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Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

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Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#51
post #41

I come from the other side of the glass. My toddlers have iPads and constantly tap ads that are usually larger than real, in-app actions. Often the ads are interstitial between two game screens, or float next to the content they are interested in. Besides being frustrating for the kids, I have to be vigilant on the content of the ads they're seeing. From my experience, the ads are not always appropriate for kids. I r…

This could be a reasonable class action lawsuit: both against advertisers collecting personal information from children (whether they intended to or not) and from platforms serving inappropriate ads to children.

very stringent rules around children's data in europe I believe

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#53

I think google do sloppy shit whenever the "sloppiness" suits them. Take app permissions in the play store as an example; you mean to say google are so concerned by me installing unvetted apps that to do so, I have to click some check box somewhere in the settings, YET do not allow me to set app permissions on an app by app basis? That is downright sloppy, only it isn't really sloppiness, it's a state of affairs that…

I am still appalled by the fact that Play Store doesn't allow users to search for apps based on requested permissions or size. It's extremely ironic, considering Google's core business.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#55
post #41

I come from the other side of the glass. My toddlers have iPads and constantly tap ads that are usually larger than real, in-app actions. Often the ads are interstitial between two game screens, or float next to the content they are interested in. Besides being frustrating for the kids, I have to be vigilant on the content of the ads they're seeing. From my experience, the ads are not always appropriate for kids. I r…

This could be a reasonable class action lawsuit: both against advertisers collecting personal information from children (whether they intended to or not) and from platforms serving inappropriate ads to children.

How are the collecting personal information, and how are the ads inappropriate?

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#56

I think google do sloppy shit whenever the "sloppiness" suits them. Take app permissions in the play store as an example; you mean to say google are so concerned by me installing unvetted apps that to do so, I have to click some check box somewhere in the settings, YET do not allow me to set app permissions on an app by app basis? That is downright sloppy, only it isn't really sloppiness, it's a state of affairs that…

I always thought it was really cool that apps had to request permissions up-front; that said, I much prefer the iOS approach of 'ask when it becomes necessary, and only then'.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#57

You are unhappy with the results because you're optimizing towards clicks. You should always optimize towards whatever is important to you. So if you would like people to click through to a specific page, define that to be a conversion and then optimize towards conversions. Optimizing to clicks is not great even if you exclude mobile devices - it's just not what you want.

Do you have any resources that talk about how to optimize for conversions?

In AdWords it's under Tools - Conversions

You have to setup conversion, and insert corresponding javascript into your conversion page.

Than make your AdWords campaigns to focus on conversions instead of clicks.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#58
post #56

I think google do sloppy shit whenever the "sloppiness" suits them. Take app permissions in the play store as an example; you mean to say google are so concerned by me installing unvetted apps that to do so, I have to click some check box somewhere in the settings, YET do not allow me to set app permissions on an app by app basis? That is downright sloppy, only it isn't really sloppiness, it's a state of affairs that…

I always thought it was really cool that apps had to request permissions up-front; that said, I much prefer the iOS approach of 'ask when it becomes necessary, and only then'.

If would only be cool if you could disable these permissions; as it is, they're not asking you if you want to grant the permissions, they're just warning you in the ways in which the app will violate your privacy. Thanks, but that's not enough.

(Unless you run Xprivacy or Cyanogenmod's Privacy Guard, etc.)

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#59
The way to avoid wasting money like this is to ramp up your spending gradually using what's called 'discovery campaigns.' This is a risk management method that helps you to avoid the shittiest publishers (which is almost all of them). If you had done this you could have avoided this unhappy incident.

You can also bypass discovery campaigns by just running managed placements, which means whitelisting certain publishers only.

Google does a disservice to its customers by making it seem like 'anyone' who can paste an image into its tool can advertise effectively. Technically, yes, it's so easy that even a greedy pigeon with a corporate credit card can do it.

Practically, in many if not most verticals, it takes reading at least a couple textbooks worth of material to be effective, plus creative experience.

Google is not being shady in this instance. The only shady thing that it is doing is using its marketing to delude people with large enough budgets to hurt themselves into managing their own campaigns.

Another issue highlighted in this post that many professional advertisers complain about is that over the last few years, Google has tried to frogmarch desktop advertisers into tablet/mobile advertising, whereas it requires more finesse and planning to tailor campaigns to those devices than most clients are interested in using.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#60
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This could be a reasonable class action lawsuit: both against advertisers collecting personal information from children (whether they intended to or not) and from platforms serving inappropriate ads to children.

very stringent rules around children's data in europe I believe

I think that Europe does not have class action suits. I'm not 100% sure. Anyway, USA has special laws around collecting and storing data of kids under 13 years old.

That is primary reason why facebook like companies tos excludes them. It is safe to assume that ad companies do not follow requirements written in these laws.

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