
I Spent $6M on Google Ads Last Year - Torwald
https://nicklafferty.com/blog/i-spent-6-million-on-google-ads-last-year-here-s-what-i-learned/
======
JeffL
I tried Adwords for search again recently after several years. There was a
decent number of clicks, and the cost per "action" seemed very reasonable,
where for me, the action is clicking on the download link from the landing
page to download the installer for our game. The only problem is that tracking
the IP's, 90% of the traffic from Adwords that downloaded the installer never
actually ran the installer. Organic traffic usually has much more than 50% of
the people who download it, run it. Is it a bunch of robots driving clicks and
then clicking randomly on links on the landing page? Seems really suspicious.

~~~
101404
Do people still download "setup.exe" files from random sites on the Internet
and run them on their PCs?

Maybe a link to some sort of "app store" (or whatever its called on Windows)
would be more convincing?

~~~
invalidOrTaken
...yes.

(I should probably change my ways.)

~~~
winkeltripel
(Microsoft could allow the store to be less terrible)

~~~
anchpop
What's terrible about the store?

------
raiyu
I'm skeptical of articles that talk about how well they did something but
don't provide the actual numbers.

There is no mention of actual ROI, conversions, traffic, and so forth.

Overall, I'm pretty skeptical of the true return that marketing campaigns can
generate. When you calculate the full cost not just of the marketing but you
include margins and the full lifetime value of the customer then you get a
real sense.

The thing that stood out to me is the first sentence, that the person had an
unlimited budget. With that in mind, basically makes me believe they weren't
that focused on the true profitability of the spend.

~~~
everythingswan
You noted a few interesting things that I wanted to call out as a marketer,
like budget.

No one has a $3m Google Ads budget for something that doesn't work already.
I've run campaigns for brands that lead the market and for new businesses that
have no brand recognition at all--the difference is night and day. Should
founders run to Gmail ads because of this? Probably not.

Assuming the campaigns are still profitable, doubling the budget is great. I
hope they really did well. But what does this really tell us? What can a
startup or small business founder learn from this? Not much.

~~~
propogandist
I can assure you there's companies that spend a millions on ads with no idea
what they are doing. In-fact there are products within business units, within
large enterprises that spend >$1M per quarter, where the segment itself may
spend $5M+/Quarter, easily.

The agency that runs the programs the the only people that win - after they
pocket their 5+% commission.

Source: past roles where I saw a lot of people who do not know wtf they are
doing with ads (yet they themselves are making 6 figures)

~~~
everythingswan
I originally had more nuance in my comment but wanted to keep it simple. In my
experience, companies like the ones you describe have a really strong brand
(so large volume of branded search) and/or really strong other channels, like
SEO. At that point, paid search is a piece of the overall ROI (serving market
share or other strategic objectives) and not channel-specific.

Adding even more nuance, that really only describes successful companies.
Failing companies _think_ they are profitable, until they quickly aren't. Your
experience is very similar to my own. You're 100% right.

------
mdorazio
I enjoy reading posts like this because I've been blocking ads and avoiding
"marketing tech" companies for so long that I don't even know what's going on
in the ad world anymore. It's interesting to see that not a whole lot has
changed in the last 5+ years with respect to platforms and strategies.

~~~
Bishonen88
Same here - I glanced over the article and was confused why there was a part
for Gmail. I thought to myself : "but gmail doesn't have ads?". Which makes me
wonder even more why 75%+ of the population doesn't have adblock themselves?

~~~
luckylion
This. People with adblock are living in a completely different online reality.
I'm amazed how much time people spend on ad-ridden sites despite the terrible
UX, with ads "slow loading" and replacing links you want to click on, full
page overlays, flashy animated ads etc pp. People still tolerate it, the must
_really_ love the content.

~~~
cameronbrown
My personal theory is that this is one of the reasons FB, Google, Reddit are
so popular as portal sites, since they have far better UX and actual
performance teams to make the experience good. Nobody wants to go directly to
news sites anymore.

~~~
luckylion
Good point. And it's not just better UX, it's also predictable and unified,
you know what happens when you click on something, you know how to like and
share, and you don't need to figure out the layout & design for each site.

------
canadianwriter
It's nice to see an adwords article that finally embraces CPA bidding. It
really is king. I've been doing this for over a decade and was very hesitant
to use it but it really beats everything out there.

One thing he doesn't mention is the landing page experience. It affects both
your quality score which can have big impacts on CPA as well as your
conversion rate.

Not sure why people have issue with "creative" as a noun, this has been the
standard in advertising for decades. Hell, it's in the dictionary:
[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/creative](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/creative)

Don't need to crap on Quantic and the like as much though, they do have some
things that Google doesn't.

Some people are commenting on him not giving specific advice for making the
creative. As some have pointed out, a whole article could be written about
that, or more realistically, entire libraries of books. In short he is talking
about ad copywriting, it's a whole discipline that takes years of experience
and learning to get good at.

