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

554 points by jbardnz 9y ago

hnaccy 9y ago
>But the cool part is that you can also track when someone views your ad, and then a bit later types in your web address to make the purchase without ever clicking the link. >In other words you can track both people who click through an ad directly, or who see your ad and then visit your site a bit later How does this work?
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Assuming Google Analytics tying it all together.
  - e12e 9y ago
    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 household income. Really stood out to me - if anyone needed further evidence that Google is still an ad company, and that the free services are about driving ad traffic. It'll be interesting to see how GDPR affects this. I suppose the sad truth is that Google/alphabet has built a ton of cash on the back of user data, and now no-one else will be able to that as this particular form of business becomes illegal. But Google is big enough to shift into other growth markets like media manipulation/lobbying and defence contracts etc.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - nukeop 9y ago
      >Really stood out to me - if anyone needed further evidence that Google is still an ad company, and that the free services are about driving ad traffic. 97% of their income is through ads. Maps, Docs, email, Google Plus, Youtube, even Search - it all exists only to increase advertisement profits, and to get ever more minable data from the users. If the ads money ever dries up for whatever reason, the entire company goes belly up.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - exchomedev 9y ago
      Google does use the "anonymous" usage stats from Chrome to inform AdWords. Source: I personally developed on this feature. Response to rebuttal: the tree you're looking at isn't actually what's complied into the Chrome binary.
      - judge2020 9y ago
        Fairly obvious that Google uses upstream chromium then adds in all of the proprietary g APIs and anonymous usage statistics after the fact.
      - delroth 9y ago
        I currently work at Google, and from what I know and have seen about how we handle privacy internally I'd be really surprised and appalled if that was the case. Mind sending me more details? My nickname @google.com. Anonymous reporting in Chrome has been one of the leading use cases for differential privacy at Google. See e.g. https://github.com/google/rappor https://github.com/google/rappor and https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/42852.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... which specifically mentions the Chrome use case. This seems to indicate the people who work on this do care at least in some amount about privacy. (Given the fact that you use a throwaway account I'm very much not expecting to see anything else than FUD, but hey, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.)
    - username223 9y ago
      > 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&showYear=2017 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Dynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Dynamics They'll do just fine when the ad bubble bursts.
      - manigandham 9y ago
        Google sold Boston Dynamics last summer to Softbank. Their next big moneymaker is the Google Cloud Platform which competes with AWS and Azure.
    - manigandham 9y ago
      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.
- jackgolding 9y ago
  These are called conversion pixels, Google Analytics should have nothing to do with it (assuming there is a Chinese wall between AdWords, Doubleclick, GDN and Google Analytics.) Obviously Google offers some built-in integration within its products but you can achieve this within the ad-buying platform itself.
- troydavis 9y ago
  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 cookie that was set when the ad was served is still present, or 2. A user was logged in to the publisher's site (Google, Twitter, etc) when they viewed the ad, and is also logged in when they visit the advertiser's site. #2 is also how most cross-device tracking occurs. For example, if you're logged in to Twitter on your phone and see a Twitter ad, then type in the advertiser's URL on your desktop where you're also logged in to Twitter (and the advertiser has Twitter's conversion pixel on their site), Twitter will record a cross-device post-view conversion. Here are examples: Twitter: https://business.twitter.com/en/advertising/campaign-types/increase-website-traffic/how-to-setup-conversion-tracking.html https://business.twitter.com/en/advertising/campaign-types/i... AdWords (for YouTube impressions): https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375431?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375431?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-strategies https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-st... Aside from blocking the ads, uBlock Origin blocks the conversion pixels/requests for the largest ad networks. Often a conversion pixel snippet is used alongside retargeting/remarketing. Some ad networks use #2 above to do quite sophisticated retargeting, not just targeting those who viewed a specific page. For example, Google lets advertisers retarget AdWords ads to those who liked a video in the advertiser's YouTube channel: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2545661?hl=en&ref_topic=3119118 https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2545661?hl=en&ref_...
  - apricot 9y ago
    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?
    - bpicolo 9y ago
      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.
keketi 9y ago
> Nope. I lost money. At least your article got on the front page of HN. That should count for something.
- sneak 9y ago
  I wish he had crossposted it to steemit as well, because I found it really valuable and my upvote there is now worth ~$40.
  - corobo 9y ago
    I wish sites like steemit realised if their front page is all meta content about how good the site/coin/blockchain is, it looks like a scam.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- tehlike 9y ago
  Candyjapan and some businesses from patio11 occasionally makes it to front page. They write very informative posts.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sonaltr 9y ago
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.
- manigandham 9y ago
  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.
  - sonaltr 9y ago
    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).
    - manigandham 9y ago
      That's called a marketing agency, and they come in all shapes and sizes. If you're a very small company then there are plenty of freelancer marketers that can help you out, even if it's just to setup a basic framework for running campaigns. An "app" would not be sufficient to handle any of the complexity here.
    - alwayseasy 9y ago
      So a self-serve app that would replace the different expertises (creatives, media buying etc) in advertising agencies?
anameaname 9y ago
An unfortunate part of experimenting with advertising is that it's expensive. Trying to find the right audience for the ad is very costly, to the point where I don't understand how advertisers can afford it. I say this as a tinfoil-hat person: narrowing the audience is going to need a lot more info about the person. Particularly, their browsing history (i.e. remarketing). Knowing this would raise the conversion ratio immensely at the cost of privacy.
KMuncie 9y ago
Good post, some nice lessons there for someone entirely new to this. Perhaps a missed opportunity was not advertising the domain name during the entire video. Often a user may not have the volume up and so perhaps providing a textual call to action in the first half continuously would help with conversions?
ttul 9y ago
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 short time horizon.
- petercooper 9y ago
  This lesson struck me hard when I was working with a major conference organizer. Even upon surveying them, they'd struggle to establish how attendees had heard of the event first. For the majority of attendees there was no direct way to correlate ticket purchases with ad spend because almost no-one immediately buys a $1000+ ticket after clicking an ad :-)
