "Full stack adaptive delivery" because you're worried people will realise that "you upload media to us, and can use our system to convert it if you want, and then we serve it via Akamai" will make people think that about 2/3 of yo…

I'm not digging into their offering, but "making things easier" can be a great value proposition. They just need to be upfront about it.

It looks like you can allow admin or users to easily upload files to an S3 bucket that you don't have to manage, and then serve them via Akamai without configuring it.

I guess there's a value add there if you don't have a person on board who can configure S3 and Akamai.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#109

Post by sgc »

shandor wrote: post #75
TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't get too fancy with your taglines. People don't have time to understand what you are saying. People don't like fancy terminologies except for what is popular. It's worse than that. And it's my pet peeve about many startup landing pages these days. It's not like people don't have time to understand - there's nothing there to understand ! "Full stack adaptive delivery" is a near-meaningless phrase. It can be con…

I have the feeling that "Full stack adaptive delivery" and its ilk are aimed at VCs or BigCorp sourcing managers instead of anyone that would actually use the product. The sad thing is that they seem to be so mutually exclusive nowadays.

We need an "engineer's hotkey" which would be a widely used hotkey combination which would change the css to show the no bs version of your landing page.

Re: We Wasted $50K on Google Ads So You Don't Have To (2019)

#110

Post by inkeddeveloper »

scottLobster wrote: post #81
shripadk wrote: post #43

Left a comment on the IndieHackers page. Keeping a copy here for those who aren't reading the comments section. I have noticed this a lot in various websites I have helped in ad campaigns. Their biggest problem is their landing page. Just like this article uses lots of jargons to explain simple concepts, their landing page reflects the same. For those of you wanting to know more about landing page optimization just w…

My go-to example is Robert DeNiro's line from The Irishmen: "You like steak? I deliver steak. I could deliver you steak." Granted there was some mob subtext to that line but the world would be a better place if people strove for that level of simplicity in their messaging.

But the mob gets things done so...
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