~~~
dhimes
What's the difference between the Aquisition in CPA and the Click in CPC?

~~~
mceachen
CPA is cost per action, not acquisition. Action is defined by you.

This bidding mode means you're taking less risk per auction, as you don't pay
for impressions or clicks. You pay (sometimes 10x more) to reduce that risk,
though, and your reach (how many people see your ad) can be adversely impacted
if the Google Brain estimates your click through and conversion rate
unfavorably to your auction competitors.

------
londons_explore
I'd like to remind people how bad the "daily budget" is in AdWords.

The design of the budget system is in Google's favour, not yours, and if you
don't understand that, you'll end up paying much more than you need to.

If you think setting the budget to half is a way to halve your ad spend and
get half the number of clicks, you're right, but you're also naïve.

If Google thinks your current rate of spend is going to exceed the daily
budget, they'll effectively deactivate your ad for random impressions, leading
to less spend.

 _but that isn 't the best strategy_. The best strategy is to lower your bids
to win fewer auctions if you want to spend less. That way, you can spend half
as much, but get _more ROI_ , since the Google AI will be only showing your ad
to those most likely to be interested in it.

~~~
londons_explore
A double digit percentage of AdWords campaigns are budget limited on any given
day. I honestly can't believe how tens of thousands of marketing folk can't
notice how much money they're throwing down the drain by using the budget
limiter...

~~~
anacleto
I agree with the broader point of view, yet I'm not sure if all you say makes
sense. Most campaigns are budget limited because auto bidding is less ops
intensive and, above all, sometimes works better than manual bidding (despite
Google reducing the reach as you get nearer the daily budget).

Manual bidding is always preferable with fewer data points (low conversions,
low clicks, no previous campaigns). Auto bidding is preferable as your GA
accounts grow in conversions and the algorithms start to create a better
profile of your customers.

------
irrational
Has anyone ever created a psychological profile of people who click on ads?
I've never clicked on an ad, so I assume my psychological profile would show
that I'm not the kind of person that would be inclined to do so. But clearly
there must be people who do click on ads. Who are these people and what is
their psychological profile?

~~~
nicklafferty
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...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/266249/advertising-revenue-of-
google/)

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
A lot of _entities_ click on them. How many of them are people is debatable.

~~~
hobofan
Unless the armies of bots out there started spending real cash for products
after those ad clicks, I'm going to stick with "a lot of of people click on
ads".

------
Animats
_" This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small fee if you choose to
purchase something."_

The author is spending $6M a year on ads and is generating substantially more
revenue than that, they claim. Why are they bothering with spare-change Amazon
affiliate links? If they can get revenue like that, they should be making tons
of money with their day job. What's wrong with this picture?

~~~
ryeguy
Nothing is wrong with this picture. Your thought process boils down to "OP
should be making enough money at their day job, why would they try to make
more?" which is ridiculous.

~~~
atarian
Agreed. It's leaving easy money on the table.

------
nicklafferty
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.

~~~
QuantumGood
Thanks, Nick! What are some of the most difficult actions to programmatically
"prove"? Which actions seem like a good idea, but perform less profitably vs.
other actions?

------
criddell
He mentions YouTube is cheap. I wonder if the existence of YouTube Premium is
partly responsible for that? I would think the Premium users may be among the
most desirable and those users have hidden themselves from him.

~~~
vegannet
That’s often a concern amongst publishers around implementing the ability to
pay to opt out of advertisements however I think in this case the relative low
cost of YouTube advertisements is because of the high cost of getting them
right.

------
pwython
> The difficulty and cost associated with creating video ads is exactly why
> Youtube is still a hidden gem.

These days many top performing video ads are the ones that are made to look
amateur/cheap. And it's not just the guru course ads. The native vlogger-style
ad is often more engaging on a platform filled with vloggers. High production
value "professional" ads have traditionally been created to lend credibility &
authority to the brand. But if their audience now trusts "influencers" more
than big brands, what's the harm in testing a TON of simple video creatives
with clever scripts.

I've even seen this style now in offline commercials.

