7 ms·

It also has to do with how much money you give them. I sell firearm accessories. When I launched my site, I put about $300 in my AdWords account and started to

It also has to do with how much money you give them. I sell firearm accessories. When I launched my site, I put about $300 in my AdWords account and started to advertise for magazines, scopes, handguards, etc. My ads were pulled rather quickly, yet other gun dealers are allowed to advertise: http://www.google.com/search?q=magpul+pmag http://www.google.com/search?q=magpul+pmag http://www.google.com/search?q=rifle+scopes http://www.google.com/search?q=rifle+scopes http://www.google.com/search?q=ar15+handguard http://www.google.com/search?q=ar15+handguard Thats my biggest frustration with AdWords.

jcampbell1 16y ago
Yeah, I have heard that 95% of their revenues come from the top 5% of customers. I spend about $10k/month on ads and still get shitty service, and long review times. I do know people that buy $250k+/month, and their ads don't even get reviewed, and they have a personal customer service rep.
- prawn 16y ago
  At least this gives us all a target - spend more than $250k/month!
  - mikecolella 16y ago
    I have spent 250K+/month for months in a row and received basically the same service as someone spending 5K/month. They assigned me a a personal rep but it's still not possible to get real answers when problems come up. I think the real number to get treated noticeably different is probably closer to 1M/month.
    - prawn 16y ago
      At least that gives us all a revised target! (Holy crap though - I would've thought even $5k/mo got you service and answers. Are the savings really worth the customer dissatisfaction?)
      - omh 16y ago
        When you have no competitors there is a limit to how much customer dissatisfaction can impact your business.
    - te_chris 16y ago
      I'm completely mystified by the prospect of spending 250k a month on AdWords. As much as you can, would mind going into a bit of detail like how much coverage that buys? Are you buying super common keywords or heaps and heaps of obscure ones? Conversion and ROI? how many impressions that gets? Obviously those questions are sensitive so, if you even feel like answering, i think we'll all live if you're a big vague on some stuff!
      - mikecolella 16y ago
        That was in the diet market on the Google content network. I'm not sure what conversion and ROI numbers would give you, every market/site is different. In the diet market that spend resulted in 1+ billion impressions, and 1+ million clicks.
        silverbax88 16y ago
        At that rate you're paying about .25 CPM and would need to be selling a product at $25 with a 1% conversion rate to break even.
        gigantor 16y ago
        That would be Truth About Abs, paying $28 commission/ebook, netting $3 a pop at high volume.
      - patio11 16y ago
        I'm not him, but I think I can help you on that one. When evaluating the credibility of this, keep in mind that AdWords is not my strongest subject, but I do depend on it for making rent: Pretend you're a company selling enterprise software. ~$10 will get you a click -- that's right, one click -- for a head keyword in many enterprise-y systems (think, oh, "electronic discovery software"). You try to convert it into an email submission, via offering a whitepaper of some description. Each email is now a lead. Your marketing and sales teams try to sell the leads. The average deal size for successful sales: six figures. Ideally, your best performing sales guys are bringing them in every single month and howling for you to give them more qualified leads. In those markets, you'd hit over $100k of monthly spend before you eclipsed BCC in AdWords clicks or impressions. (I get mine for about six cents.) You'd probably have a few hundred keywords -- obscure relative to [Justin Bieber], but fairly obvious choices to customers in your problem domain. You could also hit $250k fairly quickly with a broad campaign as an affiliate aiming to move a consumer product with a high LTV (and hence high CPA). Cell phones, credit cards or other consumer finance, antivirus software (that might be stretching it a bit), etc etc. (On the darker side of the tracks: rebill scams, whatever the latest flavor of fitness snakeoil is, etc.) These guys tend to deal with higher volumes across the keyword tail.
- stanley 16y ago
  Ads may get auto approved but they are still reviewed sooner or later. On top of that, absolutely all pages get reviewed, if not initially by human reviewers then by Google's crawlers. We spend $xxx,xxx on Google each month, it pays for us to know intimately how their systems work. They're watching us and we're watching them.
  - jcampbell1 16y ago
    There is still a huge difference between declining all ads unless they are explicitly approved, and having people explicitly disapprove ads. I know the rules quite well, have never had an ad disapproved, but the process is just frustratingly slow.
rwmj 16y ago
Precisely. When I helped to run an AdWords campaign with £100,000/month spend, you can bet our adverts never spent more than an hour in review. If they did we called our account manager and he expedited them right away.
- ig1 16y ago
  Were you running ads which could be controversial ? I've heard from affiliate marketers with ad spends on that order of magnitude who've had problems because of the nature of their business.
  - rwmj 16y ago
    Nope, holidays, flights, hotels. Not controversial at all.
    - ig1 16y ago
      Probably why you got fast approval then, most "safe" ads tend to get a fast turnaround.

