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I Spent $6M on Google Ads Last Year

418 points by Torwald 6y ago

yellow_lead 6y ago
Would love to see more information on creative, since the author touts it as the most important. I'm sure a whole post could / has been written on that though.
- rchaud 6y ago
  I work in digital marketing, and can tell you that it's not very exciting. The best performing paid ads are text-only and served to the user on the search results page and usually not on third-party websites. They're the ones that can be A/B tested the fastest, and the 'creative' part of it is very much metrics-driven. That's where the bulk of ad spend goes, as it has the highest ROAS. Plus, users who are actively searching for something are more primed to respond to an ad that appears on the results page, as opposed to an ad that pops up in the middle of a news article they were reading. Users for the most part don't seem to like stuff with animations, or heavy graphics in their ads as they're distracting. I have noticed more interesting ads on newer mediums (media?) like Instagram stories or Snapchat, which are image and video-centric. The targeting so far seems quite good, as I usually see ads for online courses, creative stuff, design tools.
  - yellow_lead 6y ago
    Interesting. Thanks for the information!
xipho 6y ago
From an outsider's perspective "Creative" seems to be the same as saying "Get good, bro".
- jstummbillig 6y ago
  Well, no. "Creative" in this context is jargon and means the part that people would generally just refer to as "an ad": art, design, text, sound, video -- the combination. What he is saying is that nailing the actual ad trumps everything else (targeting, keywords, platform, etc) when it comes to being effective in advertisement.
  - xipho 6y ago
    Apologies for the trollishness. Still seems a little tautological (to be good be good). If the core of what you are doing doesn't work (Creative), what you are trying to do with your core (Advertise) won't work. Since nowhere in the post do I learn specifics of how to make "Creative" work, and "Creative" is the only thing that works, my lesson learned from was is "get good" at "Creative". Clearly it should have been "Creative is all that matters".
  - tytso 6y ago
    Well, he also said that the ad content also has to match the platform, and that can be very time dependant --- what didn't work 3 months ago might work now, and vice versa. So that argues for a huge number of iterative experiment, measurement, and adjust cycles, which is why the essay argues for a lot of automation since to be successful you need to do this a lot.
aqme28 6y ago
I really hate seeing "creative" as a noun like this. I know it's entering common use but it sounds wrong grammatically. More importantly, it feels like another word would be better here -- "content" or "art" or "copy" or anything more descriptive.
- mdorazio 6y ago
  The problem is it's all of those things. For a text ad, the creative is the words. For a display ad, it's the imagery + text. For a YouTube ad, it's the video. Content is the other stuff on the page where your ad is being shown, so "creative" has become the standard term to encompass the stuff in your ad that you make.
  - smachiz 6y ago
    Sorry - isn't 'creative' as a noun just replacing 'ad' in this example? It's a gussied up way of suggesting this is more highbrow than 'ad' which tends to have a pejorative connotation.
    - vegannet 6y ago
      An advert is the creative and context — i.e: a photo on an influencers Instagram story is a different advert to the same photo on a billboard.
    - dmoy 6y ago
      Ad is a superset of creative The heirarchy of terms gets really confusing here
    - corobo 6y ago
      ad would also encompass the behind the scenes stuff - analytics and the likes. It may even refer to the campaign as a whole due to AB testing. "How did the ad we put up last month do" sort of conversations
  - mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
    It's "marketing/advertising content" - clearly distinct from the content anywhere it may be embedded. "Creative" is more succinct, but I don't think it's clarifying anything.
dmoy 6y ago
I wouldn't knock tools like Marin/kenshoo too bad. They really do help you scale if you're taking spend way past $6m. The target market there is different though. Think instead of a single company spending $6m on their ads, more like an agency spending $60m++ on 10++ different companies' ads. Major props to this guy for doing so well in house though.
- shostack 6y ago
  Have used both and had relationships with both companies. They can help fill a need, particularly if managing across Google and Bing and social. However in my experience, they lagged behind on access to the latest features, and there's an open debate on how effective their bid strategies can really be vs. Google when they cannot make auction-level decisions like Google can. The flip-side to that argument is that for some advertisers, they may not have their conversion data in Google, or may have other bid considerations factoring in that can be better handled with an external bid platform. Ultimately, this needs to be worth the price though when their fees are measured in % of media.
- latchkey 6y ago
  I worked for Marin as a software engineer very early on and I'm actually still a shareholder (looking forward to it going to zero so I can declare full loss on my taxes). Their technology stack is tragic. That PA acquisition? They lost $1.1m on it. The company has never been profitable and the execs get paid a lot, yet do very little. I wouldn't give them a dime.
ashkankiani 6y ago
I don't understand the use of the word creative in this context as a noun.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Go ahead and give google a whirl with “creative noun”.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - ashkankiani 6y ago
    Did you consider that I had done that and it didn't help? Your suggestion wouldn't have helped anyway, so your only intention was to attempt to ridicule me. I don't think that's a particularly good goal to set with making a comment. I was being genuine in my first comment. In a time of a pandemic and global depression, I guess you really should just expect the worst from people.
    - grey-area 6y ago
      It's advertising/publishing jargon for the creative bit of the work - the actual artwork and copywriting as opposed to all the other stuff that makes an advert work (tech, publisher, tracking etc). The word has been used as a noun for over 200 years and in this specific context for about 100 years. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-creative-be-a-noun-usage-history https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-creative-b...
    - mb_72 6y ago
      Native English speaker here. I had never come across this usage of the word 'creative' before, and even knowing it's meaning now still find it odd and grating in the article. I'm not in advertising though (thank goodness).
    - 16bytes 6y ago
      Both sides in this thread could have improved communication. E.g. instead of saying LMGIFY, the response could have said that a creative is the thing that is the audio, text, picture or video part of an advertisement. Or as M-W puts it, "creative activity or the material produced by it especially in advertising". Your question could have been improved by saying what exactly you didn't understand from the first few Google results, especially since there's a clear definition of how creative is used as a noun in the first couple links. A good question includes the context of what you've already considered.
ab_testing 6y ago
Dumb question but does anybody know what is Creative ? Is that a software or a generic term for a creative edge - like getting the right slogans and correct catch phrases to grab somebody's attention.
- locallycompact 6y ago
  the literal ad itself e.g. picture, words, video, whatever the user sees.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hrnnnnnn 6y ago
  It's the actual content of the ads. The images, video and sound created by an ad agency.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hboon 6y ago
  Replace it with "ad".
  - sbarre 6y ago
    No, replace it with "the content of the ad, the words and pictures". The ad is the medium, the creative is the message.
    - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
      No, surely the creative is the actual image (say) that carries the message. The creative is the bit people perceive with their senses, not the interpretation of that. One designs a message: "people who drink $cola are fun" and then the creative to convey that message - such as an image showing someone smiling, nestling the product in their hands.
mdorazio 6y ago
I enjoy reading posts like this because I've been blocking ads and avoiding "marketing tech" companies for so long that I don't even know what's going on in the ad world anymore. It's interesting to see that not a whole lot has changed in the last 5+ years with respect to platforms and strategies.
- Bishonen88 6y ago
  Same here - I glanced over the article and was confused why there was a part for Gmail. I thought to myself : "but gmail doesn't have ads?". Which makes me wonder even more why 75%+ of the population doesn't have adblock themselves?
  - luckylion 6y ago
    This. People with adblock are living in a completely different online reality. I'm amazed how much time people spend on ad-ridden sites despite the terrible UX, with ads "slow loading" and replacing links you want to click on, full page overlays, flashy animated ads etc pp. People still tolerate it, the must really love the content.
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      I didn't use an ad blocker for a long time, because I just didn't care. But a few malicious ads made me install one, and the downside is that I have to manually enable everything to get a website (e.g. a business I have a relationship with) to run properly fairly frequently. I wish there was a clean, sharp division between people trying to sell you stuff on the open internet and entities that you are logged in to and already doing business with, such that the latter were guaranteed to be accessible even with maximum blocking. Exploiting customers is something that needs to be regulated more.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        Are these sites from a specific industry that don't work with adblock enabled? I run into that occasionally, but it's rare for me. I'm always amazed when it happens at e.g. large online shops ... they never test with popular browser addons enabled?
