Comment by jonas21
19 hours ago
I’d suggest that the title should be, “Competition for Google AdWords is so strong that unsophisticated advertisers can no longer get a good return. Where do I promote my business now?”
19 hours ago
I’d suggest that the title should be, “Competition for Google AdWords is so strong that unsophisticated advertisers can no longer get a good return. Where do I promote my business now?”
He had presumably used it for 10 years successfully. Surely he gained some expertise over that time period.
He probably just got a new competitor in the space. Easy to see good returns on online ad spend when all traffic just goes to you by default.
Ad noob here; how would you test this hypothesis?
1 reply →
Or returns gradually went down until it stopped working altogether.
Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded.
-- Yogi Berra
I have a feeling that it is mostly unsophisticated advertisers bidding up the price of AdWords.
As someone who leads large parts of ad tech for TikTok and worked at Google for 10 years, it’s the K shaped economy that is pressing SMBs out. Pure and simple
Everyone can make up some complex theories but I see it in the numbers every day. Spend distribution is now k shaped and SMBs simply can’t compete at top end performance levels.
This seems one of the more important comments here - a K shaped economy (Rich get richer up the rising arm of the K and the rest of us are on the down arm) dominates everything (ie asset price inflation means if you had assets in 2020 you probably still do else good luck) and this just is one of many ways the playing field has tilted towards the richest.
And it is always a choice - we choose platforms and regulations and spending priorities. If “we” choose a different set of tech regulations the K shaped economy can be put back in its box.
For me the problem was most clearly outlined by Cory Doctorow “developers did not unionise or rebel in time because they thought of themselves as temporarily embarrassed entrepreneurs”.
1 reply →
There is probably an element of truth in that however when I looked at the people who outbid me on keywords half were selling high value products where they had enough margin to make it viable. The other half seemed to be spaffing their money up the wall.
Can you share any numbers ie roughly how different the spend is? SMB spends $1k on ads but grandes spend $1M or something? Idk how it works.
4 replies →
Wouldn't the K shape only affect targeting of affluent users that are desirable to luxury brands?
5 replies →
it's not "competition"
it's bots creating too high noise-to-ratio for feedback loop