nicklafferty

Google automatically refunds advertisers for fraudulent clicks each month. It's not a lot (maybe $1,000 refund on an account that spends $600k to 800k/month), but it's a line item on the invoice for sure. You have to trust them for what is a 'fraudulent' click though.

Almost entirely on search! I'd say 85% search, 10% Gmail ads, 5% Youtube.

This is spot on! When I first transitioned those campaigns from eCPC to tCPA there was a big learning period. As the campaigns scaled and collected more data the actual CPA started aligning closely with the target CPA, but it took some time. The more conversions you do the faster that alignment will happen. After 2+ years on tCPA (and many behind the scenes improvements to the Algo by Google), I could get that delta to match within 3-4 days of making a change to the target CPA. That was with thousands of conversions a day though, so scale absolutely helps.

It depends what ad platform you want to learn. Google has a great learning series here: https://skillshop.withgoogle.com/

If you want to learn Google Ads I'd recommend getting certified for Search, Display, and Shopping. If you want to learn Facebook and Instagram ads then that's a whole different animal.

You're right to be skeptical! There's no mystery behind this curtain, just a guy who spent a bunch of money on advertising and wanted to write about it. My unlimited budget was strictly tied to profitability. Being profitable was the only way to scale because I had to maintain certain margins. If I hit the right margin, I could spend as much money as I wanted because the supply was there. Thanks for your comment!

Thanks for sharing your thoughts! That hasn't been my experience, target CPA was absolutely the driver of both volume and profitability for that business. You have to know how to work the algorithm and feed it the correct data. I was doing thousands of conversions a day so we had scale in our favor. If you're not careful tCPA can spend a lot of money for sure. YMMV though.

Gmail ads show up in the promotion tab! If you have a unified inbox you won't see any ads.

70% of Google's revenue is from their ads, so a lot of people click on them. The HN audience is a very small minority :)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-reven...

Author here and I think you're spot on! We had a tight focus on ROAS and overall profitability for those campaigns, and optimized based on that. Sure, there are companies that can waste millions of dollars on ad spend, but the company I worked with was heavily invested in making paid ads work and had the right feedback loops in place to ensure we were making the right decisions.

Hey there, thanks for your comment! You're totally right to be skeptical. I didn't include any numbers on ROI for 2 reasons:

- This was my previous job, and I don't have the data anymore :) - I don't want to reveal numbers that could harm that company or inform their competitors.

I will say I was 100% focused on profitability. I'd be a pretty shitty marketer if I doubled spend without focusing on profit.

Hi everyone! Author here. I'm humbled that someone felt this was HackerNews worthy, really unexpected! I'll do my best to respond to comments, but if I don't get to yours feel free to drop me an email, link is on the website.