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

candyjapan.com

31–40 of 263 posts

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

#31

> 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.

I haven't used an ad blocker so far, because I don't browse a lot of sites with ads, but have started seriously considering it when, last week, Youtube started to feed me with unskippable five minutes long ads. Five. Freaking. Unskippable. Minutes. Infuriating.

Fortunately(?), reloading the page made them skipped.

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

#32
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.

Yeah, its almost like its a pitch for the company to an investor instead of an ad to an actual customer of the business

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

#33
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.

I've gotta agree with this, I feel like I should have a subscription like this and couldn't talk myself into it even when I was trying.

What's so cool about Japanese candy? There are a ton of other services out there like this one, why should I get this one? These are the questions I had that talked me out of it.

I say this hoping it helps, I felt really inclined to want to subscribe from past interest and I don't know what keeps me from doing so. Best of luck, and maybe I will in the future regardless ;)

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

#34
post #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...

Who do you think pays for the content you consume?

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

#35

> 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.

I haven't used an ad blocker so far, because I don't browse a lot of sites with ads, but have started seriously considering it when, last week, Youtube started to feed me with unskippable five minutes long ads. Five. Freaking. Unskippable. Minutes. Infuriating. Fortunately(?), reloading the page made them skipped.

My favorite ad related story is I went to YouTube to see a movie trailer and got the very same movie trailer as the unskippable ad before the trailer :-D It's rare things get that good though..

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

#36

> 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.

Do the ads use any more CPU cycles than the regular video does?

And which are more intrusive, TV ads or youtube ads? I can skip youtube ads.

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

#37
post #14

The author can't really be totally certain if they lost money though, since it's entirely possible the ad will make an effect on people long-term. Maybe they'll break even in a few months, who knows.

To the first order the author can say they have. That’s reasonable enough given the scale of the operation. Higher order effects are for higher order budgets.

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

#38
Well the initial snap impression is that the ad isn't very good. But let's talk about how this could have been done better.

For starters, I would not pitch a real world get stuff in your mailbox service with animation. There are no photos of the product, the explanation of how it works and why it's not a scam is hand wavy. I don't care how it works I care about what's in it for me, the buyer.

There are no clear examples of what you'll get. There is no sense of who is behind this service and why you should feel connected and like you would trust them.

In addition the implementation tactics are suspect. You targeted hardcore gamers, but you're not selling games. That's almost a complete non-sequitur.

Your goal was to target people likely to purchase candy, or perhaps Japanese novelty items, via a mail subscription service. It doesn't appear that you made much effort if any to figure out what that audience looks like and how to reach it.

One of the reasons digital advertising can be so effective is that it allows you to try multiple different approaches at the same time. Nearly every successful PPC type campaign starts with multiple theories, different hypothesis about who the audience is and what they'll respond to.

You try a few ideas, see what works, track sales and intermediate metrics (clicks, engagement, time on site, add-to-cart behavior) and then continue to direct your budget to things that show signs of yielding positive ROI.

These things are to some extent always a roll of the dice, but there are definitely some things you can and should be doing here to improve your odds of success.

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

#39
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…

Brand building investment exists today, but like all other channels unless you can prove the return you're just gambling. It's certainly not the best place to start if performance marketing is a viable channel.
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