  - jackgolding 9y ago
    Market research is the easiest way to solve these problems!
    - ChristianGeek 9y ago
      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.
      - lozenge 9y ago
        Not being able to find a discount you saw can be pretty frustrating. Less important in this case as employers often pay for these conferences.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Might work for some people, but the probability that I would even remember the first ad had a code - let alone the exact string - is minuscule.
renegadesensei 9y ago
Great read. I am in a similar place with a small business. We have a commercial and animation and are considering doing YouTube ads. It sounds like it might be worth doing if the service is profitable enough per user. Really appreciate this detailed writeup of his experience.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  I think it's easy to have a takeaway like "you will make money if you are profitable enough per user", but this depends a lot on how good your targeting is, and just how compelling your product & ad are.
tw1010 9y ago
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.
- KodiakLabs 9y ago
  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.
nukeop 9y ago
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.
- KodiakLabs 9y ago
  This „free“ spot is precisely because the author spent the 14k...
  - quickthrower2 9y ago
    proof of burn
- avg_dev 9y ago
  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.
eveningcoffee 9y ago
>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.
- nukeop 9y ago
  Makes one wish we'd get closer to 100% adblock coverage...
  - lwansbrough 9y ago
    Who do you think pays for the content you consume?
    - mrep 9y ago
      Businesses will find a way just like how cryptocurrencies will find a way to scale /s
    - joosters 9y ago
      So what? Do you feel obliged in any way to watch the ads on tv? And yet they pay for the programmes...
    - michaelt 9y ago
      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.
      - madshiva 9y ago
        Yeah, like an Ads will change you the way you consume. Totally wrong. Totally so old way of thinking.
carlsborg 9y ago
Very useful post thanks. I didn't like your ad though. It doesn't show me the product. Every food item ad I've seen: slow pan on the food product and then someone eating it - inserted somewhere in the sequence. (Given that they all do this, I would bet there are million dollar marketing budgets somewhere with data to support that this works.)
jhou2 9y ago
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.
- bobbles 9y ago
  Yeah, its almost like its a pitch for the company to an investor instead of an ad to an actual customer of the business
- kyo3 9y ago
  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 ;)
  - Mithaldu 9y ago
    I understand you mainly asked the questions to provide feedback, but as a subscriber i can give you some info that might help you decide: A lot of the sweets are made with cane sugar, which tastes distinctly different from the typical american fare. Beyond that they also have some taste combinations that you usually don't encounter in the us. Savoury snacks with sea weed tastes are pretty nice.
    - shagie 9y ago
      The "what is Japanese candy like" can be answered by going to ITSUGAR and getting some... well... Japanese candy ( https://itsugar.com/crave-japan-blind-box.html https://itsugar.com/crave-japan-blind-box.html )... or Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-assortment-dagashi-TONOSAMA-CANDY/dp/B01DHYLBIK https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-assortment-dagashi-TONOSAMA-... - its even prime - I can get it tomorrow!). After I clicked that link, I've got on the order of 50 different Japanese candy boxes showing up in the "related to items you've viewed". So why Candy Japan rather than another one? I'll point out that the savory snacks and sea weed are part of the "eww" mindset. When the pitch is "we're going to send you a bunch of random candy" I dread the prospect of opening it up and getting a box of sea weed. The repetition of "unique candy" reinforces that "I'm probably going to get sea weed" While there may be good candy out there, trying to market it needs to take more into consideration that they're selling to an American sweet tooth. The Japan candy consumer who already has a different subscription service or connection needs to be sold on value (better selection, better quality, better price). As to the sugar source debate... I've got a fondness for some european candies (particularly the Haribo candy berries). Yes, its a corn syrup base, but even the different traditions in making candy for a different pallet will change the flavor profile. Trips to Ieka find a purchase of Jelly Mice. All that matters at the end of the day is the "does it taste good?"
RichardHeart 9y ago
tldr: "In conclusion, did you break even? Nope. I lost money." " I too have lost money on adwords, and have a feeling it is more the rule than exception.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  Sure, Google's $100bn/yr revenue is all just charity from people losing money /s
CPLX 9y ago
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.
- Liquid_Fire 9y ago
  > You targeted hardcore gamers, but you're not selling games. Maybe I missed something, but where does it say he targeted gamers? I only see a mention of the fact you can target it to gamers as an example.
sandworm101 9y ago
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.
- bluedino 9y ago
  $3k/month for a billboard here
  - sandworm101 9y ago
    And how much to generate and install the picture upon it? 14k isnt very far away.
- toephu2 9y ago
  Apple pays $50k/month for that billboard sign in SF.
- dexterdog 9y ago
  Billboards around here (Philly) are listing themselves as $10K/6mo
dexterdog 9y ago
tl;dr like nearly all internet advertising it wasn't worth it other than for the experience
WalterGR 9y ago
I ordered a voiceover with a professional actress reading out the lines properly. Where does a person order voiceovers?
- cantabridgeman 9y ago
  Fiverr, Upwork, plenty of places
- adventured 9y ago
  The voice-over market has a lot of dedicated sites. Check out voices.com for one.
- astura 9y ago
  I (well my company) hired one before, we didn't need anything fancy or specific at all - just a professional voice. She worked for a voiceover company, but I don't remember the name. We called her company up and said we needed xxx word narration.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  If you have played a video game with a voice acting not from a famous performer/actor, those are typically done by professionals who specialize in voiceover roles, almost all these will be credited in the video game listing on imdb.com and the performer's contact or agency info is linked from there.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  A friend is a voice actor. She is listed with an agency. Contacts are anything from adverts to video games to an interactive display in a science museum to a telephone "press 1" system.
- simplyinfinity 9y ago
  voice bunny
clay_the_ripper 9y ago
Speaking as a marketer: getting positive ROI on ads is hard. That’s why people hire professional marketers to market things. I often find that non-marketers think they can do marketing, and then when it doesn’t work, they tend to blame the platform. I hire engineers to do engineering work, and likewise business owners should hire marketers to do marketing work.
- shiftpgdn 9y ago
  It's really REALLY hard to separate the real professionals from charlatans especially in the marketing world.
coverband 9y ago
At least he's getting some good SEO-friendly clicks out of the blog post ;-)
gesman 9y ago
I wonder if there is "brand awareness" element that resulted from this ad campaign. It's not immediately obvious - but it may be a prolonged subtle benefit resulted from it.
BartBoch 9y ago