jcampbell1 16y ago

Yeah, I have heard that 95% of their revenues come from the top 5% of customers. I spend about $10k/month on ads and still get shitty service, and long review times. I do know people that buy $250k+/month, and their ads don't even get reviewed, and they have a personal customer service rep.

prawn 16y ago
At least this gives us all a target - spend more than $250k/month!
- mikecolella 16y ago
  I have spent 250K+/month for months in a row and received basically the same service as someone spending 5K/month. They assigned me a a personal rep but it's still not possible to get real answers when problems come up. I think the real number to get treated noticeably different is probably closer to 1M/month.
  - prawn 16y ago
    At least that gives us all a revised target! (Holy crap though - I would've thought even $5k/mo got you service and answers. Are the savings really worth the customer dissatisfaction?)
    - omh 16y ago
      When you have no competitors there is a limit to how much customer dissatisfaction can impact your business.
  - te_chris 16y ago
    I'm completely mystified by the prospect of spending 250k a month on AdWords. As much as you can, would mind going into a bit of detail like how much coverage that buys? Are you buying super common keywords or heaps and heaps of obscure ones? Conversion and ROI? how many impressions that gets? Obviously those questions are sensitive so, if you even feel like answering, i think we'll all live if you're a big vague on some stuff!
    - mikecolella 16y ago
      That was in the diet market on the Google content network. I'm not sure what conversion and ROI numbers would give you, every market/site is different. In the diet market that spend resulted in 1+ billion impressions, and 1+ million clicks.
      - silverbax88 16y ago
        At that rate you're paying about .25 CPM and would need to be selling a product at $25 with a 1% conversion rate to break even.
        gigantor 16y ago
        That would be Truth About Abs, paying $28 commission/ebook, netting $3 a pop at high volume.
    - patio11 16y ago
      I'm not him, but I think I can help you on that one. When evaluating the credibility of this, keep in mind that AdWords is not my strongest subject, but I do depend on it for making rent: Pretend you're a company selling enterprise software. ~$10 will get you a click -- that's right, one click -- for a head keyword in many enterprise-y systems (think, oh, "electronic discovery software"). You try to convert it into an email submission, via offering a whitepaper of some description. Each email is now a lead. Your marketing and sales teams try to sell the leads. The average deal size for successful sales: six figures. Ideally, your best performing sales guys are bringing them in every single month and howling for you to give them more qualified leads. In those markets, you'd hit over $100k of monthly spend before you eclipsed BCC in AdWords clicks or impressions. (I get mine for about six cents.) You'd probably have a few hundred keywords -- obscure relative to [Justin Bieber], but fairly obvious choices to customers in your problem domain. You could also hit $250k fairly quickly with a broad campaign as an affiliate aiming to move a consumer product with a high LTV (and hence high CPA). Cell phones, credit cards or other consumer finance, antivirus software (that might be stretching it a bit), etc etc. (On the darker side of the tracks: rebill scams, whatever the latest flavor of fitness snakeoil is, etc.) These guys tend to deal with higher volumes across the keyword tail.
stanley 16y ago
Ads may get auto approved but they are still reviewed sooner or later. On top of that, absolutely all pages get reviewed, if not initially by human reviewers then by Google's crawlers. We spend $xxx,xxx on Google each month, it pays for us to know intimately how their systems work. They're watching us and we're watching them.
- jcampbell1 16y ago
  There is still a huge difference between declining all ads unless they are explicitly approved, and having people explicitly disapprove ads. I know the rules quite well, have never had an ad disapproved, but the process is just frustratingly slow.

rwmj 16y ago

Precisely. When I helped to run an AdWords campaign with £100,000/month spend, you can bet our adverts never spent more than an hour in review. If they did we called our account manager and he expedited them right away.

ig1 16y ago
Were you running ads which could be controversial ? I've heard from affiliate marketers with ad spends on that order of magnitude who've had problems because of the nature of their business.
- rwmj 16y ago
  Nope, holidays, flights, hotels. Not controversial at all.
  - ig1 16y ago
    Probably why you got fast approval then, most "safe" ads tend to get a fast turnaround.