

Ask HN: Are PPC ads just legalized gambling for business? - boldpanda

With FB &amp; Google raking in billions and no &quot;odds &amp; payout&quot; disclosures required on their advertising services, they are just cleaning out advertisers IMO.<p>And yes, FB &amp; Google are not alone. There are many other people offering ads with little chance of payout.<p>As a small business owner and fairly experienced online marketer, I still think most PPC ads are a ripoff, especially for non-sophisticated advertisers (I&#x27;ve had mild success w&#x2F; Reddit ads &amp; FB ads FWIW).<p>The fact that Facebook will construct a crappy ad for you by scraping your site is alarming (do they still do this?).<p>It&#x27;s like a casino offering to bring the black jack table into your room and play your hand for you (and ignoring the probabilities).<p>I&#x27;m just frustrated that there&#x27;s not a lot of transparency on what you should expect in terms of payout when you advertise on these PPC sites.<p>The advertiser bears almost all the risk of the ad and can&#x27;t get a refund if it totally bombs - which if FB is going to do the ad for me, why not offer a refund if it bombs?<p>The US government makes online gambling illegal but doesn&#x27;t take a second look at PPC ads? Hypocrisy, IMO.<p>The isn&#x27;t the most elegant prose I&#x27;ve written, but I want to see if others share my opinions and if there might be a good solution out there.
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Gustomaximus
Either you're doing it wrong, or your product is not made for PPC. You'll find
it's massively successful for many companies.

And why would there be transparency on payout? There are plethora of variables
that are out of control of the network. A why would they bear the risk of your
conversion ability? I suspect you're one of these people that 'nothing is
their fault'. PPC is no more gambling than Ebay is.