~~~
throwaway2048
For anyone that hates "native vlogger-style ads" in youtube videos
[https://sponsor.ajay.app/](https://sponsor.ajay.app/) is a godsend.

~~~
bseidensticker
Do you think it is moral to use that? The creator is trying to make money off
the video so they can continue to create. You are essentially stealing from
them-taking the content they made without paying for it (watching the ad).

If you don't like "native vlogger-style ads" don't watch those videos.

~~~
rglullis
There is no moral imperative that says you are obligated to pay for something
you did not voluntarily asked for. Or do you feel forced to give money to
every busker on the street or Subway?

> If you don't like "native vlogger-style ads" don't watch those videos

No. If the content creator wants to give access only to the people who can
provide them income, then they should make this transaction direct and
transparent. It is not on the consumer's job to ensure that the producer is
paid.

~~~
GrinningFool
> There is no moral imperative that says you are obligated to pay for
> something you did not voluntarily asked for

Is that accurate? If you follow a link to watch a video, is that not asking to
watch that video?

~~~
rglullis
VHS and TiVO have already established legal precedent: watching a video does
not legally bind you to also watch the commercials.

------
cosmodisk
The company I work for spends very substantial amounts( for its size) on
Google Ads. It does the trick but it's like putting yourself on crack.You
become dependant and somehow convince yourself that you are being very smart
by doing so.

~~~
dx034
That's always been the case with ads. The problem nowadays just is that it's
very concentrated on a few very big players. Companies just can't afford to
not be present on Google, Youtube or Facebook (depending on the brand). The
power has shifted, from the companies paying to the platforms. But marketing
in itself was crucial for many companies to succeed already decades ago.

------
StavrosK
For anyone else here confused like me, and because I don't see an immediate
explanation in the comments:

"Creative" in the context of an ad means the image, video, text, etc.
Basically, the ad content that the user will see.

~~~
some_random
Is it just me or is "Creative" a really newspeak-y way of talking about ads?

~~~
stonemetal12
Rosie the Riveter, Apple's 1984 comercial, the energizer bunny, Transformers.
The amount of creativity that goes into advertising is both amazing and heart
breaking. The creative part of advertising truely is creative, even if applied
to such a dull task.

~~~
noizejoy
I’ve never seen data on this, but I often wonder if advertising is where
artists generally find the best income potential.

------
dmoy
I wouldn't knock tools like Marin/kenshoo too bad. They really do help you
scale if you're taking spend way past $6m.

The target market there is different though. Think instead of a single company
spending $6m on their ads, more like an agency spending $60m++ on 10++
different companies' ads.

Major props to this guy for doing so well in house though.

~~~
latchkey
I worked for Marin as a software engineer very early on and I'm actually still
a shareholder (looking forward to it going to zero so I can declare full loss
on my taxes). Their technology stack is tragic. That PA acquisition? They lost
$1.1m on it. The company has never been profitable and the execs get paid a
lot, yet do very little. I wouldn't give them a dime.

------
dave84
> Or you pay an agency to make your videos

Hiring creatives to make your creatives.

------
C4stor
The fact the google ads doesn't allow to do a real location targeting but will
show ads to anyone "interested" in that location is usually a non-starter for
me.

Having people all over the world shown an ad for a specifically localized shop
? No thanks !

For more online businesses, the results are indeed quite decent !

~~~
onlyrealcuzzo
It's my understanding that -- sadly -- "interested in location" is the
default. But you can switch it to only users in or from the location.

~~~
gscott
I manually exclude every single area around the world that I don't want to
advertise in. This is the only real way to get rid of bad clicks from out of
the area. Especially since the ads I run cost around $25 a click...

------
steeleyespan
Our company spent over $3mm last year and this article is spot on. On the
Adwords side it really is that simple - test tons of creatives and use CPA
bidding.

The third party services aren't much help. Google has a lot of great in-house
support to ramp up your Adspend once you get noticed. Not sure what the target
is, but we seem to get a new rep every few months who has new suggestions.

I have no experience with Youtube, but that is highly interesting.

If Adwords isn't working for you, there is a ton to dive into. Could be your
website, could be your product. If you have a competitor obviously succeeding
in the space with heavy Adwords spend the fault is probably on your end
(unless they're just pissing away money, but how long does that go on for?).

