A bit of context for folks who don't know the back story: Netcan is (or works for) a fairly significant AdWords spender. (He has a few comments about AdWords on HN which are worth reading.) I spent about $6k on them in 2009, and they're directly responsible for about 40% of my revenue and 1/3 of my profits.
My comment above which on second reading appears to be sarcastic and exaggerated is a literally accurate account of what I went through last August.
(And I'll say this: despite having worse customer service than the Japanese immigration authorities -- whose three part mission statement includes the words "Forcibly expelling undesirable foreigners from our nation" -- AdWords was and is the best advertising option that has ever been invented for small businesses.)
Edit to add: On review of the posts I remembered, I realized that I appear to have mentally conflated netcan with a HN member named netsp. My apologies for my memory being dyslexic.
Netcan & netsp are the same person (me) so it does apply. (sorry about that, I updated my profile to show this)
You make an important point. This poor quality of service from Google hasn't affected their revenue from this advertiser(s) at all. Actually, several times a year the ads go down for a few hours due to a failed payment, CC issue or some payment related adwords bug while I drop everything & try to get a rep on the phone. I suppose that ads up to a few grand per year. But.. these are highly competitive areas. If we aren't on the page someone else is for a marginally lower CPC.
Does conversion optimizer really work that well for you?
I speak three languages and still don't have words sufficient to praise Conversion Optimizer. Are you in a mood to tolerate rabid, missionary zeal at the moment? Because if you are I can talk CO all day.
Please, please write a big long post on kalzameus for the world to see! Taking 20 min to read one of your articles is better than taking 20 hours scouring the internet reading conflicting sources none of which I entirely trust. Please!
My comment above which on second reading appears to be sarcastic and exaggerated is a literally accurate account of what I went through last August.
See generally http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=790800 or http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=791003 and the blog post linked from the second comment.
Full disclosure: I am a case study for how effective AdWords is. http://www.google.com/adwords/conversionoptimizer/bingocard....
(And I'll say this: despite having worse customer service than the Japanese immigration authorities -- whose three part mission statement includes the words "Forcibly expelling undesirable foreigners from our nation" -- AdWords was and is the best advertising option that has ever been invented for small businesses.)
Edit to add: On review of the posts I remembered, I realized that I appear to have mentally conflated netcan with a HN member named netsp. My apologies for my memory being dyslexic.