While the Candy Japan lost the revenue on YouTube ads, I wonder how those posts, that hit front HN and certain Reddit subreddits convert. Would you make money back, if you would include all the signups you will get within next 96 hours? The "mistake" cost you real money, but on the other hand, it allowed you to generate a content on a very interesting topic, that surely will get you thousands of new visitors, right to your website. Also, the animated video is... well, it is not good. You can easily get highest quality animated videos on Fiverr or PPH for way below $1K. I would suggest you get featured on unboxing video of some semi-famous guy. I am sure, you will get much more conversions for your buck since those channels are watched by people willing to buy a product.
- giarc 9y ago
  Candy Japan has hit the top of HN many times. I imagine many people in this HN audience have already converted. Posting here likely has diminishing returns. However, I get the sense that the author truly enjoys writing and sharing his experiences and learnings.
mariust 9y ago
so... I did say to myself to be a good guy and not to use ad bocker... did you try that on your site?!?
SN76477 9y ago
A lot of things are wrong with this ad. That is a lot of money to spend without an experienced media buyer or consultant.
jsonne 9y ago
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 sighted at best. 3. 14k is a very small budget. I regularly spend 5-10k per day for folks. It takes volume and frequency to optimize. Even the amounts I spend as a freelancer makes me a small fish in regards to any serious agency and their clients. 4. It is far far too early to measure the effects of the campaign. CLTV (customer lifetime value) takes years to realize. Modern analytics tools are very useful to inform us on performance. They are not the end all be all and don't do an awesome job of multi touch attribution. 5. 1 ad isn't really a great test. For clients spending any real amount of budget I can pretty easily push out 300+ ad variations a month. To find something that gets you the kind of results you want it takes time, effort, and paying close attention to what's working and what isn't. Overall it's an interesting case study but I caution folks to not simply take this as "youtube doesn't work" but rather what this person did on youtube doesn't work.
- cpncrunch 9y ago
  What is your clients' average ROI for these campaigns?
  - jsonne 9y ago
    3 to 5x on a cold audience. 5-10x on retargeting campaigns and upsell/cross sells. It really depends on the client though.
    - dfee 9y ago
      Is there reasoning to not drive this into the ground, I.e. where profitability for the campaign hits 0? At a practical level I wonder if you / they are cognizant of an exhaustion measure, if new campaigns are introduced rapidly enough to continue to maintain a 5-10x return, whether the spend is managed to a predefined ROI, etc. For what it’s worth, I’ve always seemed to drive it into the ground, but those are for short term campaigns. The long term campaigns I’ve inherited have usually already been driven into the ground before me (though the PE firm I was working for bought that distressed startup on the cheap).
xref 9y ago
could people with a love for Japanese candy do for me what Candy Japan couldn't, mainly suggest some great things to try? I've ordered a ton of different black licorice/salmiakki from Scandanavia and Germany (fazer salmiakki filled chocolate bar? oh my Lord yes) and need another adventure!
- mikekchar 9y ago
  Possibly somebody else will be able to help you, but I'm going to have to say that in nearly a decade of living here I haven't really found anything really mind blowing in terms of candy. Which is not to say that Japanese sweets aren't amazing - do a google image search of "wagashi". The problem is that these aren't candies and they don't really travel that well. You pretty much have to come to Japan to try them. When I was living in Canada I managed to find some things. For example daifuku (mochi rice with sweet bean paste inside) is amazing (I especially like goma daifuku, which is unfortunately not popular where I live). Manju (steamed buns with sweet bean paste, etc inside) can probably be frozen and shipped. But it's just not really that good when not fresh. For actual candy that's available almost everywhere: Pocky is nice -- not exactly mind blowing, like I said, but pleasant. Where I live "matcha chocolate" is popular and worth trying. It's basically coco butter with ground green tea in it. There are even various versions of Kitkat with green tea flavours. Actually Kitkat flavours are pretty crazy in Japan -- some of them are even good. My town is a test centre for Kitkat, so I get to try all of them (as well as Coca Cola -- Peach Coca Cola is horrible, just in case it makes it out of here). Basically, as far as I know (and would be glad to be proven wrong) Japan doesn't really have a long history of candy making, so the candy you are likely to find is basically just variants of candy that came from other places. There are some exceptions, but I can't imagine the traditional candies I've had being particularly popular for anything other than nostalgia (for example pressed soy bean sugar).
fitzroy 9y ago
2 observations: 1) A video ad is potentially a poor environment for direct response signups in this case. People usually just want to watch the video they clicked on (unless maybe you're advertising on videos about Japanese candy — but in that case it might me more effective to sponsor videos by a popular video producer / channel (what SquareSpace does with Lessons From The Screenplay etc). At least with a sponsorship you can have a link in the description that doesn't disappear in 30 seconds. 2) Going a bit further, something like this is ideal for content marketing on Instagram (et al). I looked for an example of an account that posts novel Japanese candies. Low and behold the top two are both content marketing for similar services. https://www.instagram.com/tokyotreat/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/tokyotreat/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/japancandybox/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/japancandybox/?hl=en $14k will get you a lot of pretty photos, posts, hashtags, follows, comments, etc. You continue to own your audience going forward and you end up with a neat little online publication / channel, which is a great jumping off point for other types of organic publicity (news quotes, etc). Disclosure(?): I do content marketing / PR and formerly worked for a video platform on the product side.
shazam 9y ago
TLDR: YouTube Ads not as efficient as blog posts about YouTube Ads
iamleppert 9y ago
As others have mentioned, the ad isn’t a good use case for this kind of blind marketing. There is simply no hook, evocation and it’s not emotional. It would work better as a landing page video to further explain the service to an already engaged potential customer, but not to new prospects targeted with route filters. I think it could work a lot better as is if it was used for retargeting. i.e. people who have already been cookied and visited your site but haven’t yet made a purchase, or clicked through on some of your email marketing.
bennesvig 9y ago
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.
- jdwhit2 9y ago
  I read some of the comments on that video, many look similar in style talking about a 'scam', or have a negative tone. Is it possible those are planted from a competitor, or do video ads often have feedback like that?
  - pdw 9y ago
    It's the "Here is how it works" section of the ad. The wording is very close to the standard "enter your personal details on a shady website to get free stuff" scam. I think that's also the reason so many commenters seemed to believe he was offering something for free. I'm not a marketer, but it would probably have helped to have the phrase "you pay us" or similar in there somewhere, even without mentioning the price.
  - sgtmas2006 9y ago
    The ad isn't good, and this component doesn't help. It feels far closer to a scam than it does a product. It's not personal.
- madshiva 9y ago
  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.
mherdeg 9y ago
Love the shout-out to Bingo Card Creator in the article.
kraig911 9y ago
I don't think the ad is good man I'm sorry :(. I'd rather see an anime commercial showing delicious candy that you can't find here. The fat girl at the end too I'd remove. Nobody wants to be fat.
Francute 9y ago
