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

candyjapan.com

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

#221

Post by corobo »

bahmboo wrote: post #63
nkkollaw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was fine

For an indie effort on a limited budget it was fine. I got the point. I don't need to see the actual candy. If you don't already get the idea of weird candy from other countries not sure illuminating it more would make much difference. If it were me I would have invested a bit more to make 1 or 2 remixes of the ad content to see if one had more traction than the other. But yes, I'm not a successful web marketer.

Are you now a subscriber to the service?

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

oculusthrift wrote: post #169
jsonne wrote: post #95

A few things that struck me. Note I primarily do Facebook consulting so I'm pulling broad generalizations from there but I do run youtube ads as well. 1. Using predefined broad audience categories rarely works. Doing keyword targeting or specific video targeting usually works out better. 2. $10 cpm isn't high. I regularly spend $40+ on Facebook that can be 5x+ profitable ROI. Judging an ad buy only by cpm is short si…

yeah but a lot of us have our side hustles or are just individuals. we can likely only afford what the poster did. not millions like some big company

[deleted]

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

#224

Post by [deleted] »

xstartup wrote: post #217
dfee wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there reasoning to not drive this into the ground, I.e. where profitability for the campaign hits 0? At a practical level I wonder if you / they are cognizant of an exhaustion measure, if new campaigns are introduced rapidly enough to continue to maintain a 5-10x return, whether the spend is managed to a predefined ROI, etc. For what it’s worth, I’ve always seemed to drive it into the ground, but those are for sho…

It depends on what you are doing. Many are just middleman, so they sell conversions they drive from FB, the difference of which is your profit. You have an incentive to keep conversion cost as low as possible and quality as high as possible to maintain your conversion payoff. Driving it into the ground might be profitable for a product owner but not to an ad agency which pockets the middle.

[deleted]

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

#225

Post by Feniks »

I love the marketing industry. Everyone is overfishing in the same ocean. People's income don't increase much year to year but internet ad spending sees double digit growth!

My budget allows me to spend €500 on entertainment/leisure per month. You can bombard me with advertising all day but that's not going to change my finances.

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

#226

Post by apricot »

troydavis wrote: post #92
hnaccy wrote: post #2

>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?

Most larger ad networks track post-view conversion - that is, someone viewed an ad but didn't click on it, and then later visited the advertiser's site anyway - using a "conversion pixel." The ad network provides each advertiser with a HTML or JS snippet that loads an 1x1 pixel image or makes a similar small HTTP request to the ad network. The ad network records a post-view conversion if either: 1. The ad network coo…

Very interesting. Now, suppose I interpret this kind of action as spying on me, and I want to stop it, are there ways around it? Is not logging on to Google etc. and using the Privacy Badger extension enough, or do I have to ramp up the arms race further?

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

#227

Post by apricot »

DownGoat wrote: post #183
hackathonguy wrote: post #182

I love Candy Japan and the articles are always fantastic. However, I can't help but wonder what about CJ is so captivating to the Hacker News audience - the posts seem to always end up on the front page.

They usually contains real world business cases from point-of-view of a technical person. Thats fits well with a large portion of HN users.

Also, green tea kit kats!

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

#229

Post by giarc »

BartBoch wrote: post #86

While the Candy Japan lost the revenue on YouTube ads, I wonder how those posts, that hit front HN and certain Reddit subreddits convert. Would you make money back, if you would include all the signups you will get within next 96 hours? The "mistake" cost you real money, but on the other hand, it allowed you to generate a content on a very interesting topic, that surely will get you thousands of new visitors, right t…

Candy Japan has hit the top of HN many times. I imagine many people in this HN audience have already converted. Posting here likely has diminishing returns. However, I get the sense that the author truly enjoys writing and sharing his experiences and learnings.

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

#230

Post by danmaz74 »

Silhouette wrote: post #59
libertine wrote: post #16

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…

Precisely - "marketers" these days don't grasp the concept of brand building. I'm not sure that's true. Some people are just working on a different scale. Brand-building is fine if you're Coke or BMW or McDonald's. You have millions to spend, you can saturate channels, and then people might actually think of you in preference to your competition when they're in the market for a drink or a car or a burger. On the othe…

Branding isn't just about spending a lot on ads. I found lots of actionable suggestions even for a small startups in a book called "Killer brands" by Frank Lane.
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