[HN Gopher] We spent $20k on Google Play pre-registration ads
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We spent $20k on Google Play pre-registration ads
Author : andreaskam
Score : 184 points
Date : 2023-07-13 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (andreaskambanis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (andreaskambanis.com)
| kanodiaayush wrote:
| Is this google ad campaign linked to the play store directly? How
| does the ad campaign figure out whether a 'download' or
| conversion happened? If its a click/google search campaign, won't
| it stop at redirecting a user to the app download page?
| CodesInChaos wrote:
| Conversion rate issues aside, why did they choose pre-launch ads
| over post launch advertising?
|
| Some apps rely on a critical mass of users on launch (multiplayer
| games, social networks, dating sites, etc.) so generating hype
| pre-launch is important for these.
|
| But this looks like an app where it doesn't matter for a user how
| many other users there are. So slowly ramping up your ads after
| launch, while you work out bugs and other flaws looks like a much
| better approach to me. This also allows you to track ad
| effectiveness and adjust as you go, instead of taking a big
| gamble.
| andreaskam wrote:
| We felt that getting a lot of traction on the launch day might
| give us some good momentum in the charts. With hindsight, I'd
| wish we'd saved our money and spent it after launch, when we
| could sense check the figures that Google Ads is reporting.
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| Or target a few low competition keywords with custom landing
| pages and get the traffic for "free". Looks like Google has
| plenty of traffic in that segment and low competition.
| rhuru wrote:
| I have built ad network tech from scratch and worked for several
| large networks.
|
| Here is my tip. Always hire specialists to do these sort of ad
| campaigns for you. It is not something you can figure out easily
| and lessons here are expensive. OP learned some of the very basic
| principles of this industry for a price tag for $20K. I have seen
| people do even worse.
|
| 1. Whatever Ads are one of the options you have. Other options
| are paying users cash to install your app, billboards, tv ads,
| radio ads, asking teens to distribute app install stickers and
| what not. I would recommend trying the cheaper method first that
| do not change much with scale.
|
| 2. Ignore the network reported stats. What matters is your
| business. What is the true cost of acquiring a user that meets
| all you requirements ?(e.g. paying user) In OPs case this number
| could be in $00s now. Totally not worth it.
|
| 3. Learn that number with smaller spend. (Smaller spend = around
| $2K for Google)
|
| 4. Optimize on that number using different strategies.
|
| Chances are that for most apps your cost to acquire a user would
| always be more than the revenue generated by that user. Making
| these ads always a losing proposition.
|
| Then why do folks do it ?
|
| * If you spend $0000000 at scale (like Uber, FB in early days)
| even though you are making a loss per user, the large number of
| users with network effects snowballs bringing organic growth.
| This is compounded if the app itself deals with real money (Uber
| ) or has deep network effects (Signal, Instagram, Snapchat) which
| bring in organic growht.
|
| * A meal prep app is never going to be profitable in this manner.
|
| If I was OP I would have probably tried to find all the instagram
| influencers who talk about meals and then emailed them about a
| partnership. Would have paid $500 or so to tier 2 influencers to
| make coiple of posts about the app.
| rhuru wrote:
| On other than those $20K helped you get this post on the front
| page of HN. This is going ot add few hundred installs for your
| app. Note that you salvaged that damage already.
| tennis_80 wrote:
| This doesn't surprise me. A user has a need - in this case a food
| diet app. They find this app, think it looks good, and registers
| their interest. Good.
|
| Launch day comes around, they're nowhere to be seen - why? Well,
| they may have found another app, or decided they don't need the
| app after all - say they lost interest in the diet / health kick.
|
| I feel like app registrations would only work for "special" apps
| that don't have close competitors or have a particular buzz -
| e.g. Threads, ChatGPT etc
|
| EDIT: I've misunderstood - the app was supposed to auto-download
| on launch day. It didn't. This story makes a lot more sense now!
| I assumed it just sent a push notification / email.
| danpalmer wrote:
| I work on related things at Google so have to be careful what I
| say here, but to clarify things a little...
|
| In the docs it makes it clear that there are a bunch of caveats
| to the auto installation. Reading through these caveats, they
| are all there for good UX reasons, essentially to ensure that
| what gets advertised is what gets installed (no bait-and-
| switch), and that users are going to be ok with the auto-
| installation (doesn't eat all their data or battery life).
| There is advice on how to improve eligibility, it's not clear
| if the author followed this or not.
|
| The eligibility factors will vary from user to user, and may
| between user bases as well. For example if you have an app that
| is popular with users on devices with less storage space, there
| are likely to be more who can't install it because they don't
| have enough space.
|
| One or more of these factors may not have been met for the
| author/publisher of this app, and it's also possible that their
| target market also doesn't meet the conditions for auto-install
| as much.