Honestly, I have no idea about ad campaigns. However, I've felt that the ad itself wasn't good enough. And, when you say "a typical YouTube ad is 30 seconds" doesn't mean you have to make one so long, you could have considered it more as an upper limit instead of a goal. Your message was simple, and i've felt the ad was unnecessarily slow and long. Being more specific, you lost me exactly after the first 8 seconds. On the other hand, the ad taught me that it's possible to buy japaneses candies easily and where i could get them. If someday I, or one of my friends, want japanese candies, I could simply point to your website. (And in fact, I already made a friend interested about it before reading your post). Lastly, the ad itself is boring, maybe with some background music or even a voice more like "Hatsune Miku" could been a little more fun to see entirely.
pryelluw 9y ago
I posted this [0] on you 2017 review post. Wish you would at least try it. For some reason I think it could work. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015617
astura 9y ago
If I were going to spend 5 figures on an ad campaign I wouldn't write the ad myself, I'd hire a professional marketer. I think that's the biggest mistake: you only get a few seconds to capture someone's attention on YouTube.
chrischen 9y ago
Since it’s a bidding system, someone’s getting good returns on these ads and I’d speculate it’s just a small handful of people who actually hit a sweet spot, with the rest filled by people doing temporary campaigns or testing out campaigns.
- T2_t2 9y ago
  Margin and volume are the key to advertising. Coca cola needs to sell a lot of extra coke to make a return, and they do. At the other end, car companies. You only need to move a tiny fraction of people left or right on a $20K purchase to justify a hell of a lot of ads. 1,000 car buyers changing from a Toyota to a Hyundai is a massive return.
ekianjo 9y ago
Bemmu presented this very same topic in person at a previous HN Kansai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs30WPkRpsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs30WPkRpsY
happertiger 9y ago
I don’t understand. You didn’t do any alternative testing? Why not? Whenever I test a new channel I start by making variations to test different factors, so that I can learn what works and what doesn’t. I feel like a lot of people run ads but don’t quite get the concept of running a campaign. My suggestion would be to try that next time... while you didn’t make money the real question your left with is what could you change to actually make money? Loved be writeup! Thank you.
soheil 9y ago
I agree with some of the other commenters the Candy Japan is a product that appeals to the soul not our brain. I doubt there isn't a better ad that could have been made to sell Candy Japan more effectively at a lower cost. This should not be a lesson in avoiding all ads, not all ads are made equal.
vdchuyen 9y ago
At least, by posting on [HN] for free, you can target and engage at least [me]. Honestly, I watch youtube on my TV with chromecast and rarely see ADs, may be google did not show ads on their products.
erikb 9y ago
A good approach might be to just produce videos and integrate them with the blog until you hit something that looks like a system and relatively viral. Then with that content go to the ad networks.
hackathonguy 9y ago
I love Candy Japan and the articles are always fantastic. However, I can't help but wonder what about CJ is so captivating to the Hacker News audience - the posts seem to always end up on the front page.
- DownGoat 9y ago
  They usually contains real world business cases from point-of-view of a technical person. Thats fits well with a large portion of HN users.
  - apricot 9y ago
    Also, green tea kit kats!
ChrisRR 9y ago
30% of people who don't skip the ad seems extremely high. I wonder how many of them were just children clicking through cartoons.
pvaldes 9y ago
IMHO this is the right stuff if you want to sell japanese candies with a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6FosltlFoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6FosltlFoo
ggg9990 9y ago
The number one rule of spending money on digital ads is to spend a small amount on many different ads before spending lots of money on one. This is doubly true today when a guy will make you an awesome video ad for $25 on Fiverr.
wingerlang 9y ago
Instead of spending 3k on the animation, you could try the way gaming companies does it. It looks to me that they grab the first 10 people off the street, pay them $10 to read a script (really bad awkward scripts as well!) and do 10 videos like that. They are everywhere so it must be working and it must be cheap as well.
ensiferum 9y ago
The real ad is the blog post on front page of HN.
NicoJuicy 9y ago
Since a lot of marketeers seem to be here. I have a small webshop, anyone willing to improve my monthly ( 400 € revenue) to more through ads on commission ( adwords only currently)? Only handling dutch currently, niche - swimming
Feniks 9y ago
I love the marketing industry. Everyone is overfishing in the same ocean. People's income don't increase much year to year but internet ad spending sees double digit growth! My budget allows me to spend €500 on entertainment/leisure per month. You can bombard me with advertising all day but that's not going to change my finances.
KarenSatantsby 9y ago
This is a great ad.. right here.. I would do it except I am financially stressed and should not make that commitment. This would be absolutely perfect for HR depts having a candy box would be great for morale
waytogo 9y ago
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.
- arekkas 9y ago
  Being a few hours on the front page of HN is definitely not worth $14k.
_pghu 9y ago
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.
- sli 9y ago
  At $29 for 7 items, you're almost better off just buying the Japanese snack packs from Amazon. They're really cheap. Not the biggest variety compared to the crate services, but unless you're planning to stick around for years, it's just as good.
bionoid 9y ago
> In other words you can track both people who click through an ad directly, or who see your ad and then visit your site a bit later (this is known as a "view-through conversion"). It's magic. It's not magic, just evil.
doomjunky 9y ago
> I assumed to trigger a keyword match, the video title or description would have to match it. This turned out not to be the case. Does Youtube extract the keywords from the speech in the videos?
FidelCashflow 9y ago
I'm not sorry to say that Candy Japan will never see any of my money for the simple fact that there's no way that I'll sign up for anything that expects a recurring charge. The whole "service" attitude is flawed in that this is not a service, software as a whole is not a "service" it's an end product. Good for everyone whose pulling money out of these schemes but not a single cent of it will come from me. And $29/mo * 12 = $348 per year. (forming assumptions about the contract i.e. predatory "cancel early" clause and similar) On candy? give me a break, I don't spend that on candy over 5 years even if you include other needless crap like soda and sports drinks I doubt I'd hit that number over 5 years. I should also add that I'm the epitome of anti-advertisement. The more that I am forced to see (thinking of YT style of ads here) an ad, the more likely I am to NOT* use that product or service. In fact, the more likely I am to purposely avoid that product out of spite.
jasonstuart90 9y ago
I only spent $75k in my life on ads but I had a x2 average ROI on it. The first thing is: you need at min. 30 different ad variations. Copy, animation, video, value proposition, pricing, landing page. Same with audiences. That's just the minimum. Therefore, standardized ones are obviously a no-no. With 1 variation, you've just - as you rightly wrote - burned the money.
Bokanovsky 9y ago
Speaking to a few anime/manga fans I know Bemmu has to compete with giants like J-List who dominate this space. Then there are local "Kawaii companys" in each region, for example Tofu Cute in the UK. Why doesn't the Candy Japan Website have prominent links to Twitter and other social media? Have you thought about using Social media more? Let's look at Twitter. Bemmu has almost 6,000 twitter followers, I'm guessing the Candy Japan Twitter account is @candyjapanese with about 250 followers? While rivals - http://www.japancandybox.com/ http://www.japancandybox.com/ has 23K follows and J-List has 155K followers.

