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I have given up on Google AdWords due to the exact issue you describe. Trying to restrict my advertising budget to just one city and do a hard geographic restr

I have given up on Google AdWords due to the exact issue you describe. Trying to restrict my advertising budget to just one city and do a hard geographic restriction to just US IP addresses did not work. I filed 5 tickets over two weeks with Google trying to get this resolved, only to have over half my budget spent in another continent making impressions with people that will literally never buy the local specific product advertised.

AJ007 4y ago
I think there is probably a record breaking class action lawsuit here with the right lawyers. Damages could be 50-100% of Google's yearly gross revenue, especially when you include countries outside on the US who really don't like Google. Google intentionally modified both geo-targeting and mobile app targeting, removing the options advertisers set. For example, you opted out of mobile app targeted. Then they removed the option and you had to set it in the domain blacklist. Then they removed that. This wasn't a one off, hid, modified, and moved these options repeatedly. Advertisers didn't know that when you geo-targeted a location, by default it was set to users searching that location. You didn't want people in India who were interested in NYC? Too bad. Remember the whole Adwords prescription drug settlement. This is an organization run by people who would be serving hard time if they didn't have a legion of lawyers and bottomless pockets.
- sailfast 4y ago
  Perhaps, but I’m sure there’s a forced arbitration clause buried in a EULA somewhere…
  - lillecarl 4y ago
    The government in Sweden could call a too crappy EULA non-enforceable. It's like the anticompetitive clauses that I happily sign over here because they don't hold in court, which employers are well aware of.
Covzire 4y ago
That's ridiculous, isn't selecting a target market Marketing/Econ 101? What possible reason would they have for not giving some kind of locality options?
- heavyset_go 4y ago
  Google Knows Best™ and lack of real competition or regulation means they can do whatever they want.
- MarkMc 4y ago
  Maybe it's simply a bug, and nobody in Google is motivated to fix it.
  - zx8080 4y ago
    If the "fix" results in less profit, then sure no one will get promoted for this. So no motivation to fix.
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      I have seen this play out so many times over the years, “if we fix this bug, our revenue will go down X%” and no one will fix it. Ever. Any redesigns or redacts that fix this bug will probably fail A/B testing unless they account for this bug. It holds back the entire company from making real progress with the product, all for a few extra bucks.
      - galaxyLogic 4y ago
        It's funny it's like intentionally putting a feature that did this would make you guilty, but if it's just a bug then nobody can blame you for not fixing it. Most software licenses say the software is sold "as is", so if there are bugs you can't complain.
        6510 4y ago
heavyset_go 4y ago
Same exact thing happened to me when launching a product that was only available in the US. For whatever reason, Google was showing my ads to people on the other side of the planet and then taking my money for the privilege.
- jiggawatts 4y ago
  That sounds like fraud. Why not take Google to court?
  - justinbaker84 4y ago
    Because any challenge will lose. It is in their terms of service that what they are doing is legal. But nobody is going to read 70+ of legalese just to set up a campaign. The issue is that they have not been good faith actors for many years now. As explained by other comments above there is a hidden setting you need to change to get Google to actually run your ads in the areas you selected.
    - discordance 4y ago
      Legislation and a companies terms of service are very different things.
    - dd36 4y ago
      It doesn’t matter if it’s in the ToS if everything else misrepresents and misleads the user. Or regularly gets changed to undermine the user’s expectations. That’s bad faith, fraud, etc.
    - idontpost 4y ago
      > It is in their terms of service that what they are doing is legal I don't know what you're trying to say, but that sentence is complete nonsense. You can't make an illegal action legal by putting it in a contract.
      - drc500free 4y ago
missedthecue 4y ago
I have had the opposite experience. I have tried many different ad networks for my product and the only two that work are Google and Bing, but Bing has very low volume. Facebook's bounce rate is about 80%. I get billed for so many accidental clicks. Most other non-faang ad networks are hot garbage. So many bots. In my view, Google has a "monopoly" not because of anti-competitive behaviour... It's because they have the best ad product.
- midhhhthrow 4y ago
  Not surprising at all. Just as a mobile user, on websites, I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally clicked on any ad. Every fricken time it’s by accident because some stupid pop up or overlay was in the way of closing a modal or ad box.
  - galangalalgol 4y ago
    I do wonder, who are these people that intentionally click on ads?
    - dazc 4y ago
      Competitors of the advertiser
      - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
        Regular, non technology focused humans, mostly.
    - olyjohn 4y ago
      I just said 'fuck it' the other day, and started clicking on all ads that show up on my Facebook feed.
      - asdff 4y ago
        How many toolbars do you have installed now?
cj 4y ago
There's a hidden setting when configuring geo on campaigns. By default it's set to "People -interested- in your target location" . You need to change it to "People who are -in- your target location". This setting is hidden under a toggle, so it's very easy to miss. Definitely a dark pattern and results in a lot of garbage clicks if you overlook that setting. This is just one of many dark patterns which makes Google Ads effective only for people willing to spend the time tuning and tweaking every single setting. A big part of the problem is Google themselves - they say always use "broad" keyword matches (and of course it's the default). Broad matches are really not good for most campaigns unless you have an extremely large budget, yet if you read their documentation they heavily encourage it. While we're at it... 1) Never enable the "auto apply recommendations" setting. If you do, it gives Google free reign to modify your campaigns (this has always resulted in worse performance and more spend in my experience) 2) Never listen to a google ads rep if they call. Once you're spending enough, they'll call you every week trying to convince you to change various settings. 95% of the time their advice is just plain bad. The quality of the advice does increase once you're spending enough and get assigned more senior reps. But even the senior reps are there to get you to spend more money, their job is not to make your campaigns more effective, "ad specialists" are simply sales people in disguise.
- justinbaker84 4y ago
  These are excellent tips. I have been managing Google Ads full time for about 12 years and I run a small agency. I can confirm he is right about all of this. The challenging thing about this advice is that for most people it feels unnatural to do the opposite of what Google recommends. Usually people need to get ripped off a few times before they accept that fact that Google is no longer a good actor.
  - propogandist 4y ago
    Google's reps routinely "take care" of big agency staff and show them a good time while feeding them the same "spend optimization" suggestions. The agency staff can then claim the campaigns were optimized based on Google's suggestions, which is the perfect smokescreen. Most big brands that outsource media buying don't have SMEs to audit the media buying they've outsourced, so the result is Google makes a ton of money via their preferred middleman, advertising agencies.
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
I think this is a bigger signal than anyone appreciates If google is making it harder for people to spend money on ads, something is either seriously broken or alphabet figured out another way to make money that isn't ads
xxs 4y ago
>restrict my advertising budget to just one city This is not possible unless the end user are willing to provide geo tracking for your convenience. The IP of the phone is the one of a datacenter, and it can be in any state (speaking about the US) - heck, in some cases, there could be multiple outgoing IPs in different datacenterss, different states. It's just a fallacy and wishful thinking... unless google combines the geo location data where the user has been logged with the browser one. Which, of course it is.
- bzmrgonz 4y ago
  In this respect, I think cable companies are missing an apportunity, they should embrace and monetize geo-location. They are the only ones who can categorize us by income bracket (relatively speaking... house/neighborhood=income bracket). This has huge potential to become a targeted premium ad conduit.
dr-detroit 4y ago