dave84 6y ago
> Or you pay an agency to make your videos Hiring creatives to make your creatives.
canadianwriter 6y ago
It's nice to see an adwords article that finally embraces CPA bidding. It really is king. I've been doing this for over a decade and was very hesitant to use it but it really beats everything out there. One thing he doesn't mention is the landing page experience. It affects both your quality score which can have big impacts on CPA as well as your conversion rate. Not sure why people have issue with "creative" as a noun, this has been the standard in advertising for decades. Hell, it's in the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative Don't need to crap on Quantic and the like as much though, they do have some things that Google doesn't. Some people are commenting on him not giving specific advice for making the creative. As some have pointed out, a whole article could be written about that, or more realistically, entire libraries of books. In short he is talking about ad copywriting, it's a whole discipline that takes years of experience and learning to get good at.
- eximius 6y ago
  > Not sure why people have issue with "creative" as a noun, this has been the standard in advertising for decades. Most people aren't in advertising. It is a surprising use of a common word. I still twitch when I hear 'copy' used in the content sense.
  - dwaxe 6y ago
    I guess not enough of HN has watched Mad Men.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- dhimes 6y ago
  What's the difference between the Aquisition in CPA and the Click in CPC?
  - mceachen 6y ago
    CPA is cost per action, not acquisition. Action is defined by you. This bidding mode means you're taking less risk per auction, as you don't pay for impressions or clicks. You pay (sometimes 10x more) to reduce that risk, though, and your reach (how many people see your ad) can be adversely impacted if the Google Brain estimates your click through and conversion rate unfavorably to your auction competitors.
JeffL 6y ago
I tried Adwords for search again recently after several years. There was a decent number of clicks, and the cost per "action" seemed very reasonable, where for me, the action is clicking on the download link from the landing page to download the installer for our game. The only problem is that tracking the IP's, 90% of the traffic from Adwords that downloaded the installer never actually ran the installer. Organic traffic usually has much more than 50% of the people who download it, run it. Is it a bunch of robots driving clicks and then clicking randomly on links on the landing page? Seems really suspicious.
- FpUser 6y ago
  Same here. Found Adwords totally useless ROI-wise
  - dsun179 6y ago
    Same here. Legend says your clicks become cheaper after spending $6M.
    - jansan 6y ago
      They don't. I spent around $2M from 2003 to 2015 and clicks became steadily more expensive and useless. The advice from their "experts" usually resulted in more spending with lower ROI. Eventually we stopped using Adwords. Google obviously didn't even notice or they just didn't give a shit, as they never contacted us to ask why we stopped using AdWords. You cannot imagine how great AdWords was in 2004. It was much more transparent and easier to use, and the ROI was just incredible. Their success at that time was more than justified. Not so sure about today, though.
      - JeffL 6y ago
        Yeah, in 2004, I could get a new paying user from Adwords for $35. Since about 2007+, the cost seems roughly infinite no matter how I try to tweak it.
tedunangst 6y ago
Nobody here watched Mad Men I guess.
- mcny 6y ago
  > Nobody here watched Mad Men I guess. I have seen a few episodes but I feel very weird about taking anything from it other than entertainment. Problem is if you are already subject matter expert, you can distinguish the information from the entertainment but you already know the information so it might be a refresher at best. For example, doctors and other medical professionals watching House, MD or Grey's Anatomy might be able to relate with some of the things when the show has some basis on reality and laugh at things when they are off base. Similarly, people in marketing/advertising business might be able to tell what is what but from the outside, I can't tell the difference between information and entertainment.
  - anoncareer0212 6y ago
    I think he's referring to almost half the comments being people asking about "creative", and watching Mad Men would give you a full sense of it.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    It would be like taking business information from the show Silicon Valley, though that might be a worse analogy than I intended, since the show is so spot on...
criddell 6y ago
He mentions YouTube is cheap. I wonder if the existence of YouTube Premium is partly responsible for that? I would think the Premium users may be among the most desirable and those users have hidden themselves from him.
- vegannet 6y ago
  That’s often a concern amongst publishers around implementing the ability to pay to opt out of advertisements however I think in this case the relative low cost of YouTube advertisements is because of the high cost of getting them right.
C4stor 6y ago
The fact the google ads doesn't allow to do a real location targeting but will show ads to anyone "interested" in that location is usually a non-starter for me. Having people all over the world shown an ad for a specifically localized shop ? No thanks ! For more online businesses, the results are indeed quite decent !
- kevmo314 6y ago
  For what it's worth, I've been enticed to visit a place based on an online ad targeting a future vacation destination before. Not saying real location targeting would be more or less effective, but rather that location interest targeting can be effective.
- onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
  It's my understanding that -- sadly -- "interested in location" is the default. But you can switch it to only users in or from the location.
  - gscott 6y ago
    I manually exclude every single area around the world that I don't want to advertise in. This is the only real way to get rid of bad clicks from out of the area. Especially since the ads I run cost around $25 a click...
- noizejoy 6y ago
  Last time I checked it was entirely possible to enable real location targeting. However in some situations, the default “interested in a location” makes sense even for brick and mortar stores. For example when purchasing ideas and/or decisions for seniors are made by their far away children. Like anything, it depends on the exact situation including the expense of the ad click and the likelihood of it being a remote decision helper.
kerrybright3000 6y ago
Wonder if he is spending anywhere near a similar amount this year? I've heard Ads are way down
samuel2 6y ago
didn't know Gmail has ads .. so they basically use ML to substitute random spam with their highly targeted spam.. innovative business model
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  Billions of people have ~unlimited free email and you've boiled it down to "substituting random spam with highly targeted spam". This isn't an unusual mode of commentary for HN, but one of my resolutions is to point out when social cynicism has far out-stripped reality.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Gmail now being a for-profit, floated business isn't the point of it to target people with advertising. The function is only to achieve the rough aim of causing people to buy products they otherwise wouldn't have.
  - samuel2 6y ago
    It isn't unlimited as far as I know, but yes sure it is indeed very much free. We should be grateful for this opportunity to save 5 dollars a month.
    - jldugger 6y ago
      I have an acct from the dawn of gmail and I'm still only using 25% of the current quota. I don't know the exact numbers but I imagine it's basically the case that 99.9 percent of inboxes never run out, and a significant fraction of those who do are abusing it with gmailfs or something.
- jansan 6y ago
  > didn't know Gmail has ads I guess this is the main reason why Gmail exists.
StavrosK 6y ago
For anyone else here confused like me, and because I don't see an immediate explanation in the comments: "Creative" in the context of an ad means the image, video, text, etc. Basically, the ad content that the user will see.
- some_random 6y ago
  Is it just me or is "Creative" a really newspeak-y way of talking about ads?
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I guess not more than all other jargon? I guess they need a way to differentiate the images/etc from the campaign itself.
  - dkryptr 6y ago
    It's new to me. I did some research on Urban Dictionary (lol), and the definition for the usage of "Creative" as a noun was defined there as early as 2004. So I guess it's a usage that's been known for a quite some time.
    - texuf 6y ago
      https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Which is how advertising people speak, no? Horses for courses! (ie it's appropriate to the context as "newspeak" is kinda what advertisers deal in)
  - platetone 6y ago
    Guess you haven't seen Mad Men? It's Don Draper's department name. They say it all time referring to the team who creates the ad ideas.
  - 6y ago
raiyu 6y ago
I'm skeptical of articles that talk about how well they did something but don't provide the actual numbers. There is no mention of actual ROI, conversions, traffic, and so forth. Overall, I'm pretty skeptical of the true return that marketing campaigns can generate. When you calculate the full cost not just of the marketing but you include margins and the full lifetime value of the customer then you get a real sense. The thing that stood out to me is the first sentence, that the person had an unlimited budget. With that in mind, basically makes me believe they weren't that focused on the true profitability of the spend.
