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For most businesses today, Google ads are not cost-effective. This applies double when you are buying ads for your company's name: you would have gotten the cl

by powera 3y ago

For most businesses today, Google ads are not cost-effective. This applies double when you are buying ads for your company's name: you would have gotten the clicks even if you weren't paying! But people still do it, presumably on the "nobody got fired for buying IBM" theory.

vkou 3y ago
If you weren't paying for a search for your company name, your competitors would be paying to have their ads displayed on a search for your company name. All the major ad networks let you run all sorts of comparisons and experiments for ad ROI. If ROI was routinely negative, the billion-dollar budgets would have long been pulled back by beancounters and cost-cutters in the buying firms, especially when they have the excuse of a recession to do so. Yes, occasionally you get 'I run a boutique business and I find that <X advertising system has horrible ROI>' blog posts on HN. Maybe they are structuring their ad campaigns wrong. Maybe their business shouldn't be advertised at all. Maybe they are using the wrong channel (Search, display, social) to advertise with. It's a pain in the ass to figure this out if you're a small business. But larger businesses with serious ad devote a lot of effort to figuring this out - and will reshuffle their marketing budgets to the high ROI channels.
kccqzy 3y ago
> you would have gotten the clicks even if you weren't paying! No you won't. For power users who use ad blockers or can recognize ads, maybe you will. For the majority of users those are lost clicks. (Also those are the easiest money Google can make.)
Gustomaximus 3y ago
> For most businesses today, Google ads are not cost-effective. Is that true? I've been in this game for quite a while now and the cast majority of business have ROI positive ads. I haven't kept record but would think 8/10 businesses type ratio.
justapassenger 3y ago
> For most businesses today, Google ads are not cost-effective. This applies double when you are buying ads for your company's name: you would have gotten the clicks even if you weren't paying! Source? It’s always extremely funny to read engineers on hacker news to make claims about ads, with no understanding of how the business work. And the underlying assumption that companies throw away billions of dollars away, with no results to show for it.
- vkou 3y ago
  I wonder if someone from marketing chimed in on a testing topic, to point out that for most lines of code written today, unit tests and integration tests aren't cost effective, and that companies are wasting billions of dollars on writing and running tests that pass 99% of the time, anyways...
  - harry8 3y ago
    If it was a marketing person with serious stats chops using the data to make the case I'd absolutely listen to their case. Yeah marketing serious stats chops, never seen it yet. Show us the flipping data if you want to make the case for something otherwise the /only/ option is to update your prior with bayes. xyz corp & co spends billions on it = must work. Reasonable. every small co. I've heard of loses money at it- looks bad. Businesses built on brand advertising, chanel, coca cola, etc don't use google at all. Why not? Looks bad. Modern, internet marketing maestros who have built major brand names on the internet did not pay google a cent. Tesla - rivals mercedes with no ads at all, Trump maga etc. (no I don't like them not that it's relevant). - Looks bad. Google, advertising to /internet/ /users/ don't use google to do it, they have tv ads! Because google advertising works so effectively? I dunno, I guess it could work. It could work badly but fashionably for large cos? It could be a group-think crock. The last 2 shouldn't be as plausible as they are though. Why has google let them be that plausible if their stuff works and they can produce the numbers? Or maybe they, I dunno, can't? So there it is, the slam-dunk case of nothing.
    - soared 3y ago
adrr 3y ago
Until your competitors runs ads on searches for your company and your organic result doesn’t show up unless the user scrolls down.
- gretch 3y ago
  Why can’t you also run ads on searches for their company? And if they buy both sets of ads, then they just have to pay for all of those leads? And if they do that, then what are you doing with your marketing dollars?

by powera 3y ago

vkou 3y ago

If you weren't paying for a search for your company name, your competitors would be paying to have their ads displayed on a search for your company name. All the major ad networks let you run all sorts of comparisons and experiments for ad ROI. If ROI was routinely negative, the billion-dollar budgets would have long been pulled back by beancounters and cost-cutters in the buying firms, especially when they have the excuse of a recession to do so. Yes, occasionally you get 'I run a boutique business and I find that <X advertising system has horrible ROI>' blog posts on HN. Maybe they are structuring their ad campaigns wrong. Maybe their business shouldn't be advertised at all. Maybe they are using the wrong channel (Search, display, social) to advertise with. It's a pain in the ass to figure this out if you're a small business. But larger businesses with serious ad devote a lot of effort to figuring this out - and will reshuffle their marketing budgets to the high ROI channels.

kccqzy 3y ago

> you would have gotten the clicks even if you weren't paying! No you won't. For power users who use ad blockers or can recognize ads, maybe you will. For the majority of users those are lost clicks. (Also those are the easiest money Google can make.)

Gustomaximus 3y ago

> For most businesses today, Google ads are not cost-effective. Is that true? I've been in this game for quite a while now and the cast majority of business have ROI positive ads. I haven't kept record but would think 8/10 businesses type ratio.

justapassenger 3y ago

> For most businesses today, Google ads are not cost-effective. This applies double when you are buying ads for your company's name: you would have gotten the clicks even if you weren't paying! Source? It’s always extremely funny to read engineers on hacker news to make claims about ads, with no understanding of how the business work. And the underlying assumption that companies throw away billions of dollars away, with no results to show for it.

vkou 3y ago
I wonder if someone from marketing chimed in on a testing topic, to point out that for most lines of code written today, unit tests and integration tests aren't cost effective, and that companies are wasting billions of dollars on writing and running tests that pass 99% of the time, anyways...
- harry8 3y ago
  If it was a marketing person with serious stats chops using the data to make the case I'd absolutely listen to their case. Yeah marketing serious stats chops, never seen it yet. Show us the flipping data if you want to make the case for something otherwise the /only/ option is to update your prior with bayes. xyz corp & co spends billions on it = must work. Reasonable. every small co. I've heard of loses money at it- looks bad. Businesses built on brand advertising, chanel, coca cola, etc don't use google at all. Why not? Looks bad. Modern, internet marketing maestros who have built major brand names on the internet did not pay google a cent. Tesla - rivals mercedes with no ads at all, Trump maga etc. (no I don't like them not that it's relevant). - Looks bad. Google, advertising to /internet/ /users/ don't use google to do it, they have tv ads! Because google advertising works so effectively? I dunno, I guess it could work. It could work badly but fashionably for large cos? It could be a group-think crock. The last 2 shouldn't be as plausible as they are though. Why has google let them be that plausible if their stuff works and they can produce the numbers? Or maybe they, I dunno, can't? So there it is, the slam-dunk case of nothing.
  - soared 3y ago

adrr 3y ago

Until your competitors runs ads on searches for your company and your organic result doesn’t show up unless the user scrolls down.

gretch 3y ago
Why can’t you also run ads on searches for their company? And if they buy both sets of ads, then they just have to pay for all of those leads? And if they do that, then what are you doing with your marketing dollars?