~~~
steeleyespan
On that note, expect to lose money initially while optimizing your website &
waiting for enough CPA data to accrue. I give it at least a month and $5-10k
spend before seriously considering killing the campaign (if starting from
scratch).

Very different from taking something already successful but mismanaged - this
can be a lot easier to ramp off if they're making big mistakes (like not
actually mobile optimized, not CPA bidding, not actually actively optimizing
the website's funnel/landing page).

~~~
nicklafferty
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.

------
ab_testing
Dumb question but does anybody know what is Creative ? Is that a software or a
generic term for a creative edge - like getting the right slogans and correct
catch phrases to grab somebody's attention.

~~~
hazard
The "creative" is, well, the creative part of an ad. It's the text, images,
design, etc. It's the "sexy" part of marketing, compared with all the
quantitative/analytic work like segmentation, user research, pricing, etc.

I somewhat disagree with the author that the creative is everything - unless
you already have all the other aspects locked on and creative is the only
place for you to improve

~~~
scottc
Ok I have another question. On social platforms like facebook, whenever the
creatives are refreshed, the ad set is put back into a "learning phase", which
we're told to avoid.

So what is the best way to iterate on new creatives without re-entering the
learning phase?

~~~
qiguai
Ab test say 20 creative in an adset and let Facebook find the best creative
for you in a cbo. Once set it is set and best not to change the creative just
launch a new ad set with the new creative. You can change it but not ideal or
how you should run Facebook ads with a proper account structure to maintain
data transparency. Also with Facebook algo suspending and disabling ad
accounts like crazy swapping creative after approved looks very fishy and can
trigger negativr signals.

------
mike_aarons
What's the best source to learn how to property target online ads (without
spending $6M)?

Are there good online courses or blogs that you recommend?

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

~~~
mike_aarons
Thanks for that! I'll check out the Google learning series.

------
itronitron
I can't help but think this person was selling shirts without stripes.

------
butler14
lol at all the devs bashing on 70 year old advertising terminology

to give you one back, my cringe dev jargon of the moment is PERFORMANT

~~~
jiofih
what’s up with performant? It’s an adjective.

I used to be in advertising and “creative” referred to the _role_ of creative
direction. “The creative” would be a person. Had never seen it used as a
synonym for content.

~~~
tfe
Have you tried looking "performant" up in a dictionary?

~~~
jiofih
As in something like the Oxford?
[https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/performant](https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/performant)

------
kerrybright3000
Wonder if he is spending anywhere near a similar amount this year? I've heard
Ads are way down

------
superasn
I've also had a lot of success with Adwords in the past even though my monthly
budget was low 5 figures only.

He is spot on about the landing page but there is one more thing I learned
that played a key role and that is something called the keyword smell.
Basically what it means is your landing page must match the keyword you're
targeting. If you're bidding for "home windows for the elderly" but the
landing page headline says "home windows" you will lose the lead. Plus google
will also never optimize your ad for clicks. Even if they have to optin and go
to another page just don't lose that smell. It can work wonders for your
campaign.

~~~
davemel37
I find this advice to be outdated. Unless the actual page offers real contect
around the intent of the searcher, I find the quality of these leads and
conversion rates drop.

------
joshfraser
I've also spent millions of dollars on ads. My experience is that targeting,
specifically highly targeted audiences and lookalikes are far more important
than creatives.

~~~
quickthrower2
I've spend hundreds of cents on ads, so take this with salt, but is it futile
to pick "the most important thing".

A bit like is exercise more important, or diet? Well if you are eating only
lard and running every day, then diet is important for you, and if you are
eating really healthily but sitting in a chair 14 hours a day, then doing more
exercise is the impactful thing.

------
yellow_lead
Would love to see more information on creative, since the author touts it as
the most important. I'm sure a whole post could / has been written on that
though.

~~~
rchaud
I work in digital marketing, and can tell you that it's not very exciting. The
best performing paid ads are text-only and served to the user on the search
results page and usually not on third-party websites. They're the ones that
can be A/B tested the fastest, and the 'creative' part of it is very much
metrics-driven. That's where the bulk of ad spend goes, as it has the highest
ROAS.

Plus, users who are actively searching for something are more primed to
respond to an ad that appears on the results page, as opposed to an ad that
pops up in the middle of a news article they were reading. Users for the most
part don't seem to like stuff with animations, or heavy graphics in their ads
as they're distracting.

I have noticed more interesting ads on newer mediums (media?) like Instagram
stories or Snapchat, which are image and video-centric. The targeting so far
seems quite good, as I usually see ads for online courses, creative stuff,
design tools.

