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Ask HN: Is Google adwords totally useless?

13 points by teddyuk ↗ HN
I started a small campaign on AdWords, £10 down, 8 clicks so really small numbers I had a look at them and found:

-2 were from sites that were really spammy and had no actual adverts so I don't know how they referred to my site -2 were from sites that had zero relevance to my keywords -4 were from sites that didn't exist

Is this what other people see? I know the numbers are low but why pay for crap? Or am I missing something??

11 comments

[ 13.9 ms ] story [ 99.3 ms ] thread
teddyuk
Also I constantly aced their support and they said they would call me after 30 minutes over 12 hours and nothing
sharemywin
I don't use partner sites just google.com to start with. Also, get rid of tablet and mobile traffic at first. If I can get that working I go from there. Also, it's pretty expensive traffic.
teddyuk
From my little foray it looks pretty crap so how does it make so much money? are partner sites ever good?

I'm just trying to see what I am missing??

eminkel
Almost never.

Mobile traffic is generally garbage, too.

AdWords is a monster to wrangle.

Gustomaximus
Heavy headline. There is reason companies spend ~$70 billion on Adwords annually. So yes you are missing something.

Sounds like you may have been doing display not search. I'd avoid this until you learn more about campaign setup. Search side is easier/safer. Display can have better returns but is harder to achieve.

If you really want to advertise I say get a few thousand $$ together and get someone who knows what they are doing to have a crack.

teddyuk
It isn't really the cost I am worried about it is the fact that apart from 2 which were from a loosely related site they looked like bogus clicks i.e. some were from non-existent sites - how can that be from 10 only 2 were valid?
Gustomaximus
Do you have examples of non-existent sites. That is something new to me.

Spammy. Very much. Even more so if you advertise in mobile apps.

GFischer
As other posters have said, you really have to know how to set up a campaign, what keywords to use, how to target, the difference between search and display, etcetera.

There are all kinds of people delivering services if you want to run a real campaign.

I ran a 100 dollar campaign for a university project, it was an interesting learning experience, but it also taught me that for any real campaigns I'd be better off hiring an expert - and they come at all sizes and prices, from independant contractors up to the biggest marketing companies in the world.

In my own sample campaign we did get a lot of noise, and a very low click-through rate. We calculated a cost per customer of U$ 8.

crucini
It sounds like you've barely scratched the surface. I'm no expert, but there's a lot to know in order to get good value from adwords. For starters google "google keyword research". Any keyword which is too popular with advertisers should have too high a price per click, so it can never be profitable. So the art is too build around undervalued keywords. I have no firsthand experience with that.

10L/8 clicks = 1.20L/click. If we assume 1% net conversion rate (strawman number), your customer acquisition cost is about 120L. Is the customer ltv high enough to justify this?

guytpearson1
Is this a serious post?

I make a great living off Adwords. God bless it.

SerLava
AdWords isn't useless, but it's pretty overpriced. Which can often mean it's useless.

The big players run AdWords campaigns like... you know, ads. They cost money. Then you sell those new customers more shit down the road. Requires complicated analytics and customer tracking. A lot of people are just in it for the big data.

It's not supposed to be a slot machine. But Google isn't arguing with you if you want to treat it like a slot machine.