- prostheticvamp 6y ago
  I’m generally skeptical of content marketing that is mostly comprised of vague self-praise. I don’t know why this is on the HN front page. Though I guess arguably that’s a point in favor of their marketing competence.
  - nocman 6y ago
    I'd guess it's on the HN front page because people were curious about someone who could afford to spend 6 million dollars on ads in a single year. My first thought was not "I was in charge of spending my employer's money on ads", it was "I was spending my money on ads".
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Yes, but they crushed it. How much more quantitative could you get? A task is either crushed, or not crushed.
  - nahtnam 6y ago
    Relevant video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2BuP7-m5Ww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2BuP7-m5Ww
  - gumby 6y ago
    But without the author opening to kimono-box, the ad remains both crushed and uncrushed. Open the box and the schrödinger waveform collapses onto one or the other.
butler14 6y ago
lol at all the devs bashing on 70 year old advertising terminology to give you one back, my cringe dev jargon of the moment is PERFORMANT
- jiofih 6y ago
  what’s up with performant? It’s an adjective. I used to be in advertising and “creative” referred to the role of creative direction. “The creative” would be a person. Had never seen it used as a synonym for content.
  - tfe 6y ago
    Have you tried looking "performant" up in a dictionary?
    - jiofih 6y ago
      As in something like the Oxford? https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/performant https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/performant
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
pwython 6y ago
> The difficulty and cost associated with creating video ads is exactly why Youtube is still a hidden gem. These days many top performing video ads are the ones that are made to look amateur/cheap. And it's not just the guru course ads. The native vlogger-style ad is often more engaging on a platform filled with vloggers. High production value "professional" ads have traditionally been created to lend credibility & authority to the brand. But if their audience now trusts "influencers" more than big brands, what's the harm in testing a TON of simple video creatives with clever scripts. I've even seen this style now in offline commercials.
- throwaway2048 6y ago
  For anyone that hates "native vlogger-style ads" in youtube videos https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ is a godsend.
  - bseidensticker 6y ago
    Do you think it is moral to use that? The creator is trying to make money off the video so they can continue to create. You are essentially stealing from them-taking the content they made without paying for it (watching the ad). If you don't like "native vlogger-style ads" don't watch those videos.
    - mothepro 6y ago
      The same could be said about adblock. Most ads are not the horribly annoying like they used to be, so adblock is just immoral, stealing from the website content creator.
      - GrinningFool 6y ago
        It could be, but "annoying ads" aren't really the problem. Ad-block is self-defense against privacy-invading ad and analytics networks. When a site serves ads and tracking from its own first-party domain and I can reasonably determine this, I do not block it and often unblock it if it defaults to blocked. When a site farms out adverts to third parties to share my browsing habits across the web, I default to blocking everything. If there's a site that decides that it won't show me content because I'm using an adblocker, then I move on. They don't want my eyes, and I don't want their practices - no reason to stick around.
cosmodisk 6y ago
The company I work for spends very substantial amounts( for its size) on Google Ads. It does the trick but it's like putting yourself on crack.You become dependant and somehow convince yourself that you are being very smart by doing so.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  There’s too much arb in Google Ads by this time.
- dx034 6y ago
  That's always been the case with ads. The problem nowadays just is that it's very concentrated on a few very big players. Companies just can't afford to not be present on Google, Youtube or Facebook (depending on the brand). The power has shifted, from the companies paying to the platforms. But marketing in itself was crucial for many companies to succeed already decades ago.
superasn 6y ago
I've also had a lot of success with Adwords in the past even though my monthly budget was low 5 figures only. He is spot on about the landing page but there is one more thing I learned that played a key role and that is something called the keyword smell. Basically what it means is your landing page must match the keyword you're targeting. If you're bidding for "home windows for the elderly" but the landing page headline says "home windows" you will lose the lead. Plus google will also never optimize your ad for clicks. Even if they have to optin and go to another page just don't lose that smell. It can work wonders for your campaign.
- davemel37 6y ago
  I find this advice to be outdated. Unless the actual page offers real contect around the intent of the searcher, I find the quality of these leads and conversion rates drop.
londons_explore 6y ago
Not all the "optimizers" behind the Google Ads dashboard are as advanced as you might imagine. One notable one only ran once a day, and simply used data from your account to adjust other things in your account. And it used a crude algorithm to do so. You literally could do better with a shell script running hourly after reading a couple of papers on the multi-armed bandit problem.
gumby 6y ago
Man, gotta get me some of that “creative”. What a cynical expression.
steeleyespan 6y ago
Our company spent over $3mm last year and this article is spot on. On the Adwords side it really is that simple - test tons of creatives and use CPA bidding. The third party services aren't much help. Google has a lot of great in-house support to ramp up your Adspend once you get noticed. Not sure what the target is, but we seem to get a new rep every few months who has new suggestions. I have no experience with Youtube, but that is highly interesting. If Adwords isn't working for you, there is a ton to dive into. Could be your website, could be your product. If you have a competitor obviously succeeding in the space with heavy Adwords spend the fault is probably on your end (unless they're just pissing away money, but how long does that go on for?).
- steeleyespan 6y ago
  On that note, expect to lose money initially while optimizing your website & waiting for enough CPA data to accrue. I give it at least a month and $5-10k spend before seriously considering killing the campaign (if starting from scratch). Very different from taking something already successful but mismanaged - this can be a lot easier to ramp off if they're making big mistakes (like not actually mobile optimized, not CPA bidding, not actually actively optimizing the website's funnel/landing page).
  - nicklafferty 6y ago
    This is spot on! When I first transitioned those campaigns from eCPC to tCPA there was a big learning period. As the campaigns scaled and collected more data the actual CPA started aligning closely with the target CPA, but it took some time. The more conversions you do the faster that alignment will happen. After 2+ years on tCPA (and many behind the scenes improvements to the Algo by Google), I could get that delta to match within 3-4 days of making a change to the target CPA. That was with thousands of conversions a day though, so scale absolutely helps.
dexcs 6y ago
Is there any open source software that pulls out statistics out of those ad platforms into a spreadsheet or any other format?
- davidwihl 6y ago
  AdWords has a rich API that allows reports to downloaded in CSV format https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/repo... Disclosure: I work on the team that builds the client libraries for this API.
  - stevenicr 6y ago
    Any idea if this API can pull a keywords searched and price paid for the report if the customer is using 'smart campaigns'? I will dive in if it can.. The other day I spent some hours trying to find reports to show where this friend spent his adwords money and just about every report in his dashboard was blank. He has been running this campaign for about 2 months now - so there should be some data.. I only found one report that showed any data, the rest blank - so then I went to help, then chatted with adwords support - explained the problem, what I was looking for.. told to wait some days for a response cuz covid.. okay. Got an email forwarded to me saying that you can't get that data with 'smart campaigns'... "I would like to inform you that, you can view your search phrases performance (impressions, clicks and status) in the campaigns dashboard, however, cost option is not available for smart campaigns." So... this is disturbing - and then there is this "You may use the search terms report to see how your ads performed (clicks, impressions, CTR, cost, etc) when triggered by actual searches within the Search Network. " Yet I have clicked virtually every link in the dashboard and I find nothing of the sort. I feel like I can put about 2 more hours into this - and then my advice will be to just to cancel adwords it's too opaque. So should I spend 2 hours learning this API thing, or trying to re-learn adwords to switch off smart campaigns, or a secret how to use reports with campaigns doc or what, I don't know how to get the info needed.
londons_explore 6y ago