AJ007 4y ago

I think there is probably a record breaking class action lawsuit here with the right lawyers. Damages could be 50-100% of Google's yearly gross revenue, especially when you include countries outside on the US who really don't like Google. Google intentionally modified both geo-targeting and mobile app targeting, removing the options advertisers set. For example, you opted out of mobile app targeted. Then they removed the option and you had to set it in the domain blacklist. Then they removed that. This wasn't a one off, hid, modified, and moved these options repeatedly. Advertisers didn't know that when you geo-targeted a location, by default it was set to users searching that location. You didn't want people in India who were interested in NYC? Too bad. Remember the whole Adwords prescription drug settlement. This is an organization run by people who would be serving hard time if they didn't have a legion of lawyers and bottomless pockets.

sailfast 4y ago
Perhaps, but I’m sure there’s a forced arbitration clause buried in a EULA somewhere…
- lillecarl 4y ago
  The government in Sweden could call a too crappy EULA non-enforceable. It's like the anticompetitive clauses that I happily sign over here because they don't hold in court, which employers are well aware of.

Covzire 4y ago

That's ridiculous, isn't selecting a target market Marketing/Econ 101? What possible reason would they have for not giving some kind of locality options?

heavyset_go 4y ago
Google Knows Best™ and lack of real competition or regulation means they can do whatever they want.
MarkMc 4y ago
Maybe it's simply a bug, and nobody in Google is motivated to fix it.
- zx8080 4y ago
  If the "fix" results in less profit, then sure no one will get promoted for this. So no motivation to fix.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    I have seen this play out so many times over the years, “if we fix this bug, our revenue will go down X%” and no one will fix it. Ever. Any redesigns or redacts that fix this bug will probably fail A/B testing unless they account for this bug. It holds back the entire company from making real progress with the product, all for a few extra bucks.
    - galaxyLogic 4y ago
      It's funny it's like intentionally putting a feature that did this would make you guilty, but if it's just a bug then nobody can blame you for not fixing it. Most software licenses say the software is sold "as is", so if there are bugs you can't complain.
      - 6510 4y ago

heavyset_go 4y ago

Same exact thing happened to me when launching a product that was only available in the US. For whatever reason, Google was showing my ads to people on the other side of the planet and then taking my money for the privilege.