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| Alternative idea: spend $1,000 or less on something that is
| unproven. You speculated and it turned out different than
| expectations. That's the name of the game. The only right answer
| is test. But you shouldn't expose yourself to so much downside.
| andreaskam wrote:
| For sure. Live and learn. And hoping to share it here so others
| can learn from my mistake.
| Farbklex wrote:
| Was this really an option here? They probably aren't launching
| that many apps on the Play Store. So they had one shot to try
| out a pre-registration campaign to get a big app launch.
| abtinf wrote:
| App launch is a unique situation: you can only do it once. As
| such, pre-launch advertising is _always_ unproven. You would
| have to have high confidence in the integrity of the ad
| network.
|
| Since online advertising is essentially untrusted, with an
| entire industry dedicated to auditing its claims, I think the
| correct approach is to never try this form of unprovable
| advertising.
| laurent123456 wrote:
| With 17,000+ pre-registrations, it sounds like their ad campaign
| wasn't well targeted either. You can get a ton of people visiting
| your app page but if it's done based on vague or generic
| keywords, the clicks you get won't mean much.
|
| Seems a bit crazy to spend that much without any cap for a small
| indie company too. If the app is any good, you can always run
| more ad campaigns after the launch.
| andreaskam wrote:
| We didn't cap it because we were getting conversions at around
| $1.36 USD. This is more than we'd normally spend for an
| install, but we thought it's worth it because it also gives us
| launch day momentum. Obviously, had we known that actually only
| 1 in 12 were going to install, we'd of killed that campaign
| instantly.
| kebsup wrote:
| The app seems to be running at 60hz on Android with 90hz screen.
| It's a common giveaway for Flutter apps, but can be fixed by
| forcing higher refresh rate.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. I was under the impression that Play
| Store pre-registration results in automatic installation. This is
| good to know that it is not.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| If I am understanding this right, the crux of the issue is that
| Google Play doesn't auto-install apps that you seemingly signed
| up to have auto-installed?
|
| Seems like a bug on Googles side, whether intentional or not.
| andreaskam wrote:
| If it's a bug then I'm hoping to raise some awareness of it
| here because the Google support team didn't want to hear about
| it.
| Farbklex wrote:
| Neat article.
|
| I would like to criticize your landing page for your app. It very
| very much bugs me, when landing pages for apps have only a QR
| code which I am supposed to scan with my phone.
|
| Luckily, you also added a "Get the App" button. Problem is, that
| you try to be smart and automatically forward me to either the
| Google Play Store or Apple App Store. Since I opened the link on
| a Macbook Pro, you assume I want to see the App Store. However, I
| am an Android user.
|
| I just want to be able to see two buttons, one for each store and
| click it myself.
|
| You are by far not the only one who does this. Would be great if
| App devs would change it all together.
| frognumber wrote:
| Yeah. The landing page didn't answer the questions I had. It's
| a hard pass. Feedback:
|
| - Give a long enough free trial to get addicted (e.g. 30-90
| days). If you're delivering value, I will pay $4/month
|
| - For me to have value, you'd need to plan things like
| ingredients. In a best-case scenario, you'd integrate with
| Instacart and other delivery services, and there would be zero
| waste. You'd also make use of ingredients I already have.
|
| I have no idea what it is you actually do, though, so I won't
| install. I can already subscribe to a recipe listserv, and I
| have no idea the delta. Is this the same thing, only for $$$
| and with aggressive data scraping from my mobile?
|
| You don't need to answer here. Answer on your landing page. I
| was curious around to click around, and find crickets.
|
| Thank you for posting and sharing, though.
| andreaskam wrote:
| Yeah we often think about the free trial vs freemium
| experience. I really admire apps like FitBod who just let you
| try out 3 free workouts without needing to commit to a free
| trial.
|
| Eating healthy is one of the toughest habits to commit to.
| The benefit of the 7 day free trial is it really pushes
| people to try it out during those 7 days and see if it's for
| them. Otherwise you download and think "I'll look at this
| later" and then never come back to it.
|
| Not saying what we have is perfect and I'm still looking for
| better options. We're always down to give people a longer
| trial if they get in touch with us. I get that 7 days won't
| be enough for everyone.
|
| RE: Instacart integration - we already integrate!
| paxys wrote:
| How many people out there install smartphone apps from a
| desktop web browser? You anyways have to pull out the phone to
| use the app. Having a QR code front and center and navigating
| to the app store listing on the phone is the preferable outcome
| for 99% of customers. The majority of them aren't even signed
| in to Apple/Google on the desktop browser.