I'd like to remind people how bad the "daily budget" is in AdWords. The design of the budget system is in Google's favour, not yours, and if you don't understand that, you'll end up paying much more than you need to. If you think setting the budget to half is a way to halve your ad spend and get half the number of clicks, you're right, but you're also naïve. If Google thinks your current rate of spend is going to exceed the daily budget, they'll effectively deactivate your ad for random impressions, leading to less spend. but that isn't the best strategy. The best strategy is to lower your bids to win fewer auctions if you want to spend less. That way, you can spend half as much, but get more ROI, since the Google AI will be only showing your ad to those most likely to be interested in it.
- speeder 6y ago
  But what you do when close competitors (ie: companies that are physically near, or that you even know their owner in person) start to "race" you? For example putting ever increasing budget limits in an attempt to make sure your ads are never shown?
  - londons_explore 6y ago
    Budget limits simply mean your ad will still be shown, but only on N% of clicks. Bids are what you are thinking of, and I'm afraid this is the nature of an auction... Remember it isn't highest bid wins... It's highest bid multiplied by a secret quality and relevance factor that wins. If your ad is more relevant and useful to the user, it can win with even a very low bid.
- londons_explore 6y ago
  A double digit percentage of AdWords campaigns are budget limited on any given day. I honestly can't believe how tens of thousands of marketing folk can't notice how much money they're throwing down the drain by using the budget limiter...
  - anacleto 6y ago
    I agree with the broader point of view, yet I'm not sure if all you say makes sense. Most campaigns are budget limited because auto bidding is less ops intensive and, above all, sometimes works better than manual bidding (despite Google reducing the reach as you get nearer the daily budget). Manual bidding is always preferable with fewer data points (low conversions, low clicks, no previous campaigns). Auto bidding is preferable as your GA accounts grow in conversions and the algorithms start to create a better profile of your customers.
irrational 6y ago
Has anyone ever created a psychological profile of people who click on ads? I've never clicked on an ad, so I assume my psychological profile would show that I'm not the kind of person that would be inclined to do so. But clearly there must be people who do click on ads. Who are these people and what is their psychological profile?
- whycombagator 6y ago
  > I've never clicked on an ad Impressive
- nicklafferty 6y ago
  70% of Google's revenue is from their ads, so a lot of people click on them. The HN audience is a very small minority :) https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven...
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    A lot of entities click on them. How many of them are people is debatable.
    - hobofan 6y ago
      Unless the armies of bots out there started spending real cash for products after those ad clicks, I'm going to stick with "a lot of of people click on ads".
    - dx034 6y ago
      It's the top result for pretty much any search. And it often is relevant. Why go down to the actual results if you can just click the first link and get what you want? And most users don't use ad blockers.
- annihilatormod 6y ago
  I've always been so interested in this as well, I also have never once (intentionally that is) clicked on an ad in my entire life. I can actually see myself doing so if the product was something I was interested in, but it almost never is. I've found I actually tend to think less of a company if I'm seeing a lot of their ads. I don't know if I've ever met anyone who has told me that they clicked on ads. I have no idea who these people are. Most of my friends even non-technical ones now, use ad-blockers by default. Sometimes this will turn into anger toward a brand even, like when I'm visiting family over the holidays and I momentarily remember just how bad cable television ads are. I just start to legitimately hate a company because of their ads. I wonder how many companies calculate value lost from an ad because of annoyed people.
nicklafferty 6y ago
Hi everyone! Author here. I'm humbled that someone felt this was HackerNews worthy, really unexpected! I'll do my best to respond to comments, but if I don't get to yours feel free to drop me an email, link is on the website.
- QuantumGood 6y ago
  Thanks, Nick! What are some of the most difficult actions to programmatically "prove"? Which actions seem like a good idea, but perform less profitably vs. other actions?
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
>> Gmail Ads Can Scale Does Gmail have ads? I know it used to, but I can't remember the last time I saw one. Looking at my Gmail inbox now, and I don't see a single ad anywhere on the page. I'm not running any kind of ad blocker.
- nicklafferty 6y ago
  Gmail ads show up in the promotion tab! If you have a unified inbox you won't see any ads.
  - PopeDotNinja 6y ago
    That would explain it. Thanks!
- alexpetralia 6y ago
  Yes. Apparently if you used the tabbed version (with Social, Promotions, etc.), then they appear.
wheybags 6y ago
Legit question: do you ever feel conflicted about the impact of this kind of advertising on the world? And do you ever hear your peers in the industry feeling conflicted or remorseful like this?
adam_fallon_ 6y ago
I wonder if Google does anything to accurately reimburse something like ad-naseum* clicks. I imagine the probably take up a non-insignificant amount of spend at the $6m level *https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/
- steeleyespan 6y ago
  That is why you need to use CPA bidding, not keyword-based.
- nicklafferty 6y ago
  Google automatically refunds advertisers for fraudulent clicks each month. It's not a lot (maybe $1,000 refund on an account that spends $600k to 800k/month), but it's a line item on the invoice for sure. You have to trust them for what is a 'fraudulent' click though.
JackPoach 6y ago
Affiliate link for Supermetrics. I see what's going on...
itronitron 6y ago
I can't help but think this person was selling shirts without stripes.
forrestthewoods 6y ago
> Youtube is also great for conquesting your competitors. In the SaaS space I’m in right now I pay over $20 per click to bid on my competitor’s search keywords. I hate the modern internet. Platforms are holding developers hostage. Because if you don’t pay for ads for YOUR PRODUCT then they’ll show your competitor’s ads. It’s anti-consumer hostile. If I search for a thing I want to see that thing. Not a different thing that has a bigger as budget.
Animats 6y ago
"This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small fee if you choose to purchase something." The author is spending $6M a year on ads and is generating substantially more revenue than that, they claim. Why are they bothering with spare-change Amazon affiliate links? If they can get revenue like that, they should be making tons of money with their day job. What's wrong with this picture?
- ryeguy 6y ago
  Nothing is wrong with this picture. Your thought process boils down to "OP should be making enough money at their day job, why would they try to make more?" which is ridiculous.
  - atarian 6y ago
    Agreed. It's leaving easy money on the table.
- chrisstanchak 6y ago
  Because people who make money like to make money.
- peteretep 6y ago
  The author’s employer was spending that money, not them?
  - prawn 6y ago
    Author's past employer, too.
joshfraser 6y ago
I've also spent millions of dollars on ads. My experience is that targeting, specifically highly targeted audiences and lookalikes are far more important than creatives.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  I've spend hundreds of cents on ads, so take this with salt, but is it futile to pick "the most important thing". A bit like is exercise more important, or diet? Well if you are eating only lard and running every day, then diet is important for you, and if you are eating really healthily but sitting in a chair 14 hours a day, then doing more exercise is the impactful thing.
  - ta2987 6y ago
    The answer for both is still "diet."
mike_aarons 6y ago
What's the best source to learn how to property target online ads (without spending $6M)? Are there good online courses or blogs that you recommend?
- nicklafferty 6y ago
  It depends what ad platform you want to learn. Google has a great learning series here: https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/ https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/ If you want to learn Google Ads I'd recommend getting certified for Search, Display, and Shopping. If you want to learn Facebook and Instagram ads then that's a whole different animal.
  - mike_aarons 6y ago
    Thanks for that! I'll check out the Google learning series.
ssklash 6y ago
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, getting people to click ads. I just don't see how this isn't a massive waste of money, abusing psychology to encourage people to buy things they don't need. No one is better off in this situation except Google, and they absolutely don't have our interests in mind.
- cmauniada 6y ago
  I understand where you are coming from but it’s not always about trying to get people to buy things right away, advertising can be used to create brand awareness as well. A positive brand image is worth a lot more than just making a couple bucks here and there off if impulsive shoppers. If you have another solution apart from google ads, I’m all ears. Seriously.
skylarchunk 6y ago
Would be cool to read about how the 6 mil was split—i.e. ratio between spend on YT ads and say, Google display, over 3 month span
- nicklafferty 6y ago
  Almost entirely on search! I'd say 85% search, 10% Gmail ads, 5% Youtube.
yccheok 6y ago
I'm more interested to know what kind of product they are selling with that much of Ads marketing dollar.
t0ughcritic 6y ago
Best place for non game app Installs for US?
fulldecent2 6y ago
For anybody else that spends most of their budget on advertising for your own trademark because your competitors do... the solution is to inform your audience how they should forcible disable ads and to switch to a search engine that can turn off ads.