554 points by jbardnz 9y ago

>But the cool part is that you can also track when someone views your ad, and then a bit later types in your web address to make the purchase without ever clicking the link. >In other words you can track both people who click through an ad directly, or who see your ad and then visit your site a bit later How does this work?

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Assuming Google Analytics tying it all together.
- e12e 9y ago
  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 household income. Really stood out to me - if anyone needed further evidence that Google is still an ad company, and that the free services are about driving ad traffic. It'll be interesting to see how GDPR affects this. I suppose the sad truth is that Google/alphabet has built a ton of cash on the back of user data, and now no-one else will be able to that as this particular form of business becomes illegal. But Google is big enough to shift into other growth markets like media manipulation/lobbying and defence contracts etc.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - nukeop 9y ago
    >Really stood out to me - if anyone needed further evidence that Google is still an ad company, and that the free services are about driving ad traffic. 97% of their income is through ads. Maps, Docs, email, Google Plus, Youtube, even Search - it all exists only to increase advertisement profits, and to get ever more minable data from the users. If the ads money ever dries up for whatever reason, the entire company goes belly up.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - exchomedev 9y ago
    Google does use the "anonymous" usage stats from Chrome to inform AdWords. Source: I personally developed on this feature. Response to rebuttal: the tree you're looking at isn't actually what's complied into the Chrome binary.
    - judge2020 9y ago
      Fairly obvious that Google uses upstream chromium then adds in all of the proprietary g APIs and anonymous usage statistics after the fact.
    - delroth 9y ago
      I currently work at Google, and from what I know and have seen about how we handle privacy internally I'd be really surprised and appalled if that was the case. Mind sending me more details? My nickname @google.com. Anonymous reporting in Chrome has been one of the leading use cases for differential privacy at Google. See e.g. https://github.com/google/rappor https://github.com/google/rappor and https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/42852.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... which specifically mentions the Chrome use case. This seems to indicate the people who work on this do care at least in some amount about privacy. (Given the fact that you use a throwaway account I'm very much not expecting to see anything else than FUD, but hey, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt.)
  - username223 9y ago
    > 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&showYear=2017 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://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Dynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Dynamics They'll do just fine when the ad bubble bursts.
    - manigandham 9y ago
      Google sold Boston Dynamics last summer to Softbank. Their next big moneymaker is the Google Cloud Platform which competes with AWS and Azure.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    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.
jackgolding 9y ago
These are called conversion pixels, Google Analytics should have nothing to do with it (assuming there is a Chinese wall between AdWords, Doubleclick, GDN and Google Analytics.) Obviously Google offers some built-in integration within its products but you can achieve this within the ad-buying platform itself.
troydavis 9y ago
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 cookie that was set when the ad was served is still present, or 2. A user was logged in to the publisher's site (Google, Twitter, etc) when they viewed the ad, and is also logged in when they visit the advertiser's site. #2 is also how most cross-device tracking occurs. For example, if you're logged in to Twitter on your phone and see a Twitter ad, then type in the advertiser's URL on your desktop where you're also logged in to Twitter (and the advertiser has Twitter's conversion pixel on their site), Twitter will record a cross-device post-view conversion. Here are examples: Twitter: https://business.twitter.com/en/advertising/campaign-types/increase-website-traffic/how-to-setup-conversion-tracking.html https://business.twitter.com/en/advertising/campaign-types/i... AdWords (for YouTube impressions): https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375431?hl=en https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2375431?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-strategies https://www.facebook.com/business/a/performance-marketing-st... Aside from blocking the ads, uBlock Origin blocks the conversion pixels/requests for the largest ad networks. Often a conversion pixel snippet is used alongside retargeting/remarketing. Some ad networks use #2 above to do quite sophisticated retargeting, not just targeting those who viewed a specific page. For example, Google lets advertisers retarget AdWords ads to those who liked a video in the advertiser's YouTube channel: https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2545661?hl=en&ref_topic=3119118 https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2545661?hl=en&ref_...
- apricot 9y ago
  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?
  - bpicolo 9y ago
    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.

keketi 9y ago

> Nope. I lost money. At least your article got on the front page of HN. That should count for something.

sneak 9y ago
I wish he had crossposted it to steemit as well, because I found it really valuable and my upvote there is now worth ~$40.
- corobo 9y ago
  I wish sites like steemit realised if their front page is all meta content about how good the site/coin/blockchain is, it looks like a scam.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
tehlike 9y ago
Candyjapan and some businesses from patio11 occasionally makes it to front page. They write very informative posts.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

sonaltr 9y ago

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.

manigandham 9y ago
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.
- sonaltr 9y ago
  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).
  - manigandham 9y ago
    That's called a marketing agency, and they come in all shapes and sizes. If you're a very small company then there are plenty of freelancer marketers that can help you out, even if it's just to setup a basic framework for running campaigns. An "app" would not be sufficient to handle any of the complexity here.
  - alwayseasy 9y ago
    So a self-serve app that would replace the different expertises (creatives, media buying etc) in advertising agencies?

anameaname 9y ago

An unfortunate part of experimenting with advertising is that it's expensive. Trying to find the right audience for the ad is very costly, to the point where I don't understand how advertisers can afford it. I say this as a tinfoil-hat person: narrowing the audience is going to need a lot more info about the person. Particularly, their browsing history (i.e. remarketing). Knowing this would raise the conversion ratio immensely at the cost of privacy.

KMuncie 9y ago

Good post, some nice lessons there for someone entirely new to this. Perhaps a missed opportunity was not advertising the domain name during the entire video. Often a user may not have the volume up and so perhaps providing a textual call to action in the first half continuously would help with conversions?

ttul 9y ago

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 short time horizon.

petercooper 9y ago
This lesson struck me hard when I was working with a major conference organizer. Even upon surveying them, they'd struggle to establish how attendees had heard of the event first. For the majority of attendees there was no direct way to correlate ticket purchases with ad spend because almost no-one immediately buys a $1000+ ticket after clicking an ad :-)
- jackgolding 9y ago
  Market research is the easiest way to solve these problems!
  - ChristianGeek 9y ago
    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.
    - lozenge 9y ago
      Not being able to find a discount you saw can be pretty frustrating. Less important in this case as employers often pay for these conferences.
    - icebraining 9y ago
      Might work for some people, but the probability that I would even remember the first ad had a code - let alone the exact string - is minuscule.

renegadesensei 9y ago

Great read. I am in a similar place with a small business. We have a commercial and animation and are considering doing YouTube ads. It sounds like it might be worth doing if the service is profitable enough per user. Really appreciate this detailed writeup of his experience.

