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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

#61

Post by michaelt »

lwansbrough wrote: post #34
nukeop wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes one wish we'd get closer to 100% adblock coverage...

Who do you think pays for the content you consume?

Myself, obviously.

Sometimes it's Patreon or Netflix between me and the content creator

Other times they show me a video that attempts to influence me to go to the store, pick up a different brand of detergent, then the store gives money to the multinational behind the brand, then the multinational gives the money to an ad agency, then the ad agency give the money to Youtube, then Youtube gives the money to the content creator. Except I buy store-brand detergent, so this pipeline leaks a lot.

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

#62

Post by manigandham »

e12e wrote: post #12
toomuchtodo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming Google Analytics tying it all together.

And perhaps spying through Google searches and chrome? I guess Google never spies on you except by proxy via analytics - but then, if they correlate views on YouTube with analytic hits, that's not really true. Anyway, the above, as well as: > If that still doesn't make your campaign profitable, there are broader exclusions and bid adjustments you can make based on age, gender, device, location, parental status and ho…

Cookies are used and track both the ads you've seen and clicked on. Combine that with on-site analytics tags and you can see the campaign and traffic sources. View-through and click-through conversions are very standard in advertising.

Also yes, Google is an advertising company. I'm not sure when perception around that ever changed? Their biggest new avenue though is their Google Cloud Platform which has the potential in the future to make more than their entire business combined.

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

#63

Post by bahmboo »

nkkollaw wrote: post #44
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.

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.

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

#64

Post by jliptzin »

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.

A better ad could have been made a lot cheaper and faster too by just having a friend (or an actor) opening the box and eating the candy and enjoying it with a voiceover explaining the benefits.

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

#65

Post by bluedino »

sandworm101 wrote: post #42

14k is nothing. Lookup how much a single billboard beside a highway costs. I watch youtube all the time. I some ads, at least the first few seconds. I have never clicked on one deliberately and certainly would never be a convert, but i do know these companies exist. That is worth something.

$3k/month for a billboard here

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

#66

Post by manigandham »

username223 wrote: post #60
e12e wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And perhaps spying through Google searches and chrome? I guess Google never spies on you except by proxy via analytics - but then, if they correlate views on YouTube with analytic hits, that's not really true. Anyway, the above, as well as: > If that still doesn't make your campaign profitable, there are broader exclusions and bid adjustments you can make based on age, gender, device, location, parental status and ho…

> But Google is big enough to shift into other growth markets like media manipulation/lobbying and defence contracts etc. They're already the number one single company in lobbying, beating out AT&T and Boeing: https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s&showYe... I imagine DoD would love smarter autonomous drones and tanks. They bought Boston Dynamics awhile back, makers of seriously creepy things: https://…

Google sold Boston Dynamics last summer to Softbank. Their next big moneymaker is the Google Cloud Platform which competes with AWS and Azure.

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

#67

Post by janekm »

jliptzin wrote: post #64
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.

A better ad could have been made a lot cheaper and faster too by just having a friend (or an actor) opening the box and eating the candy and enjoying it with a voiceover explaining the benefits.

Even better would have been paying one of the popular unboxing channels to make that video (well... not too popular or it would be crazy expensive!).

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

#68

Post by avg_dev »

nukeop wrote: post #17

I'm interested if a free spot at the top of hacker news hot articles will end up being better in terms of advertisement than spending ~$14k on youtube ads.

This is totally tangent but while the cost is perhaps not always quantifiable in dollars every post that makes it up here has the cost of some story behind it. In this case that is a $14k story on top of building the company.

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

#70

Post by wolco »

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…

In a startup brand awareness p is extremely important perhap more so than coke. They spend millions of dollars because they are trying to reach billions.

The most useful thing I noticed some startups do is get involved in their niche community and spent money building brand awareness for a targeted group.

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