~~~
yellow_lead
Interesting. Thanks for the information!

------
JackPoach
Affiliate link for Supermetrics. I see what's going on...

------
londons_explore
Not all the "optimizers" behind the Google Ads dashboard are as advanced as
you might imagine.

One notable one only ran once a day, and simply used data from your account to
adjust other things in your account. And it used a crude algorithm to do so.

You literally could do better with a shell script running hourly after reading
a couple of papers on the multi-armed bandit problem.

------
ssklash
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, getting people to
click ads. I just don't see how this isn't a massive waste of money, abusing
psychology to encourage people to buy things they don't need. No one is better
off in this situation except Google, and they absolutely don't have our
interests in mind.

~~~
cmauniada
I understand where you are coming from but it’s not always about trying to get
people to buy things right away, advertising can be used to create brand
awareness as well. A positive brand image is worth a lot more than just making
a couple bucks here and there off if impulsive shoppers.

If you have another solution apart from google ads, I’m all ears. Seriously.

------
fulldecent2
For anybody else that spends most of their budget on advertising for your own
trademark because your competitors do...

the solution is to inform your audience how they should forcible disable ads
and to switch to a search engine that can turn off ads.

------
PopeDotNinja
>> Gmail Ads Can Scale

Does Gmail have ads? I know it used to, but I can't remember the last time I
saw one. Looking at my Gmail inbox now, and I don't see a single ad anywhere
on the page. I'm not running any kind of ad blocker.

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

~~~
PopeDotNinja
That would explain it. Thanks!

------
wheybags
Legit question: do you ever feel conflicted about the impact of this kind of
advertising on the world? And do you ever hear your peers in the industry
feeling conflicted or remorseful like this?

------
skylarchunk
Would be cool to read about how the 6 mil was split—i.e. ratio between spend
on YT ads and say, Google display, over 3 month span

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

------
dexcs
Is there any open source software that pulls out statistics out of those ad
platforms into a spreadsheet or any other format?

~~~
davidwihl
AdWords has a rich API that allows reports to downloaded in CSV format
[https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/repo...](https://developers.google.com/adwords/api/docs/appendix/reports)

Disclosure: I work on the team that builds the client libraries for this API.

~~~
stevenicr
Any idea if this API can pull a keywords searched and price paid for the
report if the customer is using 'smart campaigns'? I will dive in if it can..

The other day I spent some hours trying to find reports to show where this
friend spent his adwords money and just about every report in his dashboard
was blank. He has been running this campaign for about 2 months now - so there
should be some data.. I only found one report that showed any data, the rest
blank - so then I went to help, then chatted with adwords support - explained
the problem, what I was looking for.. told to wait some days for a response
cuz covid.. okay. Got an email forwarded to me saying that you can't get that
data with 'smart campaigns'... "I would like to inform you that, you can view
your search phrases performance (impressions, clicks and status) in the
campaigns dashboard, however, cost option is not available for smart
campaigns."

So... this is disturbing - and then there is this "You may use the search
terms report to see how your ads performed (clicks, impressions, CTR, cost,
etc) when triggered by actual searches within the Search Network. "

Yet I have clicked virtually every link in the dashboard and I find nothing of
the sort.

I feel like I can put about 2 more hours into this - and then my advice will
be to just to cancel adwords it's too opaque.

So should I spend 2 hours learning this API thing, or trying to re-learn
adwords to switch off smart campaigns, or a secret how to use reports with
campaigns doc or what, I don't know how to get the info needed.

------
yccheok
I'm more interested to know what kind of product they are selling with that
much of Ads marketing dollar.

------
adam_fallon_
I wonder if Google does anything to accurately reimburse something like ad-
naseum* clicks. I imagine the probably take up a non-insignificant amount of
spend at the $6m level

*[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

~~~
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.

------
t0ughcritic
Best place for non game app Installs for US?

------
tedunangst
Nobody here watched Mad Men I guess.

~~~
mcny
> Nobody here watched Mad Men I guess.