Eridrus 9y ago
I think it's easy to have a takeaway like "you will make money if you are profitable enough per user", but this depends a lot on how good your targeting is, and just how compelling your product & ad are.

tw1010 9y ago

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.

KodiakLabs 9y ago
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.

nukeop 9y ago

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.

KodiakLabs 9y ago
This „free“ spot is precisely because the author spent the 14k...
- quickthrower2 9y ago
  proof of burn
avg_dev 9y ago
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.

eveningcoffee 9y ago

>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.

nukeop 9y ago
Makes one wish we'd get closer to 100% adblock coverage...
- lwansbrough 9y ago
  Who do you think pays for the content you consume?
  - mrep 9y ago
    Businesses will find a way just like how cryptocurrencies will find a way to scale /s
  - joosters 9y ago
    So what? Do you feel obliged in any way to watch the ads on tv? And yet they pay for the programmes...
  - michaelt 9y ago
    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.
    - madshiva 9y ago
      Yeah, like an Ads will change you the way you consume. Totally wrong. Totally so old way of thinking.

carlsborg 9y ago

Very useful post thanks. I didn't like your ad though. It doesn't show me the product. Every food item ad I've seen: slow pan on the food product and then someone eating it - inserted somewhere in the sequence. (Given that they all do this, I would bet there are million dollar marketing budgets somewhere with data to support that this works.)

jhou2 9y ago

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.

bobbles 9y ago
Yeah, its almost like its a pitch for the company to an investor instead of an ad to an actual customer of the business
kyo3 9y ago
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 ;)
- Mithaldu 9y ago
  I understand you mainly asked the questions to provide feedback, but as a subscriber i can give you some info that might help you decide: A lot of the sweets are made with cane sugar, which tastes distinctly different from the typical american fare. Beyond that they also have some taste combinations that you usually don't encounter in the us. Savoury snacks with sea weed tastes are pretty nice.
  - shagie 9y ago
    The "what is Japanese candy like" can be answered by going to ITSUGAR and getting some... well... Japanese candy ( https://itsugar.com/crave-japan-blind-box.html https://itsugar.com/crave-japan-blind-box.html )... or Amazon ( https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-assortment-dagashi-TONOSAMA-CANDY/dp/B01DHYLBIK https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-assortment-dagashi-TONOSAMA-... - its even prime - I can get it tomorrow!). After I clicked that link, I've got on the order of 50 different Japanese candy boxes showing up in the "related to items you've viewed". So why Candy Japan rather than another one? I'll point out that the savory snacks and sea weed are part of the "eww" mindset. When the pitch is "we're going to send you a bunch of random candy" I dread the prospect of opening it up and getting a box of sea weed. The repetition of "unique candy" reinforces that "I'm probably going to get sea weed" While there may be good candy out there, trying to market it needs to take more into consideration that they're selling to an American sweet tooth. The Japan candy consumer who already has a different subscription service or connection needs to be sold on value (better selection, better quality, better price). As to the sugar source debate... I've got a fondness for some european candies (particularly the Haribo candy berries). Yes, its a corn syrup base, but even the different traditions in making candy for a different pallet will change the flavor profile. Trips to Ieka find a purchase of Jelly Mice. All that matters at the end of the day is the "does it taste good?"

RichardHeart 9y ago

tldr: "In conclusion, did you break even? Nope. I lost money." " I too have lost money on adwords, and have a feeling it is more the rule than exception.

fwdpropaganda 9y ago
Sure, Google's $100bn/yr revenue is all just charity from people losing money /s

CPLX 9y ago

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.

Liquid_Fire 9y ago
> You targeted hardcore gamers, but you're not selling games. Maybe I missed something, but where does it say he targeted gamers? I only see a mention of the fact you can target it to gamers as an example.

sandworm101 9y ago

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.

bluedino 9y ago
$3k/month for a billboard here
- sandworm101 9y ago
  And how much to generate and install the picture upon it? 14k isnt very far away.
toephu2 9y ago
Apple pays $50k/month for that billboard sign in SF.
dexterdog 9y ago
Billboards around here (Philly) are listing themselves as $10K/6mo

dexterdog 9y ago

tl;dr like nearly all internet advertising it wasn't worth it other than for the experience

WalterGR 9y ago

I ordered a voiceover with a professional actress reading out the lines properly. Where does a person order voiceovers?

cantabridgeman 9y ago
Fiverr, Upwork, plenty of places
adventured 9y ago
The voice-over market has a lot of dedicated sites. Check out voices.com for one.
astura 9y ago
I (well my company) hired one before, we didn't need anything fancy or specific at all - just a professional voice. She worked for a voiceover company, but I don't remember the name. We called her company up and said we needed xxx word narration.
stevenwoo 9y ago
If you have played a video game with a voice acting not from a famous performer/actor, those are typically done by professionals who specialize in voiceover roles, almost all these will be credited in the video game listing on imdb.com and the performer's contact or agency info is linked from there.
Symbiote 9y ago
A friend is a voice actor. She is listed with an agency. Contacts are anything from adverts to video games to an interactive display in a science museum to a telephone "press 1" system.
simplyinfinity 9y ago
voice bunny

clay_the_ripper 9y ago

Speaking as a marketer: getting positive ROI on ads is hard. That’s why people hire professional marketers to market things. I often find that non-marketers think they can do marketing, and then when it doesn’t work, they tend to blame the platform. I hire engineers to do engineering work, and likewise business owners should hire marketers to do marketing work.

shiftpgdn 9y ago
It's really REALLY hard to separate the real professionals from charlatans especially in the marketing world.

coverband 9y ago

At least he's getting some good SEO-friendly clicks out of the blog post ;-)

gesman 9y ago

I wonder if there is "brand awareness" element that resulted from this ad campaign. It's not immediately obvious - but it may be a prolonged subtle benefit resulted from it.

BartBoch 9y ago

While the Candy Japan lost the revenue on YouTube ads, I wonder how those posts, that hit front HN and certain Reddit subreddits convert. Would you make money back, if you would include all the signups you will get within next 96 hours? The "mistake" cost you real money, but on the other hand, it allowed you to generate a content on a very interesting topic, that surely will get you thousands of new visitors, right to your website. Also, the animated video is... well, it is not good. You can easily get highest quality animated videos on Fiverr or PPH for way below $1K. I would suggest you get featured on unboxing video of some semi-famous guy. I am sure, you will get much more conversions for your buck since those channels are watched by people willing to buy a product.

giarc 9y ago
Candy Japan has hit the top of HN many times. I imagine many people in this HN audience have already converted. Posting here likely has diminishing returns. However, I get the sense that the author truly enjoys writing and sharing his experiences and learnings.

mariust 9y ago

so... I did say to myself to be a good guy and not to use ad bocker... did you try that on your site?!?