| Swizec wrote:
| Most people are already on their phone when they see your
| website. Are they supposed to pull out another phone to scan
| the qr code?
| andreaskam wrote:
| When they're on their phone it'll show a download button
| instead :-)
|
| The QR code only appears on desktop.
| izacus wrote:
| Again, what do you gain with inconveniencing the user and
| adding friction, instead of just taking them to Play
| Store and letting them install with one click?
| paxys wrote:
| There's already a download link next to it.
| perk wrote:
| You can take a screenshot and long click the QR to go to
| the link. At least on iOS. No need for another phone ;)
|
| Not exactly obvious to say the least, but it works.
| delecti wrote:
| I almost exclusively install apps from my desktop browser. Is
| that not normal? I find it much easier to verify that I'm
| looking at the app that I intend.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I do. But even if I didn't I might just want to see the play
| store page without jumping through hoops.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up - I won't use this for my project.
| andreaskam wrote:
| Happy I saved you some $$$
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| > MealPrepPro is built by a small indie dev team and $20k was a
| painful amount of money for us to waste. With pre-registration
| ads you're putting all your faith in Google that they'll deliver
| the conversions they're showing in the ads reports
|
| I am running a small independent startup myself where I count
| every nickel and dime. I tried Google Ads (there was an offer to
| spend $400 to get an additional $400). Besides a few sign ups, it
| didn't pay off at all. I would never even consider spending
| $20,000 (!?). I talked with a few newsletters (starts at $1500
| per quarter for a campaign) and social influencers (starts at
| $700 per post) and if money wasn't an issue I would buy
| marketing, but in the early stage the most important resource is
| myself. If I spend my savings that I live off, I risk running out
| of money and must go back to being a freelance developer (and the
| European market sucks at the moment).
| dougSF70 wrote:
| I have spent a few $00 possible $000 on Google Ads and had
| nothing to show from it. Lots of traffic no sign ups. I then
| emailed a list and got a 4% conversion, so it isnt the product,
| it must be the targetting. As Bob Hoffman (a contrarian ad
| thinker) says do you want to die wasteful (spend $ on analogue
| advertising) or unknown (spend $ on line advertising)
| burnte wrote:
| Their biggest problem was not doing research. Conversions are
| hard, usually a percent or two. But what is a conversion? It's
| getting a user to respond to your CTA. In this case, the CTA
| was to get people to see the ad and click through to a
| "preorder" page. They got what they bought. The problems were
| they expected a greater response, didn't know what they were
| getting into, and spend $$$ on ads before anyone could get the
| product. That was the real killer, that's why the money was
| wasted. They thought they were spending 20k for installs, they
| were actually spending 20k on were clicks to an app no one
| could get.
|
| Don't spend money on preorders if you're not collecting payment
| data now and authorization to charge it later. Anything else
| isn't a preorder, it's a waste of time.
| aantix wrote:
| Just thinking out loud - is there any way to create a
| profitable Google Ad campaign without sinking thousands of
| money ramping up and learning?
|
| It doesn't appear so.
| phpnode wrote:
| The best way to learn is to become a PPC expert at some
| marketing company, you'll still burn through thousands
| learning all the tricks, but at least they won't be _your_
| thousands.
| itake wrote:
| I think it is possible, but you can't do it on the freemium
| model, or very aggressive paywalls for premium features.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| "is there any way to create a profitable Google Ad campaign
| without sinking thousands of money ramping up and learning?"
|
| Yes, it's called hiring an expert with a track record who
| will get you profitable a lot faster than you probably could
| yourself (assuming you are inexperienced).
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Where do you find these experts? I've tried managing
| campaigns myself and concluded the same thing you did, but
| have struggled to find an expert. There are so many people
| online who claim they can run your campaign but I have a
| hard time separating the real experts from the "fake it til
| you make it" types.
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| It's difficult to find, especially when you are working
| with a limited ad spend. Why would someone skilled run a
| 30K month campaign for you, when they could make a lot
| more money running a 300K per month campaign for someone
| else.
|
| When working with smaller numbers, you are going to be
| working with someone who is a little less experienced,
| more than likely. So, finding someone who can share a
| solid, provable track record may be a little harder.
| Figuring out a compensation scheme that takes their
| inexperience into account and shifts some of the risk to
| them as a result of this is key. You cannot enter a deal
| in which they just take a percentage of ad spend, because
| if they don't produce sales, then they get their money
| and you lose big.
|
| I guess what I am trying to say is that you need to focus
| on the actual "deal" that you make with the person
| running your CPA campaigns to ensure that the risk is a
| bit more balanced and incentives are aligned...
