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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

#231

Post by madshiva »

bennesvig wrote: post #110

As a marketer, videographer, and someone with a sweet tooth, it's not a great ad. Get to the point. Show the actual product. Tease me with things I can expect to receive. Maybe show reaction videos of people opening and trying the candy (and loving it). Also, you'd probably get higher ROI sending $14k worth of Candy Japan to YouTubers in the hopes they'd open it on their vlog and mention the website.

You can make the best Ad ever and then fail to receive any ROI. There's no good Ad.

99% of Ad serve for Nothing. I can't even buy the product on that Ad. Come on.

Ad rotten our live.

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

#232

Post by waytogo »

While most of us happily discuss what Candy Japan's CEO did right and wrong with his Youtube ads, they miss one little thing:

Candy Japan, the master of upvoted stories on HN, burned $14K on Youtube to have another story for HN which brings attention, traffic and new subs. Still: The thread is full of super important infos, so all good.

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

#233

Post by _pghu »

Hi Bemmu. I subscribe to TokyoTreat, and formerly subscribed to Japan Crate (and the 'umai crate' noodle box, until one of them got seized by customs because they shipped something with pork bits...)

I don't subscribe to CJ despite having seen it a million times here and almost definitely being the target audience (though this particular ad would have definitely repelled me) because your prices just aren't competitive. I mean, sure, the root price of $29 a month is, but when you consider the volume of candy you get, it's not even close. 7 items on your example image vs. the 14 I got in the February TokyoTreat (one of which was a heavy drink and another of which was a 30-piece share pack) just makes it clear.

Have you considered dropping the shipping to once a month like all the other boxes and making them bigger? I think that would help you compete more effectively, because you'd be paying less for shipping as a percentage of your subscription gross and the "unboxing" pictures of your boxes wouldn't look as sad.

$29 for 7 items is over $4 an item. You're going to have a hard time convincing people it's worth paying that if they look at any other subscription box.

From looking at the list of past boxes, I think you do a really good job hitting the right balance of "ooh, exclusive Japan thing" and balancing out the tastes of an average person. The candy you select is spot-on with what I considered some of the best stuff I got when I lived there.

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

#234

Post by arekkas »

waytogo wrote: post #232

While most of us happily discuss what Candy Japan's CEO did right and wrong with his Youtube ads, they miss one little thing: Candy Japan, the master of upvoted stories on HN, burned $14K on Youtube to have another story for HN which brings attention, traffic and new subs. Still: The thread is full of super important infos, so all good.

Being a few hours on the front page of HN is definitely not worth $14k.

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

#235

Post by sonaltr »

manigandham wrote: post #48
sonaltr wrote: post #6

I really like the honesty about how he lost money buying youtube ads...feels like there's definitely a market for an self-serve "pay x amount a month" for "y results" app if you will.

That doesn't exist because it's impossible. Advertising doesn't work like that and anyone who could actually guarantee results would become bigger than Google overnight.

They don't have to guarantee results - Companies are becoming disillusioned about Ads as it is (since they don't understand technology and/or can't compete with companies that do)...we need a platform where such companies go back doing their core-services if you will and leave the rest to experts - As an example - a B2B company making some airplane part does not need to host it's own marketing site (for it's sales pipeline), measure KPIs on this site etc. - Instead, it could pay $X to an self-serve app, and let them manage everything about said content (maybe even help with the content creation as well) to achieve measurable results Y (KPIs).

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

#236

Post by petercooper »

ChristianGeek wrote: post #104
jackgolding wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market research is the easiest way to solve these problems!

What if you provide a discount code in the ad that’s unique to the ad? Subsequent ads have slight lower discounts so there’s an incentive to use the code from the first ad they saw.

Discount codes was one method used, the only problem was that at the $1000+ ticket level, it's often another department buying the tickets and they frequently don't bother to use the codes :-D

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

#237

Post by thrownaway954 »

jhou2 wrote: post #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.

totally agree. showing examples of what candies you would get by subscribing would have been miles better then the animation. also, the blend in of the animation took a full second before you heard a the animated voice say hi. there was a reason Billy Mayes always started a commercial with a loud hi right from the get go.

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

#238

Post by bpicolo »

apricot wrote: post #226
troydavis wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Adblocking extensions like uBlock Origin. Privacy Badger is a good tool that looks to specifically aim to block things like conversion pixels, so that should be protecting you already from this class of things.

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

#239

Post by scott00 »

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…

What would you recommend as a minimum budget to have a reasonable chance of success?

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

#240

Post by jypepin »

mseebach wrote: post #219
ggg9990 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is usually true but sometimes not. For example products like Grey Goose vodka make billions of dollars despite being indistinguishable from other quality vodka even by self-professed experts.

It's probably splitting hair at this point, but Grey Goose isn't bad vodka, it's just no better than other "good" vodkas (whatever "good" means in context of a product whose defining characteristic is the absence of characteristics). If GG was a foul-tasting vodka, no amount of advertising would save it.

this ^ I didn't say you need a better product, or the best product, but you need a great product. If people hear about your product, and they think it's great, then they'll buy it. GG vodka is a great vodka (not a vodka pro but definitely in the high end of consumer vodka I believe), and coupled with their advertising they sell a lot of vodka.
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