jiggawatts 4y ago
That sounds like fraud. Why not take Google to court?
- justinbaker84 4y ago
  Because any challenge will lose. It is in their terms of service that what they are doing is legal. But nobody is going to read 70+ of legalese just to set up a campaign. The issue is that they have not been good faith actors for many years now. As explained by other comments above there is a hidden setting you need to change to get Google to actually run your ads in the areas you selected.
  - discordance 4y ago
    Legislation and a companies terms of service are very different things.
  - dd36 4y ago
    It doesn’t matter if it’s in the ToS if everything else misrepresents and misleads the user. Or regularly gets changed to undermine the user’s expectations. That’s bad faith, fraud, etc.
  - idontpost 4y ago
    > It is in their terms of service that what they are doing is legal I don't know what you're trying to say, but that sentence is complete nonsense. You can't make an illegal action legal by putting it in a contract.
    - drc500free 4y ago

missedthecue 4y ago

I have had the opposite experience. I have tried many different ad networks for my product and the only two that work are Google and Bing, but Bing has very low volume. Facebook's bounce rate is about 80%. I get billed for so many accidental clicks. Most other non-faang ad networks are hot garbage. So many bots. In my view, Google has a "monopoly" not because of anti-competitive behaviour... It's because they have the best ad product.

midhhhthrow 4y ago
Not surprising at all. Just as a mobile user, on websites, I don’t think I’ve ever intentionally clicked on any ad. Every fricken time it’s by accident because some stupid pop up or overlay was in the way of closing a modal or ad box.
- galangalalgol 4y ago
  I do wonder, who are these people that intentionally click on ads?
  - dazc 4y ago
    Competitors of the advertiser
    - disgruntledphd2 4y ago
      Regular, non technology focused humans, mostly.
  - olyjohn 4y ago
    I just said 'fuck it' the other day, and started clicking on all ads that show up on my Facebook feed.
    - asdff 4y ago
      How many toolbars do you have installed now?

cj 4y ago

There's a hidden setting when configuring geo on campaigns. By default it's set to "People -interested- in your target location" . You need to change it to "People who are -in- your target location". This setting is hidden under a toggle, so it's very easy to miss. Definitely a dark pattern and results in a lot of garbage clicks if you overlook that setting. This is just one of many dark patterns which makes Google Ads effective only for people willing to spend the time tuning and tweaking every single setting. A big part of the problem is Google themselves - they say always use "broad" keyword matches (and of course it's the default). Broad matches are really not good for most campaigns unless you have an extremely large budget, yet if you read their documentation they heavily encourage it. While we're at it... 1) Never enable the "auto apply recommendations" setting. If you do, it gives Google free reign to modify your campaigns (this has always resulted in worse performance and more spend in my experience) 2) Never listen to a google ads rep if they call. Once you're spending enough, they'll call you every week trying to convince you to change various settings. 95% of the time their advice is just plain bad. The quality of the advice does increase once you're spending enough and get assigned more senior reps. But even the senior reps are there to get you to spend more money, their job is not to make your campaigns more effective, "ad specialists" are simply sales people in disguise.

justinbaker84 4y ago
These are excellent tips. I have been managing Google Ads full time for about 12 years and I run a small agency. I can confirm he is right about all of this. The challenging thing about this advice is that for most people it feels unnatural to do the opposite of what Google recommends. Usually people need to get ripped off a few times before they accept that fact that Google is no longer a good actor.
- propogandist 4y ago
  Google's reps routinely "take care" of big agency staff and show them a good time while feeding them the same "spend optimization" suggestions. The agency staff can then claim the campaigns were optimized based on Google's suggestions, which is the perfect smokescreen. Most big brands that outsource media buying don't have SMEs to audit the media buying they've outsourced, so the result is Google makes a ton of money via their preferred middleman, advertising agencies.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

I think this is a bigger signal than anyone appreciates If google is making it harder for people to spend money on ads, something is either seriously broken or alphabet figured out another way to make money that isn't ads

xxs 4y ago

>restrict my advertising budget to just one city This is not possible unless the end user are willing to provide geo tracking for your convenience. The IP of the phone is the one of a datacenter, and it can be in any state (speaking about the US) - heck, in some cases, there could be multiple outgoing IPs in different datacenterss, different states. It's just a fallacy and wishful thinking... unless google combines the geo location data where the user has been logged with the browser one. Which, of course it is.

bzmrgonz 4y ago
In this respect, I think cable companies are missing an apportunity, they should embrace and monetize geo-location. They are the only ones who can categorize us by income bracket (relatively speaking... house/neighborhood=income bracket). This has huge potential to become a targeted premium ad conduit.

dr-detroit 4y ago