Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

youexec.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 382 posts

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#231

Post by blockchan »

I did Adwords for 1 person mom shops and bigger companies in industries ranging from tourism and general aviation to jewelry and software development.

It was all profitable. Ad agencies are borderline scammers - they measure traffic and clicks as performance, which makes you to spend more money to increase "performance" and pay more agency fees.

Sometimes I burned $15000 before first conversion, but ROI was always positive in the end.

People launching ads without any experience, redirecting people to homepage and loosing money are the same kind of people trying trade stock market and loosing money, creating their own amateur e-commerce shop and loosing money getting zero customers, hiring high-school nephew for company website etc etc. You need experience, and before that - knowledge.

First, manage your ads in-house. Agencies have no reason to work for your conversions, that's not their business model. Second, don't treat ads like "we'll slap users with our ad and see what happens". Prepare user flow, conversion funnel, dedicated landing pages, drip campaigns, remarketing etc.

Adwords and Facebook are fully-fledged promotion channels and they have to be treated as such. It's a craft which consultants make huge money from - because they know how to bring profits.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#233

Post by FabHK »

digi_owl wrote: post #221
cconcepts wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The spammy links thing fascinates me. I don't know much about search algos or SEO but on our small, industrial business site we couldn't understand why, after many hours and thousands of dollars spent on the procedures that Google recommends, our organic ranking in SERPs for a very niche product (of which we are one of only three providers in our region) was appalling - often page three. It wasn't till we realised we…

I dunno how much it has evolved, but Google got started by weighting search results based on how many other pages linked to that page. More links and your pages was found closer to the top of the results page. So a easy way to game that was to set up "link farms" that pointed to each other, but not really offering anything worthwhile except a bunch of words people were likely to search for.

Goodhart's law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#234

Post by abalashov »

nrjdhsbsid wrote: post #229
abalashov wrote: post #23

I really thought I was crazy when I thought that a 99% bounce rate is unreal, even for my highly specialised product sites which cater to a very niche audience. But I ultimately came to a similar conclusion; no matter what ads I come up with, it's money down the drain, and I've never had a single conversion that came through the door that way. I've spent untold thousands on paid ads. I learned a great deal about whic…

Just checked your site. It's well put together but the language is far too technical for AdWords. Engineers don't usually make the kind of business decisions to buy these things at larger companies, it's VP level people. Find your kinds of customers and tailor a landing page with stuff that they want, instead of having the site explain everything like a users manual. Ex: Calls centers do not care at all about the oth…

Thank you for the suggestions!

The intentionally deep technical content of the site may be motivated by reasoning backward to your thought process:

Usually it's the technical guys, tasked with researching and finding a product that fits the requirements, who find the site and forward the link to their managers. The managers have no idea what any of it means, but "it looks like good stuff", so "contact them and find out more".

This has been my experience. Of course, that may be a reflection of the self-selecting group of prospects that the site does reach, so your observations are entirely valid!

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#235

Post by crottypeter »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #158
rackforms wrote: post #114

I've got a long history here, stretching all the way back to 2007. At that time 80% of my traffic was organic, and most importantly, was spread equally between MSN, Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. I paid for ad's through HotScripts, and this was a solid source of leads. This mixture, along with a fast, secure, easy to use site and great word of mouth lead to an annual growth rate of around 30%, ending up in 2011 with a mont…

>My site was targeted with millions of low quality links Are you saying competitors maliciously sabotaged your ranking? Or that you bought SEO services from an unscrupulous company?

Or your competitors bought SEO from an unscrupulous company ... ?

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#236

Post by ubernostrum »

reefoctopus wrote: post #198
cconcepts wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how do I combat against this? We're a small, honest company providing great products and services for the companies that need them but we're getting killed online because no one can find us. I've forked out a lot (for us) on adwords and the return has been negligible to say the least. Does this mean that the democratizing power of the internet has been swallowed up for small, lean companies like us who cant afford…

You have to disavow the bad links. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

Why is it that someone else gaming Google's algorithm becomes my problem and requires me to solve it rather than Google?

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#237

Post by somid3 »

balls187 wrote: post #142

So a 10% conversion rate? Seems normal.

10% of the entering traffic, acts normal. The other 90% is garbage. So if your initial organic conversion rate is X%, this article suggests your Google Ad, or Facebook ad conversion rate will be 10% * X%. That said, its not an extensive study or anything scientific.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#239

Post by TeMPOraL »

ubernostrum wrote: post #236
reefoctopus wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to disavow the bad links. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en

Why is it that someone else gaming Google's algorithm becomes my problem and requires me to solve it rather than Google?

For the same reason when some fellow citizen acts against you, you may need to sue them yourself - Google provides a platform with some set of rules, but they can't proactively ensure nobody is doing something malicious to other parties (especially if the malicious act is allowed by the rules), nor they can codify and enforce "don't be an asshole" rule.

Re: Google and Facebook ad traffic is 90% useless

#240

Post by kombucha2 »

phamilton wrote: post #131
bobajeff wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe ad networks (that rely on third-party scripts and cookies) days are numbered thanks to adblocking. The only ads I see surviving long term are affiliate links, sponcered content and static native ads. The problems with ad networks are too big to go on for very long. Poor user experience, Ad fraud, malware, the indiscriminate gathering and selling of user information. It's just a matter of time 'till everyone…

Programmatic ads (i.e. Real-time auctions) aren't going anywhere. The old method of phone calls and handshakes to fill adspace is just so inefficient. The ad networks are just waiting for premium content (eg ESPN) to go programmatic. The cable networks who own that content are slowly wearing down. Once those floodgates open there will be a whole new arms race.

I've always wondered when this would happen. If premium content went programmatic we would see a massive upending of the advertising status quo.
Post reply on HN