I have managed Google ad accounts in the $100k to $300k spend year and ads like these are likely under $.25 or less. There isn’t that much competition and there really wouldn’t be that much profit to be made. The most expensive ads I have ever run were just touching on $3-5 per click, but those were on $1k-$2k+ products in a very saturated market. Given the majority of these services on these websites are pretty cheap, I’d assume their ad spend is pretty minimal.
That’s a fair assessment tbh, the bulk my adspend was 2018-2020 when they started getting astronomically expensive, and I was selling tech products/financial services which were pricier than entertainment stuff, which were also insanely competitive. But as you niche down to smaller audiences, CPC generally increases
But the tldr is that people absolutely can cost you a ton of money by mindlessly clicking your ads, and I was targeted by this in the past
It is. Otherwise your competition could just run your daily spend down. NOT that anyone would… um… ever do that or anything.
haha… ha…
Very cool. Yea, a lot has changed in the last few years. Google ads is dominated by their AI models now. It’s a bit creepy to see those campaigns out performing well built campaigns that have been running for ages. That said, lots of platforms are still lagging behind. The biggest being Amazon. But they don’t care! lol. They are getting your money no matter what so they don’t have much incentive to improve.
You should see the ROAS on some of the AD services they run. Pure trash. You’re lucky to break even. I was working with one of their account reps a few years ago and they asked if our target would be 3:1 (barely profitable). I thought they were joking and they said some campaigns may only see a 2:1 or less. Minimum spend was $35k but they wanted $100k+ for just THREE campaigns. They basically made you buy these ridiculous ads to ‘barter’ with them over other products they offered.
100%
There are lots of ways to be very unethical in this space. Some of that is perpetuated by the very platforms that are running the ads. Facebook was notorious for it. I know they got caught inflating their numbers, but it was really worse than that. If you didn’t dial in your targeting, all your spend would magically be used up in the early hours of the morning. Weird seeing tons of clicks from India… totally nothing fishy there…
Ya this is more or less why I stopped FB ads, it kind of just became garbage in->garbage out, even though they were incredibly profitable at first (they also got rid of a lot of things you used to be able to target for, ie, income, education level, and various demographics). There were lots of people saying they were lying about a bunch of stuff, but it was hard to tell if it was just sour grapes or not.
Google was always pretty consistent and if there wasn’t the traffic for search terms, it wouldn’t use up the adspend. I’d be interested in checking out their AI advertising, but I probably wouldn’t even bother with traditional PPC advertising anymore unless I was running a local service company of some sort (ie, “zerve’s plumbing” or something like that). Influencer marketing still seems like the best path, and although costs have probably changed, I remember you could get people like Kylie Jenner to shill your product for $50k or so, which really is a steal if you think about it
Don’t worry about it. Rarely does he have any idea what he’s arguing about either, just fishing for attention. Usually takes no more than 2 or 3 of his posts on any outside topic and the abundance of ignorance is fully revealed. The only thing about him you can trust implicitly is that he’s authentically genuinely fake. Also on public assistance so the taxpayers can fund his WoW addiction, allowing him to play the game 100% of his waking hours. Disregard and ignore is the sound play.
Yea, FB used to be amazing on all fronts. Really sucks what they did. Engagement is garbage if you don’t spend money. So it’s less about serving up products and more about just getting basic visibility. I get it. They are making boat loads of cash, but its far less one to one with whatever you’re actually promoting.
FB overall still can be decent for brand promotion and building audiences based off website traffic and abandoned carts, but it’s still not great.
