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What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

candyjapan.com

21–30 of 263 posts

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#21
post #12

Earlier 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…

>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.

97% of their income is through ads. Maps, Docs, email, Google Plus, Youtube, even Search - it all exists only to increase advertisement profits, and to get ever more minable data from the users. If the ads money ever dries up for whatever reason, the entire company goes belly up.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#22
post #9

People 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 adverti…

I'd venture to say it's not the marketers acting on their own in many cases. Shit runs down hill. VCs want fast returns, CEOs want their investors to be happy about their CAC, marketers want to prove their value in this system. And EVERYBODY is obsessed with analytics, often as a poorly constructed crutch. You try pitching brand building in that environment.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#23

> 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.

Makes one wish we'd get closer to 100% adblock coverage...

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#24
Very useful post thanks. I didn't like your ad though. It doesn't show me the product. Every food item ad I've seen: slow pan on the food product and then someone eating it - inserted somewhere in the sequence. (Given that they all do this, I would bet there are million dollar marketing budgets somewhere with data to support that this works.)

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#25
post #21
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. 97% of their income is through ads. Maps, Docs, email, Google Plus, Youtube, even Search - it all exists only to increase advertisement profits, and to get ever more minable data from the users. If the ads money ever dries up for whatever reason, the entire company g…

[deleted]

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#26
post #19
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 adverti…

I'd venture to say it's not the marketers acting on their own in many cases. Shit runs down hill. VCs want fast returns, CEOs want their investors to be happy about their CAC, marketers want to prove their value in this system. And EVERYBODY is obsessed with analytics, often as a poorly constructed crutch. You try pitching brand building in that environment.

Exactly this.

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#28
post #9

People 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…

There actually are ways like market mix models and multi touch attribution models to account for impact of those "late conversions" across multiple channels but requires fairly sophisticated data integration and modeling and is generally worth it only if you are optimizing millions of dollars in ad spend. The tools Google/Facebook currently provide are not really sophisticated enough for such work.

Source: I work on these techniques

Re: What I Learned Burning $14k on YouTube Ads for Candy Japan

#29
The ad was terrible. It explained how Candy Japan works. I don't care how Candy Japan works. I want the why should I buy Candy Japan. It should have focused instead on the candies that you can get. Delicious, weird, unique candies only available through this service.
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