SN76477 9y ago

A lot of things are wrong with this ad. That is a lot of money to spend without an experienced media buyer or consultant.

jsonne 9y ago

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 sighted at best. 3. 14k is a very small budget. I regularly spend 5-10k per day for folks. It takes volume and frequency to optimize. Even the amounts I spend as a freelancer makes me a small fish in regards to any serious agency and their clients. 4. It is far far too early to measure the effects of the campaign. CLTV (customer lifetime value) takes years to realize. Modern analytics tools are very useful to inform us on performance. They are not the end all be all and don't do an awesome job of multi touch attribution. 5. 1 ad isn't really a great test. For clients spending any real amount of budget I can pretty easily push out 300+ ad variations a month. To find something that gets you the kind of results you want it takes time, effort, and paying close attention to what's working and what isn't. Overall it's an interesting case study but I caution folks to not simply take this as "youtube doesn't work" but rather what this person did on youtube doesn't work.

cpncrunch 9y ago
What is your clients' average ROI for these campaigns?
- jsonne 9y ago
  3 to 5x on a cold audience. 5-10x on retargeting campaigns and upsell/cross sells. It really depends on the client though.
  - dfee 9y ago
    Is there reasoning to not drive this into the ground, I.e. where profitability for the campaign hits 0? At a practical level I wonder if you / they are cognizant of an exhaustion measure, if new campaigns are introduced rapidly enough to continue to maintain a 5-10x return, whether the spend is managed to a predefined ROI, etc. For what it’s worth, I’ve always seemed to drive it into the ground, but those are for short term campaigns. The long term campaigns I’ve inherited have usually already been driven into the ground before me (though the PE firm I was working for bought that distressed startup on the cheap).

xref 9y ago

could people with a love for Japanese candy do for me what Candy Japan couldn't, mainly suggest some great things to try? I've ordered a ton of different black licorice/salmiakki from Scandanavia and Germany (fazer salmiakki filled chocolate bar? oh my Lord yes) and need another adventure!

mikekchar 9y ago
Possibly somebody else will be able to help you, but I'm going to have to say that in nearly a decade of living here I haven't really found anything really mind blowing in terms of candy. Which is not to say that Japanese sweets aren't amazing - do a google image search of "wagashi". The problem is that these aren't candies and they don't really travel that well. You pretty much have to come to Japan to try them. When I was living in Canada I managed to find some things. For example daifuku (mochi rice with sweet bean paste inside) is amazing (I especially like goma daifuku, which is unfortunately not popular where I live). Manju (steamed buns with sweet bean paste, etc inside) can probably be frozen and shipped. But it's just not really that good when not fresh. For actual candy that's available almost everywhere: Pocky is nice -- not exactly mind blowing, like I said, but pleasant. Where I live "matcha chocolate" is popular and worth trying. It's basically coco butter with ground green tea in it. There are even various versions of Kitkat with green tea flavours. Actually Kitkat flavours are pretty crazy in Japan -- some of them are even good. My town is a test centre for Kitkat, so I get to try all of them (as well as Coca Cola -- Peach Coca Cola is horrible, just in case it makes it out of here). Basically, as far as I know (and would be glad to be proven wrong) Japan doesn't really have a long history of candy making, so the candy you are likely to find is basically just variants of candy that came from other places. There are some exceptions, but I can't imagine the traditional candies I've had being particularly popular for anything other than nostalgia (for example pressed soy bean sugar).

fitzroy 9y ago

2 observations: 1) A video ad is potentially a poor environment for direct response signups in this case. People usually just want to watch the video they clicked on (unless maybe you're advertising on videos about Japanese candy — but in that case it might me more effective to sponsor videos by a popular video producer / channel (what SquareSpace does with Lessons From The Screenplay etc). At least with a sponsorship you can have a link in the description that doesn't disappear in 30 seconds. 2) Going a bit further, something like this is ideal for content marketing on Instagram (et al). I looked for an example of an account that posts novel Japanese candies. Low and behold the top two are both content marketing for similar services. https://www.instagram.com/tokyotreat/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/tokyotreat/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/japancandybox/?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/japancandybox/?hl=en $14k will get you a lot of pretty photos, posts, hashtags, follows, comments, etc. You continue to own your audience going forward and you end up with a neat little online publication / channel, which is a great jumping off point for other types of organic publicity (news quotes, etc). Disclosure(?): I do content marketing / PR and formerly worked for a video platform on the product side.

shazam 9y ago

TLDR: YouTube Ads not as efficient as blog posts about YouTube Ads

iamleppert 9y ago

As others have mentioned, the ad isn’t a good use case for this kind of blind marketing. There is simply no hook, evocation and it’s not emotional. It would work better as a landing page video to further explain the service to an already engaged potential customer, but not to new prospects targeted with route filters. I think it could work a lot better as is if it was used for retargeting. i.e. people who have already been cookied and visited your site but haven’t yet made a purchase, or clicked through on some of your email marketing.

bennesvig 9y ago

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.

jdwhit2 9y ago
I read some of the comments on that video, many look similar in style talking about a 'scam', or have a negative tone. Is it possible those are planted from a competitor, or do video ads often have feedback like that?
- pdw 9y ago
  It's the "Here is how it works" section of the ad. The wording is very close to the standard "enter your personal details on a shady website to get free stuff" scam. I think that's also the reason so many commenters seemed to believe he was offering something for free. I'm not a marketer, but it would probably have helped to have the phrase "you pay us" or similar in there somewhere, even without mentioning the price.
- sgtmas2006 9y ago
  The ad isn't good, and this component doesn't help. It feels far closer to a scam than it does a product. It's not personal.
madshiva 9y ago
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.

mherdeg 9y ago

Love the shout-out to Bingo Card Creator in the article.

kraig911 9y ago

I don't think the ad is good man I'm sorry :(. I'd rather see an anime commercial showing delicious candy that you can't find here. The fat girl at the end too I'd remove. Nobody wants to be fat.