418 points by Torwald 6y ago

Would love to see more information on creative, since the author touts it as the most important. I'm sure a whole post could / has been written on that though.

rchaud 6y ago
I work in digital marketing, and can tell you that it's not very exciting. The best performing paid ads are text-only and served to the user on the search results page and usually not on third-party websites. They're the ones that can be A/B tested the fastest, and the 'creative' part of it is very much metrics-driven. That's where the bulk of ad spend goes, as it has the highest ROAS. Plus, users who are actively searching for something are more primed to respond to an ad that appears on the results page, as opposed to an ad that pops up in the middle of a news article they were reading. Users for the most part don't seem to like stuff with animations, or heavy graphics in their ads as they're distracting. I have noticed more interesting ads on newer mediums (media?) like Instagram stories or Snapchat, which are image and video-centric. The targeting so far seems quite good, as I usually see ads for online courses, creative stuff, design tools.
- yellow_lead 6y ago
  Interesting. Thanks for the information!

xipho 6y ago

From an outsider's perspective "Creative" seems to be the same as saying "Get good, bro".

jstummbillig 6y ago
Well, no. "Creative" in this context is jargon and means the part that people would generally just refer to as "an ad": art, design, text, sound, video -- the combination. What he is saying is that nailing the actual ad trumps everything else (targeting, keywords, platform, etc) when it comes to being effective in advertisement.
- xipho 6y ago
  Apologies for the trollishness. Still seems a little tautological (to be good be good). If the core of what you are doing doesn't work (Creative), what you are trying to do with your core (Advertise) won't work. Since nowhere in the post do I learn specifics of how to make "Creative" work, and "Creative" is the only thing that works, my lesson learned from was is "get good" at "Creative". Clearly it should have been "Creative is all that matters".
- tytso 6y ago
  Well, he also said that the ad content also has to match the platform, and that can be very time dependant --- what didn't work 3 months ago might work now, and vice versa. So that argues for a huge number of iterative experiment, measurement, and adjust cycles, which is why the essay argues for a lot of automation since to be successful you need to do this a lot.

aqme28 6y ago

I really hate seeing "creative" as a noun like this. I know it's entering common use but it sounds wrong grammatically. More importantly, it feels like another word would be better here -- "content" or "art" or "copy" or anything more descriptive.

mdorazio 6y ago
The problem is it's all of those things. For a text ad, the creative is the words. For a display ad, it's the imagery + text. For a YouTube ad, it's the video. Content is the other stuff on the page where your ad is being shown, so "creative" has become the standard term to encompass the stuff in your ad that you make.
- smachiz 6y ago
  Sorry - isn't 'creative' as a noun just replacing 'ad' in this example? It's a gussied up way of suggesting this is more highbrow than 'ad' which tends to have a pejorative connotation.
  - vegannet 6y ago
    An advert is the creative and context — i.e: a photo on an influencers Instagram story is a different advert to the same photo on a billboard.
  - dmoy 6y ago
    Ad is a superset of creative The heirarchy of terms gets really confusing here
  - corobo 6y ago
    ad would also encompass the behind the scenes stuff - analytics and the likes. It may even refer to the campaign as a whole due to AB testing. "How did the ad we put up last month do" sort of conversations
- mandelbrotwurst 6y ago
  It's "marketing/advertising content" - clearly distinct from the content anywhere it may be embedded. "Creative" is more succinct, but I don't think it's clarifying anything.

dmoy 6y ago

I wouldn't knock tools like Marin/kenshoo too bad. They really do help you scale if you're taking spend way past $6m. The target market there is different though. Think instead of a single company spending $6m on their ads, more like an agency spending $60m++ on 10++ different companies' ads. Major props to this guy for doing so well in house though.

shostack 6y ago
Have used both and had relationships with both companies. They can help fill a need, particularly if managing across Google and Bing and social. However in my experience, they lagged behind on access to the latest features, and there's an open debate on how effective their bid strategies can really be vs. Google when they cannot make auction-level decisions like Google can. The flip-side to that argument is that for some advertisers, they may not have their conversion data in Google, or may have other bid considerations factoring in that can be better handled with an external bid platform. Ultimately, this needs to be worth the price though when their fees are measured in % of media.
latchkey 6y ago
I worked for Marin as a software engineer very early on and I'm actually still a shareholder (looking forward to it going to zero so I can declare full loss on my taxes). Their technology stack is tragic. That PA acquisition? They lost $1.1m on it. The company has never been profitable and the execs get paid a lot, yet do very little. I wouldn't give them a dime.

ashkankiani 6y ago

I don't understand the use of the word creative in this context as a noun.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Go ahead and give google a whirl with “creative noun”.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ashkankiani 6y ago
  Did you consider that I had done that and it didn't help? Your suggestion wouldn't have helped anyway, so your only intention was to attempt to ridicule me. I don't think that's a particularly good goal to set with making a comment. I was being genuine in my first comment. In a time of a pandemic and global depression, I guess you really should just expect the worst from people.
  - grey-area 6y ago
    It's advertising/publishing jargon for the creative bit of the work - the actual artwork and copywriting as opposed to all the other stuff that makes an advert work (tech, publisher, tracking etc). The word has been used as a noun for over 200 years and in this specific context for about 100 years. https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-creative-be-a-noun-usage-history https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/can-creative-b...
  - mb_72 6y ago
    Native English speaker here. I had never come across this usage of the word 'creative' before, and even knowing it's meaning now still find it odd and grating in the article. I'm not in advertising though (thank goodness).
  - 16bytes 6y ago
    Both sides in this thread could have improved communication. E.g. instead of saying LMGIFY, the response could have said that a creative is the thing that is the audio, text, picture or video part of an advertisement. Or as M-W puts it, "creative activity or the material produced by it especially in advertising". Your question could have been improved by saying what exactly you didn't understand from the first few Google results, especially since there's a clear definition of how creative is used as a noun in the first couple links. A good question includes the context of what you've already considered.

ab_testing 6y ago

Dumb question but does anybody know what is Creative ? Is that a software or a generic term for a creative edge - like getting the right slogans and correct catch phrases to grab somebody's attention.

locallycompact 6y ago
the literal ad itself e.g. picture, words, video, whatever the user sees.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hrnnnnnn 6y ago
It's the actual content of the ads. The images, video and sound created by an ad agency.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hboon 6y ago
Replace it with "ad".
- sbarre 6y ago
  No, replace it with "the content of the ad, the words and pictures". The ad is the medium, the creative is the message.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    No, surely the creative is the actual image (say) that carries the message. The creative is the bit people perceive with their senses, not the interpretation of that. One designs a message: "people who drink $cola are fun" and then the creative to convey that message - such as an image showing someone smiling, nestling the product in their hands.

mdorazio 6y ago

I enjoy reading posts like this because I've been blocking ads and avoiding "marketing tech" companies for so long that I don't even know what's going on in the ad world anymore. It's interesting to see that not a whole lot has changed in the last 5+ years with respect to platforms and strategies.