I have seen a few episodes but I feel very weird about taking anything from it
other than entertainment. Problem is if you are already subject matter expert,
you can distinguish the information from the entertainment but you already
know the information so it might be a refresher at best. For example, doctors
and other medical professionals watching House, MD or Grey's Anatomy might be
able to relate with some of the things when the show has some basis on reality
and laugh at things when they are off base. Similarly, people in
marketing/advertising business might be able to tell what is what but from the
outside, I can't tell the difference between information and entertainment.

~~~
StavrosK
It would be like taking business information from the show Silicon Valley,
though that might be a worse analogy than I intended, since the show is so
spot on...

------
samuel2
didn't know Gmail has ads .. so they basically use ML to substitute random
spam with their highly targeted spam.. _innovative business model_

~~~
anoncareer0212
Billions of people have ~unlimited free email and you've boiled it down to
"substituting random spam with highly targeted spam".

This isn't an unusual mode of commentary for HN, but one of my resolutions is
to point out when social cynicism has far out-stripped reality.

~~~
samuel2
It isn't unlimited as far as I know, but yes sure it is indeed very much free.
We should be grateful for this opportunity to save 5 dollars a month.

~~~
jldugger
I have an acct from the dawn of gmail and I'm still only using 25% of the
current quota. I don't know the exact numbers but I imagine it's basically the
case that 99.9 percent of inboxes never run out, and a significant fraction of
those who do are abusing it with gmailfs or something.

------
gumby
Man, gotta get me some of that “creative”. What a cynical expression.

------
ashkankiani
I don't understand the use of the word creative in this context as a noun.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Go ahead and give google a whirl with “creative noun”.

~~~
ashkankiani
Did you consider that I had done that and it didn't help? Your suggestion
wouldn't have helped anyway, so your only intention was to attempt to ridicule
me. I don't think that's a particularly good goal to set with making a
comment.

I was being genuine in my first comment. In a time of a pandemic and global
depression, I guess you really should just expect the worst from people.

~~~
16bytes
Both sides in this thread could have improved communication.

E.g. instead of saying LMGIFY, the response could have said that a creative is
the thing that is the audio, text, picture or video part of an advertisement.
Or as M-W puts it, "creative activity or the material produced by it
especially in advertising".

Your question could have been improved by saying what exactly you didn't
understand from the first few Google results, especially since there's a clear
definition of how creative is used as a noun in the first couple links.

A good question includes the context of what you've already considered.

------
forrestthewoods
> Youtube is also great for conquesting your competitors. In the SaaS space
> I’m in right now I pay over $20 per click to bid on my competitor’s search
> keywords.

I hate the modern internet. Platforms are holding developers hostage. Because
if you don’t pay for ads for YOUR PRODUCT then they’ll show your competitor’s
ads.

It’s anti-consumer hostile. If I search for a thing I want to see that thing.
Not a different thing that has a bigger as budget.

------
xipho
From an outsider's perspective "Creative" seems to be the same as saying "Get
good, bro".

~~~
jstummbillig
Well, no. "Creative" in this context is jargon and means the part that people
would generally just refer to as "an ad": art, design, text, sound, video --
the combination.

What he is saying is that nailing the actual ad trumps everything else
(targeting, keywords, platform, etc) when it comes to being effective in
advertisement.

~~~
xipho
Apologies for the trollishness. Still seems a little tautological (to be good
be good). If the core of what you are doing doesn't work (Creative), what you
are trying to do with your core (Advertise) won't work. Since nowhere in the
post do I learn specifics of how to make "Creative" work, and "Creative" is
the only thing that works, my lesson learned from was is "get good" at
"Creative". Clearly it should have been "Creative is all that matters".

------
aqme28
I really hate seeing "creative" as a noun like this. I know it's entering
common use but it sounds wrong grammatically. More importantly, it feels like
another word would be better here -- "content" or "art" or "copy" or anything
more descriptive.

~~~
mdorazio
The problem is it's all of those things. For a text ad, the creative is the
words. For a display ad, it's the imagery + text. For a YouTube ad, it's the
video. Content is the _other_ stuff on the page where your ad is being shown,
so "creative" has become the standard term to encompass the stuff in your ad
that you make.

~~~
smachiz
Sorry - isn't 'creative' as a noun just replacing 'ad' in this example?

It's a gussied up way of suggesting this is more highbrow than 'ad' which
tends to have a pejorative connotation.

~~~
vegannet
An advert is the creative and context — i.e: a photo on an influencers
Instagram story is a different advert to the same photo on a billboard.