Francute 9y ago

Honestly, I have no idea about ad campaigns. However, I've felt that the ad itself wasn't good enough. And, when you say "a typical YouTube ad is 30 seconds" doesn't mean you have to make one so long, you could have considered it more as an upper limit instead of a goal. Your message was simple, and i've felt the ad was unnecessarily slow and long. Being more specific, you lost me exactly after the first 8 seconds. On the other hand, the ad taught me that it's possible to buy japaneses candies easily and where i could get them. If someday I, or one of my friends, want japanese candies, I could simply point to your website. (And in fact, I already made a friend interested about it before reading your post). Lastly, the ad itself is boring, maybe with some background music or even a voice more like "Hatsune Miku" could been a little more fun to see entirely.

pryelluw 9y ago

I posted this [0] on you 2017 review post. Wish you would at least try it. For some reason I think it could work. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015617

astura 9y ago

If I were going to spend 5 figures on an ad campaign I wouldn't write the ad myself, I'd hire a professional marketer. I think that's the biggest mistake: you only get a few seconds to capture someone's attention on YouTube.

chrischen 9y ago

Since it’s a bidding system, someone’s getting good returns on these ads and I’d speculate it’s just a small handful of people who actually hit a sweet spot, with the rest filled by people doing temporary campaigns or testing out campaigns.

T2_t2 9y ago
Margin and volume are the key to advertising. Coca cola needs to sell a lot of extra coke to make a return, and they do. At the other end, car companies. You only need to move a tiny fraction of people left or right on a $20K purchase to justify a hell of a lot of ads. 1,000 car buyers changing from a Toyota to a Hyundai is a massive return.

ekianjo 9y ago

Bemmu presented this very same topic in person at a previous HN Kansai: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs30WPkRpsY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs30WPkRpsY

happertiger 9y ago

I don’t understand. You didn’t do any alternative testing? Why not? Whenever I test a new channel I start by making variations to test different factors, so that I can learn what works and what doesn’t. I feel like a lot of people run ads but don’t quite get the concept of running a campaign. My suggestion would be to try that next time... while you didn’t make money the real question your left with is what could you change to actually make money? Loved be writeup! Thank you.

soheil 9y ago

I agree with some of the other commenters the Candy Japan is a product that appeals to the soul not our brain. I doubt there isn't a better ad that could have been made to sell Candy Japan more effectively at a lower cost. This should not be a lesson in avoiding all ads, not all ads are made equal.

vdchuyen 9y ago

At least, by posting on [HN] for free, you can target and engage at least [me]. Honestly, I watch youtube on my TV with chromecast and rarely see ADs, may be google did not show ads on their products.

erikb 9y ago

A good approach might be to just produce videos and integrate them with the blog until you hit something that looks like a system and relatively viral. Then with that content go to the ad networks.

hackathonguy 9y ago

I love Candy Japan and the articles are always fantastic. However, I can't help but wonder what about CJ is so captivating to the Hacker News audience - the posts seem to always end up on the front page.

DownGoat 9y ago
They usually contains real world business cases from point-of-view of a technical person. Thats fits well with a large portion of HN users.
- apricot 9y ago
  Also, green tea kit kats!

ChrisRR 9y ago

30% of people who don't skip the ad seems extremely high. I wonder how many of them were just children clicking through cartoons.

pvaldes 9y ago

IMHO this is the right stuff if you want to sell japanese candies with a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6FosltlFoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6FosltlFoo

ggg9990 9y ago

The number one rule of spending money on digital ads is to spend a small amount on many different ads before spending lots of money on one. This is doubly true today when a guy will make you an awesome video ad for $25 on Fiverr.

wingerlang 9y ago

Instead of spending 3k on the animation, you could try the way gaming companies does it. It looks to me that they grab the first 10 people off the street, pay them $10 to read a script (really bad awkward scripts as well!) and do 10 videos like that. They are everywhere so it must be working and it must be cheap as well.

ensiferum 9y ago

The real ad is the blog post on front page of HN.

NicoJuicy 9y ago

Since a lot of marketeers seem to be here. I have a small webshop, anyone willing to improve my monthly ( 400 € revenue) to more through ads on commission ( adwords only currently)? Only handling dutch currently, niche - swimming

Feniks 9y ago

I love the marketing industry. Everyone is overfishing in the same ocean. People's income don't increase much year to year but internet ad spending sees double digit growth! My budget allows me to spend €500 on entertainment/leisure per month. You can bombard me with advertising all day but that's not going to change my finances.

KarenSatantsby 9y ago

This is a great ad.. right here.. I would do it except I am financially stressed and should not make that commitment. This would be absolutely perfect for HR depts having a candy box would be great for morale

waytogo 9y ago

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.

arekkas 9y ago
Being a few hours on the front page of HN is definitely not worth $14k.

_pghu 9y ago

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.

sli 9y ago
At $29 for 7 items, you're almost better off just buying the Japanese snack packs from Amazon. They're really cheap. Not the biggest variety compared to the crate services, but unless you're planning to stick around for years, it's just as good.

bionoid 9y ago

> In other words you can track both people who click through an ad directly, or who see your ad and then visit your site a bit later (this is known as a "view-through conversion"). It's magic. It's not magic, just evil.

doomjunky 9y ago

> I assumed to trigger a keyword match, the video title or description would have to match it. This turned out not to be the case. Does Youtube extract the keywords from the speech in the videos?

FidelCashflow 9y ago

I'm not sorry to say that Candy Japan will never see any of my money for the simple fact that there's no way that I'll sign up for anything that expects a recurring charge. The whole "service" attitude is flawed in that this is not a service, software as a whole is not a "service" it's an end product. Good for everyone whose pulling money out of these schemes but not a single cent of it will come from me. And $29/mo * 12 = $348 per year. (forming assumptions about the contract i.e. predatory "cancel early" clause and similar) On candy? give me a break, I don't spend that on candy over 5 years even if you include other needless crap like soda and sports drinks I doubt I'd hit that number over 5 years. I should also add that I'm the epitome of anti-advertisement. The more that I am forced to see (thinking of YT style of ads here) an ad, the more likely I am to NOT* use that product or service. In fact, the more likely I am to purposely avoid that product out of spite.

jasonstuart90 9y ago

I only spent $75k in my life on ads but I had a x2 average ROI on it. The first thing is: you need at min. 30 different ad variations. Copy, animation, video, value proposition, pricing, landing page. Same with audiences. That's just the minimum. Therefore, standardized ones are obviously a no-no. With 1 variation, you've just - as you rightly wrote - burned the money.

Bokanovsky 9y ago

Speaking to a few anime/manga fans I know Bemmu has to compete with giants like J-List who dominate this space. Then there are local "Kawaii companys" in each region, for example Tofu Cute in the UK. Why doesn't the Candy Japan Website have prominent links to Twitter and other social media? Have you thought about using Social media more? Let's look at Twitter. Bemmu has almost 6,000 twitter followers, I'm guessing the Candy Japan Twitter account is @candyjapanese with about 250 followers? While rivals - http://www.japancandybox.com/ http://www.japancandybox.com/ has 23K follows and J-List has 155K followers.