Bishonen88 6y ago
Same here - I glanced over the article and was confused why there was a part for Gmail. I thought to myself : "but gmail doesn't have ads?". Which makes me wonder even more why 75%+ of the population doesn't have adblock themselves?
- luckylion 6y ago
  This. People with adblock are living in a completely different online reality. I'm amazed how much time people spend on ad-ridden sites despite the terrible UX, with ads "slow loading" and replacing links you want to click on, full page overlays, flashy animated ads etc pp. People still tolerate it, the must really love the content.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    I didn't use an ad blocker for a long time, because I just didn't care. But a few malicious ads made me install one, and the downside is that I have to manually enable everything to get a website (e.g. a business I have a relationship with) to run properly fairly frequently. I wish there was a clean, sharp division between people trying to sell you stuff on the open internet and entities that you are logged in to and already doing business with, such that the latter were guaranteed to be accessible even with maximum blocking. Exploiting customers is something that needs to be regulated more.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Are these sites from a specific industry that don't work with adblock enabled? I run into that occasionally, but it's rare for me. I'm always amazed when it happens at e.g. large online shops ... they never test with popular browser addons enabled?

dave84 6y ago

> Or you pay an agency to make your videos Hiring creatives to make your creatives.

canadianwriter 6y ago

It's nice to see an adwords article that finally embraces CPA bidding. It really is king. I've been doing this for over a decade and was very hesitant to use it but it really beats everything out there. One thing he doesn't mention is the landing page experience. It affects both your quality score which can have big impacts on CPA as well as your conversion rate. Not sure why people have issue with "creative" as a noun, this has been the standard in advertising for decades. Hell, it's in the dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative Don't need to crap on Quantic and the like as much though, they do have some things that Google doesn't. Some people are commenting on him not giving specific advice for making the creative. As some have pointed out, a whole article could be written about that, or more realistically, entire libraries of books. In short he is talking about ad copywriting, it's a whole discipline that takes years of experience and learning to get good at.

eximius 6y ago
> Not sure why people have issue with "creative" as a noun, this has been the standard in advertising for decades. Most people aren't in advertising. It is a surprising use of a common word. I still twitch when I hear 'copy' used in the content sense.
- dwaxe 6y ago
  I guess not enough of HN has watched Mad Men.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
dhimes 6y ago
What's the difference between the Aquisition in CPA and the Click in CPC?
- mceachen 6y ago
  CPA is cost per action, not acquisition. Action is defined by you. This bidding mode means you're taking less risk per auction, as you don't pay for impressions or clicks. You pay (sometimes 10x more) to reduce that risk, though, and your reach (how many people see your ad) can be adversely impacted if the Google Brain estimates your click through and conversion rate unfavorably to your auction competitors.

JeffL 6y ago

I tried Adwords for search again recently after several years. There was a decent number of clicks, and the cost per "action" seemed very reasonable, where for me, the action is clicking on the download link from the landing page to download the installer for our game. The only problem is that tracking the IP's, 90% of the traffic from Adwords that downloaded the installer never actually ran the installer. Organic traffic usually has much more than 50% of the people who download it, run it. Is it a bunch of robots driving clicks and then clicking randomly on links on the landing page? Seems really suspicious.

FpUser 6y ago
Same here. Found Adwords totally useless ROI-wise
- dsun179 6y ago
  Same here. Legend says your clicks become cheaper after spending $6M.
  - jansan 6y ago
    They don't. I spent around $2M from 2003 to 2015 and clicks became steadily more expensive and useless. The advice from their "experts" usually resulted in more spending with lower ROI. Eventually we stopped using Adwords. Google obviously didn't even notice or they just didn't give a shit, as they never contacted us to ask why we stopped using AdWords. You cannot imagine how great AdWords was in 2004. It was much more transparent and easier to use, and the ROI was just incredible. Their success at that time was more than justified. Not so sure about today, though.
    - JeffL 6y ago
      Yeah, in 2004, I could get a new paying user from Adwords for $35. Since about 2007+, the cost seems roughly infinite no matter how I try to tweak it.

tedunangst 6y ago

Nobody here watched Mad Men I guess.

mcny 6y ago
> Nobody here watched Mad Men I guess. I have seen a few episodes but I feel very weird about taking anything from it other than entertainment. Problem is if you are already subject matter expert, you can distinguish the information from the entertainment but you already know the information so it might be a refresher at best. For example, doctors and other medical professionals watching House, MD or Grey's Anatomy might be able to relate with some of the things when the show has some basis on reality and laugh at things when they are off base. Similarly, people in marketing/advertising business might be able to tell what is what but from the outside, I can't tell the difference between information and entertainment.
- anoncareer0212 6y ago
  I think he's referring to almost half the comments being people asking about "creative", and watching Mad Men would give you a full sense of it.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  It would be like taking business information from the show Silicon Valley, though that might be a worse analogy than I intended, since the show is so spot on...

criddell 6y ago

He mentions YouTube is cheap. I wonder if the existence of YouTube Premium is partly responsible for that? I would think the Premium users may be among the most desirable and those users have hidden themselves from him.

vegannet 6y ago
That’s often a concern amongst publishers around implementing the ability to pay to opt out of advertisements however I think in this case the relative low cost of YouTube advertisements is because of the high cost of getting them right.

C4stor 6y ago

The fact the google ads doesn't allow to do a real location targeting but will show ads to anyone "interested" in that location is usually a non-starter for me. Having people all over the world shown an ad for a specifically localized shop ? No thanks ! For more online businesses, the results are indeed quite decent !

kevmo314 6y ago
For what it's worth, I've been enticed to visit a place based on an online ad targeting a future vacation destination before. Not saying real location targeting would be more or less effective, but rather that location interest targeting can be effective.
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
It's my understanding that -- sadly -- "interested in location" is the default. But you can switch it to only users in or from the location.
- gscott 6y ago
  I manually exclude every single area around the world that I don't want to advertise in. This is the only real way to get rid of bad clicks from out of the area. Especially since the ads I run cost around $25 a click...
noizejoy 6y ago
Last time I checked it was entirely possible to enable real location targeting. However in some situations, the default “interested in a location” makes sense even for brick and mortar stores. For example when purchasing ideas and/or decisions for seniors are made by their far away children. Like anything, it depends on the exact situation including the expense of the ad click and the likelihood of it being a remote decision helper.

kerrybright3000 6y ago

Wonder if he is spending anywhere near a similar amount this year? I've heard Ads are way down

samuel2 6y ago

didn't know Gmail has ads .. so they basically use ML to substitute random spam with their highly targeted spam.. innovative business model

anoncareer0212 6y ago
Billions of people have ~unlimited free email and you've boiled it down to "substituting random spam with highly targeted spam". This isn't an unusual mode of commentary for HN, but one of my resolutions is to point out when social cynicism has far out-stripped reality.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Gmail now being a for-profit, floated business isn't the point of it to target people with advertising. The function is only to achieve the rough aim of causing people to buy products they otherwise wouldn't have.
- samuel2 6y ago
  It isn't unlimited as far as I know, but yes sure it is indeed very much free. We should be grateful for this opportunity to save 5 dollars a month.
  - jldugger 6y ago
    I have an acct from the dawn of gmail and I'm still only using 25% of the current quota. I don't know the exact numbers but I imagine it's basically the case that 99.9 percent of inboxes never run out, and a significant fraction of those who do are abusing it with gmailfs or something.
jansan 6y ago
> didn't know Gmail has ads I guess this is the main reason why Gmail exists.

StavrosK 6y ago

For anyone else here confused like me, and because I don't see an immediate explanation in the comments: "Creative" in the context of an ad means the image, video, text, etc. Basically, the ad content that the user will see.

some_random 6y ago
Is it just me or is "Creative" a really newspeak-y way of talking about ads?
- StavrosK 6y ago
  I guess not more than all other jargon? I guess they need a way to differentiate the images/etc from the campaign itself.
- dkryptr 6y ago
  It's new to me. I did some research on Urban Dictionary (lol), and the definition for the usage of "Creative" as a noun was defined there as early as 2004. So I guess it's a usage that's been known for a quite some time.
  - texuf 6y ago
    https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Which is how advertising people speak, no? Horses for courses! (ie it's appropriate to the context as "newspeak" is kinda what advertisers deal in)
- platetone 6y ago
  Guess you haven't seen Mad Men? It's Don Draper's department name. They say it all time referring to the team who creates the ad ideas.
- 6y ago

raiyu 6y ago

I'm skeptical of articles that talk about how well they did something but don't provide the actual numbers. There is no mention of actual ROI, conversions, traffic, and so forth. Overall, I'm pretty skeptical of the true return that marketing campaigns can generate. When you calculate the full cost not just of the marketing but you include margins and the full lifetime value of the customer then you get a real sense. The thing that stood out to me is the first sentence, that the person had an unlimited budget. With that in mind, basically makes me believe they weren't that focused on the true profitability of the spend.