| austinpena wrote:
| It's very hard to find good talent under $5k/mo. At those
| rates and above usually finding a referral works.
|
| UpWork is spotty.
| rcme wrote:
| I haven't fully validated this idea yet, but I ran a Google
| ad campaign for $5 a day for a mailing list signup page that
| I was planning a business around. Click through rates were
| around 2.5%, which seems to be the baseline, i.e. a 2.5%
| click through rate basically means no engagement. One thing
| that was interesting, however, is that certain keywords had
| click through rates around 7%. I wanted to try re-targeting
| the campaign to just those keywords but I lost motivation.
| GordonS wrote:
| Was this a long time ago, or for a totally empty niche? I
| ask, because I'm lucky if I can buy a single click through
| for $5, and it's been like that for several years now.
| rcme wrote:
| This was a few months ago. I don't think it was totally
| niche. It was about $1 per click through and I run the
| campaign for 2 months, which was an accident. I meant to
| pause a lot sooner.
| HaZeust wrote:
| Generally yes, it's just a different approach. Most people in
| the Google Ads space actually get their start with warm
| intros to companies and/or individuals that want to get into
| digital marketing, and just get a percentage of their monthly
| ad-spend for contribution. You _can_ haggle with price per
| lead or revenue share from the leads that convert, but you
| still need capital to initially launch those campaigns.
|
| When I started out in lead-generation using Google Ads for
| ACA coverage, Final Expense insurance, roofing and solar
| installs, I did it in this order:
|
| 1.) Reached out to insurance agencies & roofing companies I
| already knew, convinced them I could do their digital
| marketing campaigns for a percentage of their monthly ad
| spend;
|
| 2.) Got upfront capital through that ad spend percentage
| _and_ had the clients manage the ad spend for their own
| campaigns, and used the ad spend percentage capital to build
| cost per-lead campaigns for other clients. These were far
| more lucrative in investment, but cost a lot of money
| upfront.
|
| 3.) Proved my merit for clients in both approaches, and used
| my second quarter audit to "upgrade" the clients in number 1
| to a cost per-lead, and negotiated with clients in number 2
| to a revenue share for converted leads.
|
| It's a grind, it's hard, but it can be done.
| phantom784 wrote:
| This sort of ad just doesn't seem useful for this type of app.
|
| I'd think most people would want a meal planning app that they
| can use right away, so they'd just download a different app when
| they see yours isn't available yet.
|
| I wonder how many of those "pre-registrations" thought they could
| install it right away, saw they couldn't and then just found
| something else.
| andreaskam wrote:
| All good points. Especially about meal planning being something
| you're looking to solve right now, not in a few weeks time.
| Unlike a game, where a few weeks from now you'll still be
| looking for new entertainment options. Thanks for adding your
| thoughts, I think they'll be helpful for someone else
| considering pre-registration for their app.
| andreaskam wrote:
| Short version: We used a Google Ads pre-registration campaign to
| get installs for our app. Google charged us for 16,171
| conversions. When we launched, we only received 1,371 installs.
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| And we threw $20k in ad spend at it (which quite frankly is
| insane).
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Seems like at this point you'd come out ahead if you just
| mailed people 2 dollar bills with the promise of another 2
| dollar bill if they install your app
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Indeed there are groups and "businesses" that "pay" you to
| install apps. I assume someone is on the other side of that
| transaction paying for new user installs. Doing it yourself
| would probably be cheaper and you would probably be
| offering a much higher payout than those systems.
| munk-a wrote:
| Honestly, there's a lot of advertising out there that I
| think could benefit from direct monetary incentives. A
| large portion of the population is becoming resistant to
| regular advertising (good for them) and opting in to ad
| blockers when available. Actually paying people for the
| attention you're demanding from them would be refreshingly
| different... and heck, it worked for timeshares.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| That's a good point. I got some in-game spam mail in
| World of Warcraft the other day with a few gold coins
| attached. Even though it was an amount you'd earn in
| about 2 seconds of playing the game (real world value:
| 4/100ths of a cent), it made me a lot less angry than ads
| usually do
| LastTrain wrote:
| What was the time between pre-registration and release?
| andreaskam wrote:
| We started the pre-registration around 2 months before
| release and it ran right up until release. The max you can do
| is 90 days.
| _delirium wrote:
| The core reason seems to be that Android pre-registration
| (unlike iOS) doesn't, by default, automatically install the app
| once it's available. Instead it just signs the user up for a
| push notification, unless the user has opted in to automatic
| installs. So this campaign had 16,171 people click through and
| pre-register, but only 1,371 of those converted to actual app
| installs once it was available.
