Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads • Hacker News Board

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#71

Post by rogermbyrne » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 9:26 AM UTC

tezmc wrote: post #24

Similar to this, I noticed a pretty crappy thing Google are doing on Youtube on the ipad last night. I did a youtube search and went to tap the first result only to have it replaced with an ad just before I clicked it, taking me through to some ad. I experimented with this a couple of times, both times I did a search, and about 0.5-1 second after the page loaded the first search result was shifted down and its positi…

some browser extensions do this injecting ads. not saying thats the answer but also an alternate possibility.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#72

Post by SyneRyder » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 12:41 PM UTC

dperfect wrote: post #62

SyneRyder wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't optimize your ads for conversions until you've already had a minimum number of conversions (I think 30 per month?). Google can still run up hundreds of dollars of paid clicks that will never result in conversions before then (and mobile apps for kids are one way to do that). As for desktop vs tablet, some people might be advertising a tablet-only app or a desktop-only app. In that case it's best to advertis…

That's true. Still doesn't mean you should optimize for CTR when you're really interested in conversions. But I do see your point that in some cases - especially when starting a new campaign on a tight budget, it would be useful to manually target the campaign with more precision (including tablets vs desktop control and more obvious control for apps). Ideally, Google would allow people to start optimizing for conver…

Oh definitely, if you have the option to optimize for conversions, you should definitely try it. From memory that was a key factor in patio11 finding success with Bingo Card Creator.

That said, if your conversion rate is the typical "1% of trial users buy / x% of visitors download", it can take a long time to optimize. And if you try to use trial signups / downloads as a proxy conversion for sales, you can end up optimizing for the wrong thing (eg optimizing for freeloaders / kick the tyres, not buyers).

Curious to hear if Aha!'s mobile app exclusion method actually works - I tried a similar exclusion and it didn't work for me, I still play mobile app whack-a-mole. Google called me when I stopped my ads & told me that entering a -300% bid for mobile was a hack from engineering that would stop showing all ads on tablets, but the interface wouldn't accept anything more than -100% (which I already had).

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#73

Post by akosner » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

k1w1 wrote: post #44

akosner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What keywords did you use? Curious to see how unrelated games might have been related to your keywords.

Aha! is a tool for product managers to plan a roadmap, so keywords were related to "product management", "visual roadmap", etc. I am not sure how keywords match a game like Solitaire but my guess is that the game somehow contains a dictionary that they pass to google when ads are being chosen. Or perhaps the description of the game is keyword stuffed?

Follow up post here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonykosner/2014/04/04/aha-mom...

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#74

Post by hagbardgroup » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 4:22 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #67

hagbardgroup wrote: post #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 publisher…

As a "professional advertiser" myself with a deep background in search this is spot on. Also, people don't poke around enough in the help files or in the settings for their targeting to see that there are easy ways to avoid this from the start. For example, Site Category Exclusions would be a good start, although the specific negatives they mention are good to note as well since I'm not sure the category exclusions w…

Thanks!

Yup. As a quasi-professional advertiser with a medium-depth background in search, I'm glad to hear that I'm on the correct track.

Re: Pissing Away Our Money With Google Display Ads

#75

Post by AJ007 » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 10:16 PM UTC

dperfect wrote: post #39

AJ007 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaint originates from Google preventing advertisers from separating desktop & tablet bids. It is not that Google made ads available for mobile platforms but that they force you to purchase them. Kind of like if you want HBO.

Again, if you've set up your campaign to optimize for what you really want to see (not just clicks), then why would you even need to care about desktop vs tablets? There are more and more devices every day that blur the line between desktop and tablet, so it's really not that useful of a distinction to make. What about desktops with touchscreens? People are probably just as likely to click your ad by mistake there as…

You can hand over the task of bidding for conversions to Google. Besides presenting your business on a silver platter for them, you lose control over the finer points of your campaign.