prostheticvamp 6y ago
I’m generally skeptical of content marketing that is mostly comprised of vague self-praise. I don’t know why this is on the HN front page. Though I guess arguably that’s a point in favor of their marketing competence.
- nocman 6y ago
  I'd guess it's on the HN front page because people were curious about someone who could afford to spend 6 million dollars on ads in a single year. My first thought was not "I was in charge of spending my employer's money on ads", it was "I was spending my money on ads".
robertlagrant 6y ago
Yes, but they crushed it. How much more quantitative could you get? A task is either crushed, or not crushed.
- nahtnam 6y ago
  Relevant video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2BuP7-m5Ww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2BuP7-m5Ww
- gumby 6y ago
  But without the author opening to kimono-box, the ad remains both crushed and uncrushed. Open the box and the schrödinger waveform collapses onto one or the other.

butler14 6y ago

lol at all the devs bashing on 70 year old advertising terminology to give you one back, my cringe dev jargon of the moment is PERFORMANT

jiofih 6y ago
what’s up with performant? It’s an adjective. I used to be in advertising and “creative” referred to the role of creative direction. “The creative” would be a person. Had never seen it used as a synonym for content.
- tfe 6y ago
  Have you tried looking "performant" up in a dictionary?
  - jiofih 6y ago
    As in something like the Oxford? https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/performant https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/performant
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

pwython 6y ago

> The difficulty and cost associated with creating video ads is exactly why Youtube is still a hidden gem. These days many top performing video ads are the ones that are made to look amateur/cheap. And it's not just the guru course ads. The native vlogger-style ad is often more engaging on a platform filled with vloggers. High production value "professional" ads have traditionally been created to lend credibility & authority to the brand. But if their audience now trusts "influencers" more than big brands, what's the harm in testing a TON of simple video creatives with clever scripts. I've even seen this style now in offline commercials.

throwaway2048 6y ago
For anyone that hates "native vlogger-style ads" in youtube videos https://sponsor.ajay.app/ https://sponsor.ajay.app/ is a godsend.
- bseidensticker 6y ago
  Do you think it is moral to use that? The creator is trying to make money off the video so they can continue to create. You are essentially stealing from them-taking the content they made without paying for it (watching the ad). If you don't like "native vlogger-style ads" don't watch those videos.
  - mothepro 6y ago
    The same could be said about adblock. Most ads are not the horribly annoying like they used to be, so adblock is just immoral, stealing from the website content creator.
    - GrinningFool 6y ago
      It could be, but "annoying ads" aren't really the problem. Ad-block is self-defense against privacy-invading ad and analytics networks. When a site serves ads and tracking from its own first-party domain and I can reasonably determine this, I do not block it and often unblock it if it defaults to blocked. When a site farms out adverts to third parties to share my browsing habits across the web, I default to blocking everything. If there's a site that decides that it won't show me content because I'm using an adblocker, then I move on. They don't want my eyes, and I don't want their practices - no reason to stick around.

cosmodisk 6y ago

The company I work for spends very substantial amounts( for its size) on Google Ads. It does the trick but it's like putting yourself on crack.You become dependant and somehow convince yourself that you are being very smart by doing so.

heavenlyblue 6y ago
There’s too much arb in Google Ads by this time.
dx034 6y ago
That's always been the case with ads. The problem nowadays just is that it's very concentrated on a few very big players. Companies just can't afford to not be present on Google, Youtube or Facebook (depending on the brand). The power has shifted, from the companies paying to the platforms. But marketing in itself was crucial for many companies to succeed already decades ago.

superasn 6y ago

I've also had a lot of success with Adwords in the past even though my monthly budget was low 5 figures only. He is spot on about the landing page but there is one more thing I learned that played a key role and that is something called the keyword smell. Basically what it means is your landing page must match the keyword you're targeting. If you're bidding for "home windows for the elderly" but the landing page headline says "home windows" you will lose the lead. Plus google will also never optimize your ad for clicks. Even if they have to optin and go to another page just don't lose that smell. It can work wonders for your campaign.

davemel37 6y ago
I find this advice to be outdated. Unless the actual page offers real contect around the intent of the searcher, I find the quality of these leads and conversion rates drop.

londons_explore 6y ago

Not all the "optimizers" behind the Google Ads dashboard are as advanced as you might imagine. One notable one only ran once a day, and simply used data from your account to adjust other things in your account. And it used a crude algorithm to do so. You literally could do better with a shell script running hourly after reading a couple of papers on the multi-armed bandit problem.

gumby 6y ago

Man, gotta get me some of that “creative”. What a cynical expression.

steeleyespan 6y ago

Our company spent over $3mm last year and this article is spot on. On the Adwords side it really is that simple - test tons of creatives and use CPA bidding. The third party services aren't much help. Google has a lot of great in-house support to ramp up your Adspend once you get noticed. Not sure what the target is, but we seem to get a new rep every few months who has new suggestions. I have no experience with Youtube, but that is highly interesting. If Adwords isn't working for you, there is a ton to dive into. Could be your website, could be your product. If you have a competitor obviously succeeding in the space with heavy Adwords spend the fault is probably on your end (unless they're just pissing away money, but how long does that go on for?).

steeleyespan 6y ago
On that note, expect to lose money initially while optimizing your website & waiting for enough CPA data to accrue. I give it at least a month and $5-10k spend before seriously considering killing the campaign (if starting from scratch). Very different from taking something already successful but mismanaged - this can be a lot easier to ramp off if they're making big mistakes (like not actually mobile optimized, not CPA bidding, not actually actively optimizing the website's funnel/landing page).
- nicklafferty 6y ago
  This is spot on! When I first transitioned those campaigns from eCPC to tCPA there was a big learning period. As the campaigns scaled and collected more data the actual CPA started aligning closely with the target CPA, but it took some time. The more conversions you do the faster that alignment will happen. After 2+ years on tCPA (and many behind the scenes improvements to the Algo by Google), I could get that delta to match within 3-4 days of making a change to the target CPA. That was with thousands of conversions a day though, so scale absolutely helps.

dexcs 6y ago

Is there any open source software that pulls out statistics out of those ad platforms into a spreadsheet or any other format?

davidwihl 6y ago
AdWords has a rich API that allows reports to downloaded in CSV format https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/repo... Disclosure: I work on the team that builds the client libraries for this API.
- stevenicr 6y ago
  Any idea if this API can pull a keywords searched and price paid for the report if the customer is using 'smart campaigns'? I will dive in if it can.. The other day I spent some hours trying to find reports to show where this friend spent his adwords money and just about every report in his dashboard was blank. He has been running this campaign for about 2 months now - so there should be some data.. I only found one report that showed any data, the rest blank - so then I went to help, then chatted with adwords support - explained the problem, what I was looking for.. told to wait some days for a response cuz covid.. okay. Got an email forwarded to me saying that you can't get that data with 'smart campaigns'... "I would like to inform you that, you can view your search phrases performance (impressions, clicks and status) in the campaigns dashboard, however, cost option is not available for smart campaigns." So... this is disturbing - and then there is this "You may use the search terms report to see how your ads performed (clicks, impressions, CTR, cost, etc) when triggered by actual searches within the Search Network. " Yet I have clicked virtually every link in the dashboard and I find nothing of the sort. I feel like I can put about 2 more hours into this - and then my advice will be to just to cancel adwords it's too opaque. So should I spend 2 hours learning this API thing, or trying to re-learn adwords to switch off smart campaigns, or a secret how to use reports with campaigns doc or what, I don't know how to get the info needed.

londons_explore 6y ago

I'd like to remind people how bad the "daily budget" is in AdWords. The design of the budget system is in Google's favour, not yours, and if you don't understand that, you'll end up paying much more than you need to. If you think setting the budget to half is a way to halve your ad spend and get half the number of clicks, you're right, but you're also naïve. If Google thinks your current rate of spend is going to exceed the daily budget, they'll effectively deactivate your ad for random impressions, leading to less spend. but that isn't the best strategy. The best strategy is to lower your bids to win fewer auctions if you want to spend less. That way, you can spend half as much, but get more ROI, since the Google AI will be only showing your ad to those most likely to be interested in it.