| flokie wrote:
| It seems pretty clear that's what you get when you use the
| campaign? https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-
| developer/answ...
|
| "After you make an app or game available for pre-registration,
| users can visit your store listing to learn about and pre-
| register for your new app or game.
|
| _Then, when you publish your app or game later, all pre-
| registered users will receive a push notification from Google
| Play to install it._
|
| Eligible devices will also have the app or game auto installed on
| the day it launches. (more details on this in documentation)
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Is sending someone a push notification really worth $1 though?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| To the users who have actively indicated that they are
| interested in downloading your app, all at the same time on
| launch day, potentially putting you on some "most downloaded
| apps" leaderboards? Quite possibly, yes. It'd depend a lot on
| the app, though.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Is paying $1-3 simply for a click on google ads worth it
| either?
|
| (In my experience, no).
| vikeri wrote:
| I don't have experience but I thought Subprime Attention
| Crisis was an interesting read
| JimtheCoder wrote:
| Depends on your conversion rate and customer LTV.
|
| Check Mesothelioma ad click rates on Google...
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| Yep, and what your CPA is.
|
| LTV for a 30 yr mortgage is hundreds of thousands - that
| pushes for some expensive clicks at auction.
| f5e4 wrote:
| I don't know anything about app releases, and I'm sure
| something like this is important to get an app into trending
| lists.
|
| However I'm a bit skeptical that auto-downloads would even
| really be better for a free app. If the user isn't willing to
| accept a notification to install an app, they probably aren't
| going to use the app if it just auto-downloaded.
|
| Also this just seems like a very weird app to have pre-
| registration ads for. If a user is looking for a "meal planner"
| app they obviously aren't going to just wait 2.5 months for
| your app (which doesn't seem particularly unique) to come out.
| They're going to download and try other apps that are actually
| available during that time.
|
| It still seems like a rip-off though.
| andreaskam wrote:
| If you look at the first screenshot in the article it shows
| what the pre-registration page looks like.
|
| It says:
|
| Perks of pre-registering
|
| - Automatic install
|
| Install automatically when it's available
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| >If you choose to make your app eligible for auto install,
| Play can deliver your app to users' devices automatically on
| launch day (if they've opted in).
|
| It's up to the users.
| munk-a wrote:
| And you need to still do quite a lot of leg work getting
| users to opt in. With the recent death of the Reddit API my
| favored client is being adapted to Lemmy - but the news of
| that happening only reached me because I was following the
| news on their subreddit before the shutoff. Pre-
| registration feels like a huge waste unless your users are
| literally chomping at the bit.
|
| Users install a whole bunch of apps on their phone when
| looking for a solution to a problem and a fair few of those
| are never actually launched.
| onion2k wrote:
| "Would you like to install this meal prep app in a couple
| of months time?" is a question I cannot imagine anyone
| saying yes to. Why would you? There are apps available
| today...
| soared wrote:
| For a sense of scale, if an advertiser came to my adtech platform
| and said they want to spend $20k, we'd tell them to return when
| their budget is 5x larger.
|
| Small advertisers get screwed because they lack the technical
| expertise to understand the complexity of adtech platforms. Those
| complexities provide huge power and value to people who know what
| they're doing, but also cause huge problems for advertisers.
|
| I don't know what happened in this case unfortunately.
| ekiauhce wrote:
| Hm, what's the point of placing TLDR section at the end of the
| article? :)
| vagab0nd wrote:
| If you are like me and confused about how pre-registering doesn't
| cost anything but downloading could be triggered automatically on
| the launch day: the app is free.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Free is the default price for mobile apps. You're dead in the
| water these days if you have any sort of paywall blocking the
| user and a download. they will just find 20 other alternatives
| without that barrier.
| edding4500 wrote:
| Just out of interest, did you do some social media stuff? You can
| get quite some traffic by presenting your app in a relevant
| subreddit. Reddit ads are also much cheaper.
| jb87 wrote:
| One point that people without app experience probably aren't
| considering - on iOS, having a large number of downloads
| (particularly in the first week after launch) can really boost
| your keyword rankings and ASO. Without this boost, climbing up
| the keyword rankings can be extremely difficult.
|
| Apple's pre-order feature does precisely what I'd expect -
| automatically downloading the app when it's available, which
| helps jumpstart the flywheel explained above.
|
| I would have expected Google's pre-registration feature to work
| similarly. Thanks to OP for spending the $$ to find out this
| isn't the case!