speeder 6y ago
But what you do when close competitors (ie: companies that are physically near, or that you even know their owner in person) start to "race" you? For example putting ever increasing budget limits in an attempt to make sure your ads are never shown?
- londons_explore 6y ago
  Budget limits simply mean your ad will still be shown, but only on N% of clicks. Bids are what you are thinking of, and I'm afraid this is the nature of an auction... Remember it isn't highest bid wins... It's highest bid multiplied by a secret quality and relevance factor that wins. If your ad is more relevant and useful to the user, it can win with even a very low bid.
londons_explore 6y ago
A double digit percentage of AdWords campaigns are budget limited on any given day. I honestly can't believe how tens of thousands of marketing folk can't notice how much money they're throwing down the drain by using the budget limiter...
- anacleto 6y ago
  I agree with the broader point of view, yet I'm not sure if all you say makes sense. Most campaigns are budget limited because auto bidding is less ops intensive and, above all, sometimes works better than manual bidding (despite Google reducing the reach as you get nearer the daily budget). Manual bidding is always preferable with fewer data points (low conversions, low clicks, no previous campaigns). Auto bidding is preferable as your GA accounts grow in conversions and the algorithms start to create a better profile of your customers.

irrational 6y ago

Has anyone ever created a psychological profile of people who click on ads? I've never clicked on an ad, so I assume my psychological profile would show that I'm not the kind of person that would be inclined to do so. But clearly there must be people who do click on ads. Who are these people and what is their psychological profile?

whycombagator 6y ago
> I've never clicked on an ad Impressive
nicklafferty 6y ago
70% of Google's revenue is from their ads, so a lot of people click on them. The HN audience is a very small minority :) https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-google/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven...
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  A lot of entities click on them. How many of them are people is debatable.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    Unless the armies of bots out there started spending real cash for products after those ad clicks, I'm going to stick with "a lot of of people click on ads".
  - dx034 6y ago
    It's the top result for pretty much any search. And it often is relevant. Why go down to the actual results if you can just click the first link and get what you want? And most users don't use ad blockers.
annihilatormod 6y ago
I've always been so interested in this as well, I also have never once (intentionally that is) clicked on an ad in my entire life. I can actually see myself doing so if the product was something I was interested in, but it almost never is. I've found I actually tend to think less of a company if I'm seeing a lot of their ads. I don't know if I've ever met anyone who has told me that they clicked on ads. I have no idea who these people are. Most of my friends even non-technical ones now, use ad-blockers by default. Sometimes this will turn into anger toward a brand even, like when I'm visiting family over the holidays and I momentarily remember just how bad cable television ads are. I just start to legitimately hate a company because of their ads. I wonder how many companies calculate value lost from an ad because of annoyed people.

nicklafferty 6y ago

Hi everyone! Author here. I'm humbled that someone felt this was HackerNews worthy, really unexpected! I'll do my best to respond to comments, but if I don't get to yours feel free to drop me an email, link is on the website.

QuantumGood 6y ago
Thanks, Nick! What are some of the most difficult actions to programmatically "prove"? Which actions seem like a good idea, but perform less profitably vs. other actions?

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

>> Gmail Ads Can Scale Does Gmail have ads? I know it used to, but I can't remember the last time I saw one. Looking at my Gmail inbox now, and I don't see a single ad anywhere on the page. I'm not running any kind of ad blocker.

nicklafferty 6y ago
Gmail ads show up in the promotion tab! If you have a unified inbox you won't see any ads.
- PopeDotNinja 6y ago
  That would explain it. Thanks!
alexpetralia 6y ago
Yes. Apparently if you used the tabbed version (with Social, Promotions, etc.), then they appear.

wheybags 6y ago

Legit question: do you ever feel conflicted about the impact of this kind of advertising on the world? And do you ever hear your peers in the industry feeling conflicted or remorseful like this?

adam_fallon_ 6y ago

I wonder if Google does anything to accurately reimburse something like ad-naseum* clicks. I imagine the probably take up a non-insignificant amount of spend at the $6m level *https://adnauseam.io/ https://adnauseam.io/

steeleyespan 6y ago
That is why you need to use CPA bidding, not keyword-based.
nicklafferty 6y ago
Google automatically refunds advertisers for fraudulent clicks each month. It's not a lot (maybe $1,000 refund on an account that spends $600k to 800k/month), but it's a line item on the invoice for sure. You have to trust them for what is a 'fraudulent' click though.

JackPoach 6y ago

Affiliate link for Supermetrics. I see what's going on...

itronitron 6y ago

I can't help but think this person was selling shirts without stripes.

forrestthewoods 6y ago

> Youtube is also great for conquesting your competitors. In the SaaS space I’m in right now I pay over $20 per click to bid on my competitor’s search keywords. I hate the modern internet. Platforms are holding developers hostage. Because if you don’t pay for ads for YOUR PRODUCT then they’ll show your competitor’s ads. It’s anti-consumer hostile. If I search for a thing I want to see that thing. Not a different thing that has a bigger as budget.

Animats 6y ago

"This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small fee if you choose to purchase something." The author is spending $6M a year on ads and is generating substantially more revenue than that, they claim. Why are they bothering with spare-change Amazon affiliate links? If they can get revenue like that, they should be making tons of money with their day job. What's wrong with this picture?

ryeguy 6y ago
Nothing is wrong with this picture. Your thought process boils down to "OP should be making enough money at their day job, why would they try to make more?" which is ridiculous.
- atarian 6y ago
  Agreed. It's leaving easy money on the table.
chrisstanchak 6y ago
Because people who make money like to make money.
peteretep 6y ago
The author’s employer was spending that money, not them?
- prawn 6y ago
  Author's past employer, too.

joshfraser 6y ago

I've also spent millions of dollars on ads. My experience is that targeting, specifically highly targeted audiences and lookalikes are far more important than creatives.

quickthrower2 6y ago
I've spend hundreds of cents on ads, so take this with salt, but is it futile to pick "the most important thing". A bit like is exercise more important, or diet? Well if you are eating only lard and running every day, then diet is important for you, and if you are eating really healthily but sitting in a chair 14 hours a day, then doing more exercise is the impactful thing.
- ta2987 6y ago
  The answer for both is still "diet."

mike_aarons 6y ago

What's the best source to learn how to property target online ads (without spending $6M)? Are there good online courses or blogs that you recommend?

nicklafferty 6y ago
It depends what ad platform you want to learn. Google has a great learning series here: https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/ https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/ If you want to learn Google Ads I'd recommend getting certified for Search, Display, and Shopping. If you want to learn Facebook and Instagram ads then that's a whole different animal.
- mike_aarons 6y ago
  Thanks for that! I'll check out the Google learning series.

ssklash 6y ago

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, getting people to click ads. I just don't see how this isn't a massive waste of money, abusing psychology to encourage people to buy things they don't need. No one is better off in this situation except Google, and they absolutely don't have our interests in mind.

cmauniada 6y ago
I understand where you are coming from but it’s not always about trying to get people to buy things right away, advertising can be used to create brand awareness as well. A positive brand image is worth a lot more than just making a couple bucks here and there off if impulsive shoppers. If you have another solution apart from google ads, I’m all ears. Seriously.

skylarchunk 6y ago

Would be cool to read about how the 6 mil was split—i.e. ratio between spend on YT ads and say, Google display, over 3 month span

nicklafferty 6y ago
Almost entirely on search! I'd say 85% search, 10% Gmail ads, 5% Youtube.

yccheok 6y ago

I'm more interested to know what kind of product they are selling with that much of Ads marketing dollar.

t0ughcritic 6y ago

Best place for non game app Installs for US?

fulldecent2 6y ago

For anybody else that spends most of their budget on advertising for your own trademark because your competitors do... the solution is to inform your audience how they should forcible disable ads and to switch to a search engine that can turn off ads.