| andreaskam wrote:
| haha it's been my pleasure being a guinea pig. Just wish I
| could of learned the same lesson for $5k instead of $20k.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| One question I had when reading: Had you opted in to all of
| the appropriate settings so that your personal device should
| have automatically installed?
| user_named wrote:
| Sorry to say but there is no money in this industry/category. I
| know from experience. Get out, build an app in another category.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Not just google ads. Meta ads and reddit ads all fake the metrics
| and charge more money than what they send you. It's all a scam
| but because of the larger gun policy nobody can do anything.
| alexb_ wrote:
| Google has such a gigantic incentive to lie about how effective
| their advertising is. It's impossible to verify and they make
| more money the more effective they say it is. So it's something
| I've suspected is happening for a long time.
|
| The question then becomes, what does the internet look like if
| advertisers only spent 10% of what they do now? How much of the
| internet is built on the lie that digital advertising works?
| What services would have to shut down? How valuable is user
| data really? If user data isn't valuable, because advertising
| isn't valuable, then what else on the internet becomes
| impossible financially?
|
| Many, many websites function based on the assumption that user
| data and advertising will always be money makers. What if they
| aren't? What if we've all been lied to about the effectiveness
| of ads?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > It's impossible to verify
|
| Spend on ads is extremely easy to verify. For every ad
| channel you use a different discount code. Then you see how
| many customers used a specific discount code when making a
| purchase. Discount codes work everywhere: Social media,
| search ads, radio, TV, banners, etc etc
|
| If you don't use discount codes when advertising it means you
| don't care for how you spend your marketing money - which is
| the truth for a large majority of businesses. They simply
| don't care if their advertising works or not.
| stemlord wrote:
| >It's impossible to verify
|
| 1. Determine sales rate 2. Deploy ads 3. Determine delta
| sales
|
| Am I missing something?
| [deleted]
| htrp wrote:
| Confounding effects
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That was the past, which gave us a glorious internet at the
| expense of idiotic advertisers in exchange for a few bits of
| data.
|
| Thanks to the EU and the privacy social justice warrior that
| era is gone: welcome to the era of cookie banners and walled
| gardens.
|
| Search will be even worse than today, your Google search
| won't be very useful (and it's definitely not as useful as it
| was 15 years ago): you'll have to search on Reddit, Facebook
| and who knows how many other walled gardens which can't live
| off advertising anymore and will need to find a different
| revenue model (which probably will cost the user).
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Hang on... the decline in Google search is due to the EU?
|
| Walled Gardens are caused by cookie banners?
|
| I have heard some things in my time....
| thfuran wrote:
| >What services would have to shut down? How valuable is user
| data really? If user data isn't valuable, because advertising
| isn't valuable, then what else on the internet becomes
| impossible financially?
|
| If it suddenly stops being the case that everything is judged
| against an ad-supported but free to use baseline, I think
| paid services become more viable than they currently are.
| There would probably need to be some work on payment models,
| but I think not many things would be forced to shut down
| (ignoring whatever shutters while the dust settles).
| safety1st wrote:
| In 1995 the Internet existed, it was basically great, and
| basically no website was ad funded.
|
| I cannot think of a single essential service I use on the
| Internet today which is ad funded. If it's essential I'm
| paying for it because the free, ad-funded version is shitty
| and unreliable.
|
| We could ban Internet advertising tomorrow (give people time
| to migrate to paid services) and I genuinely don't think it
| would have much negative impact on society. Social media like
| Twitter and Meta would take a big hit and that would be very
| good for our society. Less teen girls would commit suicide,
| and less hate would be spread.
|
| I'd start paying ten bucks a month or whatever for Google
| (already pay them a pretty penny for Workspace) and can't
| think of much else that I'd lose that would matter.
| Subscriptions to a couple sites of professional interest like
| Stack Overflow? Small price to pay for ending Internet ads.
| munk-a wrote:
| I'd also add that personally motivated hosting is basically
| what gets small sites through the day. I worked on a MUD
| for quite a while where a small portion of the playerbase
| was working professionals and the majority of the
| playerbase was broke college students with far too much
| free time. The working folks would shell out a completely
| inconsequential 30 dollars a month between ten of them just
| so they could have fun playing the game - there was never
| any serious discussion of adding a paid requirement to join
| because 3$/month is very little for a steady stream of
| entertainment and because the "leeches" actually
| contributed immensely to the activity in the MUD. The
| workings folks contributed money, the college folks
| contributed time and everyone had fun.
|
| If you're an independent reporter running a blog you can
| easily cover the hosting costs by just writing an
| occasional article for a major organization. If you have a
| fun hobby that hobby is probably worth the cost of hosting
| a server to attract other hobbiests.
|
| Really, the only thing that would possibly die forever
| might be services like YouTube which have absolutely
| absurdly weak monetization potentials when compared to
| their infrastructure costs. Losing YouTube would suck, but
| if it meant I'd never need to see another internet ad I
| think the cost is worth it... and more curated services
| like Nebula have proven that purely subscriber funded video
| content can work - but it'd be hard to enter that market
| with no free hosting platform like YouTube.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > If you're an independent reporter running a blog you
| can easily cover the hosting costs by just writing an
| occasional article for a major organization.
|
| I agree with most of what you wrote except for the above.
| Unless you're an independent reporter in things like
| gardening or motor sports, the major media organizations
| see you as an enemy and would prefer to shut you down.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > In 1995 the Internet existed, it was basically great, and
| basically no website was ad funded.
|
| Sorry, but which parallel universe is this?
|
| Advertising was definitely less intrusive, but I would say
| that an even larger proportion of websites was ad-funded
| than today.
|
| A shitton of content is (and was) on platforms which are
| entirely ad-funded. Think geocities, the various blogging
| platforms, and twitter et al. today. You remove ads, you
| force the authors of this content to pay for their
| publication (a ridiculously cheap amount sure, but the
| large majority of them won't pay a dime).
|
| I have paid for hosting my personal/hobby websites since
| approx 1993, but I know very well I'm a 1 to 10000
| exception, based on the ratio of people who participate on
| my website.
| phpnode wrote:
| Ads were of course common in 1995, but monetisation in
| general was rarer. A greater proportion of the web was
| hobbyists writing and collating information about
| subjects they were interested in, not because of
| financial incentives.
| [deleted]
| threeio wrote:
| I mean, isn't that basically what the first .com was about?
| :)
|
| Everyone went from thinking every page view was equivalent to
| a magazine/tv/radio ad view, paying 5-10$ CPM and then
| everyone wised up and the industry was decimated for a while.
| ipaddr wrote:
| The first .com bust was that these e-stores weren't
| profitable compared to valuations. So much money was poured
| in.. I use to get 1 or 2 dollar checks from free spin
| places. Too much money too soon. Ads had nothing to do with
| the bust. When pets.com went bust the market the air left
| with it and everyone moved into companies laying cable.
| konschubert wrote:
| You just have to run your own measurements and not rely on
| their data.
| marricks wrote:
| > because of the larger gun policy nobody can do anything
|
| Oh please do elaborate
| transcriptase wrote:
| I think they're saying that these small teams getting screwed
| aren't exactly going to win a legal battle against Meta and
| Google, even if they could afford to try.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| You'll spend more than $20K trying to get your money back in
| court.
| marricks wrote:
| Ah so it's a joke used to reference the complete lack of
| power companies/people have against behemoth corps?
| pierat wrote:
| Sooooo.... Fraud?
| jb87 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing your experience. I would have thought they
| would auto-install the app for users that pre-registered, as
| Apple does. Seems kind of pointless that they don't do this!
| andreaskam wrote:
| Hope it's helpful for some fellow developers when considering
| how to promote their app launch :-)
| IshKebab wrote:
| I think they're being a bit misleading - the issue is simply that
| Google counts a "conversion" as someone signing up for pre-
| registration, whereas they assumed it would be for an app
| install.
|
| Google should be clearer about that, but it's not like they are
| just making numbers up.
| andreaskam wrote:
| Fair point. To Google conversion = someone who has pre-
| registered. That's different to someone actually installing. I
| never expected 100% of people who pre-registered would install,
| but having only 8% of people who pre-register go on to download
| seems kinda wild.
|
| If anyone has any figures for a pre-order campaign on the App
| Store it would be very interesting to compare the conversion
| rate.
| dceddia wrote:
| Hopefully someone with some benchmarks on this specific kind
| of thing can chime in, but to me it seemed like 8-10%
| conversion from notification to install was not too terrible.
| Don't get me wrong, it sucks that it turned out this way! I'm
| just basing this on conversion percentages I've seen from
| email launch sequences (maybe 2-5% of the list), webpage
| conversions (free signup maybe 10,20,50% but paid 1-5%), and
| 8-10% for a nearly-cold install notification seems kinda in
| the ballpark.
|
| There's a correlation I've noticed between how easy it is to
| sign up for a thing, combined with how badly someone wants
| that thing, and then how likely they are to actually
| buy/download/etc. In this case it was _super easy_ to click
| that "pre-subscribe" button so I'd think those people aren't
| very invested. There's only a tiny bit of time for them to
| form a connection with it, so when that notification pops up
| hours /days later they might not even remember they clicked
| that button, or don't remember the name, etc.
|
| It's a bummer it was so expensive though! I went through a
| couple expensive YouTube paid promo experiences recently that
| took me by surprise too. Just like nowhere near the
| performance I hoped for. Not fun!
| andreaskam wrote:
| What was painful about pre-registration ads is you don't
| realise your mistake until you launch your app. Only then
| do you look at your screen and then go have a cry hahaha.
|
| Be super interesting to read a case study for the App Store
| and their pre-order ads.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| I spent some money on GP ads and it was kind of funny that no
| matter how the views and clicks were distributed in the end the
| cost for each install was about 1$.
|
| It is "fake" how it works but it is in the agreement. Also Google
| ads has the worst support ever. Not even helping when you want to
| invest.
|
| Fun fact. GP actually paid out some cash invested for ads this
| year. Have no idea why. I am pretty sure I burned it all on ads.
| pkallberg wrote:
| Wow this is crazy!
| andreaskam wrote:
| Yeah when I first looked at the analytics in the Google Play
| Console I thought there must of been some error. Figured it
| would be a fairly quick thing to sort out with Google support.
| simple10 wrote:
| Google is notorious for over-reporting ad data for all sorts of
| reasons.
|
| One super important thing to know is conversions could also be
| landing page views depending on how the ad account is setup. By
| default, Google will use any type of conversion configured in the
| ad account for displaying stats in the campaign. It's a bit
| tricky with Google Ads to configure a specific campaign to only
| report conversions as app installs, signups (leads), or sales.
|
| Best practice is to mostly ignore the data reported in Google Ads
| dashboard (unless you really know what you're doing) and instead
| rely on your own metrics. Run multiple campaigns to different
| audiences and different landing pages to be able to more easily
| verify what's actually working. Fortunately, it's fairly easy --
| although not straight forward -- to pipe Google Ads data into a
| Google Sheet and merge it with actual data from your website. I'm
| not sure how this works with pre-registration ads since I've
| never run that specific type of campaign.
| no_wizard wrote:
| This seems like it should be a lawsuit waiting to happen. If I
| was running ad spend through Google and they were giving me
| inflated reports routinely, its willful on part of the company,
| and feels like grounds for a lawsuit.
| simple10 wrote:
| It's not necessarily inaccurate data from a legal
| perspective. But it's often unexpected data where it's
| getting reported in a less useful way in the dashboard.
|
| And yes, there are almost always ongoing class action
| lawsuits agains major ad platforms for failing to properly
| filter out bots and click fraud. There's very little
| incentive for Google and Meta to do more than the bare
| minimum in fighting bots.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The problem is that it's one of those things that to take it
| to court, you need some starting proof, but the entire system
| is designed to be opaque.
| neom wrote:
| 16,171 converted and pre-registered for the app
|
| 1,371 either installed it when they got the push notification or
| selected auto install when they pre-registered (it's oped in)
|
| Cost was $22k USD ish.
|
| This is extremely normal... it's almost exactly as I would
| expect, maybe even good! I'm curious why they would expect
| differently?
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I agree with the author's assessment that only 1371 users were
| actually converted and they were charged inappropriately.
| neom wrote:
| This complaint is tantamount to me saying: I spent $20,000
| advertising my new cloud provider on twitter, 5000 people
| signed up for an account but only 5 of them ever logged in so
| only 5 converted. That isn't how it works.
|
| In google ads a conversion is clearly defined as the users
| clicks the link and then completed a second action (pre-
| register in this instance). When you create a campaign, you
| define the goal like this: when a user clicks the link and
| pushes the pre-registration button the user goal of
| conversion is complete.
|
| Just because you don't _like_ what happened thereafter isn 't
| the concern of the ad platform.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| It's because Google clearly wants it to seem like _pre-
| registration_ is actually _pre-installing_ when in reality
| is closer to _pre-nothing_.
| danpalmer wrote:
| To take this even further, the install isn't what matters
| either, it's the user buying an in-app purchase, or it's
| the user still being subscribed 1 year later, or it's the
| user buying high margin merchandise after 3 years as a
| loyal customer...
|
| Every part is a step in the funnel, and every step down the
| funnel is harder and slower to analyse. Ad marketplaces
| only have the data of the very first step most of the time.
|
| Doing this analysis is The Job. That's all of what
| marketing (particularly digital marketing/PPC) is, and
| being good at this and building the loop is the difference
| between buying clicks from people who aren't actually that
| interested, and buying clicks from people who will pay for
| a product.
| Natuerich wrote:
| We will do very well as a purely digital world: everyone thinks
| they make it because they have an edge while realizing to late
| it's not.
|
| What a naive take on using 20k
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