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I've been in go to market for the better part of 20 years now (anyone remember the DigitalOcean youtube ads of the 2012-2014 era?), paid online advertising has

by neom 4d ago

I've been in go to market for the better part of 20 years now (anyone remember the DigitalOcean youtube ads of the 2012-2014 era?), paid online advertising has basically gone to shit, it started about 6 years ago, but over the past 3-4 years outside of linkedin it's effectively pointless, over 55% of Americans run ad blockers now and around 40% globally - on top of that, what you do get it mostly just... bots. In January I was helping a friend with some of his GTM efforts, we ran $10k over 3 weeks on meta, google, linkedin and X. On Meta, google and X the sub 1 second bounce rate was around 0.7% and hotjar+raw server logs registered zero activity on 99% of the inbound from those platforms, this was to a multitude of ICP specific landing pages with highly targeted ads AND relatively general targeting to the homepage. LinkedIn does still work, but it has gotten extremely expensive.

brazukadev 4d ago
ads have gone so wild I'm afraid this post might be a targeted ad for LinkedIn
Nemo_bis 4d ago
I always like to link an AdContrarian post https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-inescapable-logic-of-ad-fraud.html https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-inescapable-lo...
- neom 4d ago
  Good read. If you put mixpanel+hotjar or something like that in and actually drill down into what the networks are sending you the discrepancies are often stark. A couple years back I was working on a campaign for someone and over a month X reported it had sent ~$30k in traffic, but on our side the analysis platforms showed we'd only gotten around $2k of inbound (never mind the quality), we reported it to x and a few weeks later they came back and said there was a "bug" in the ads platform and refunded us the $30k but at the time I thought...if someone unsophisticated was running ads, they'd be out whatever they spent, to a degree their own fault for not being on top of it as ads platforms are somewhat notorious for this kinda thing but never the less, not ideal. I'm pretty sure the only useful places to advertise online these days are LinkedIn and Instagram.
- dorgo 4d ago
  Does it matter from marketers perspective? I can measure incremental revenue/profit and decide based on that if the channel is worth it. I don't care if the rest of the money goes to the channel or is stolen.
  - neom 4d ago
    [dead]
- TitaRusell 4d ago
  This blog makes a good point: governments are already overworked dealing with pedos, terrorists and spies. Ad fraud is a victimless crime that voters don't care about so in all likelihood a low priority.
mitxela 4d ago
Even 6 years ago people were saying the market had gone to shit in the last 6 years
bluehatbrit 4d ago
So beyond LinkedIn, what sort of channels are you using now? Is it basically all about paying influencers?
- neom 4d ago
  Well... I've always believed that a good go to market should be extremely multi channel with paid being gravy anyway. I think DigitalOcean was successful because we did a combination of: Actually useful content marketing + being where your customer actually is (so attend&host event/conferences etc) + genuine community outreach and interest in what your customer base is all about (I spent time every day during DO on HN making sure if anyone had a problem it was solved) + for devtools (at least back in my day) I think supporting OSS meaningfully was also incredibly important. To a degree in DevTools, DevRel can basically be the same as paid influencers, I had Mikeal Rogers (rest in peace) working for me and his mission was "Do whatever you want as long as it's net positive to the nodejs community, have fun!" so I guess "paying influencers" can mean few diff things. With youtube a lot of people use sponsor blockers now too so paying someone to shill your shit in the middle of their video is probably not as effective as it once was, tho I doubt the sponsor blocks are as widespread as ad blockers. If you're just getting started I think the best thing you can do by a mile is just attend conferences/events where your ICP is and try to bootstrap PLG with it.
- codingdave 4d ago
  This question is asked often, and the answer is always that it depends on who your audience is. Channels that work for one person might fail for you, and vice versa. Every product solves a different problem, which means different people who seek out information from different places. Step 1 is to understand who those people are for your product, and figure out which information sources they trust. As implied above, almost nobody trusts online ads.
dzonga 3d ago
this is why people are going native / retail media. & some people i.e those with a lot of money are going to CTV as well. search ads have negative ROI. Facebook/Instagram & linkedIn work to a certain extent.

by neom 4d ago

brazukadev 4d ago

ads have gone so wild I'm afraid this post might be a targeted ad for LinkedIn

Nemo_bis 4d ago

I always like to link an AdContrarian post https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-inescapable-logic-of-ad-fraud.html https://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-inescapable-lo...

neom 4d ago
Good read. If you put mixpanel+hotjar or something like that in and actually drill down into what the networks are sending you the discrepancies are often stark. A couple years back I was working on a campaign for someone and over a month X reported it had sent ~$30k in traffic, but on our side the analysis platforms showed we'd only gotten around $2k of inbound (never mind the quality), we reported it to x and a few weeks later they came back and said there was a "bug" in the ads platform and refunded us the $30k but at the time I thought...if someone unsophisticated was running ads, they'd be out whatever they spent, to a degree their own fault for not being on top of it as ads platforms are somewhat notorious for this kinda thing but never the less, not ideal. I'm pretty sure the only useful places to advertise online these days are LinkedIn and Instagram.
dorgo 4d ago
Does it matter from marketers perspective? I can measure incremental revenue/profit and decide based on that if the channel is worth it. I don't care if the rest of the money goes to the channel or is stolen.
- neom 4d ago
  [dead]
TitaRusell 4d ago
This blog makes a good point: governments are already overworked dealing with pedos, terrorists and spies. Ad fraud is a victimless crime that voters don't care about so in all likelihood a low priority.

mitxela 4d ago

Even 6 years ago people were saying the market had gone to shit in the last 6 years

bluehatbrit 4d ago

So beyond LinkedIn, what sort of channels are you using now? Is it basically all about paying influencers?

neom 4d ago
Well... I've always believed that a good go to market should be extremely multi channel with paid being gravy anyway. I think DigitalOcean was successful because we did a combination of: Actually useful content marketing + being where your customer actually is (so attend&host event/conferences etc) + genuine community outreach and interest in what your customer base is all about (I spent time every day during DO on HN making sure if anyone had a problem it was solved) + for devtools (at least back in my day) I think supporting OSS meaningfully was also incredibly important. To a degree in DevTools, DevRel can basically be the same as paid influencers, I had Mikeal Rogers (rest in peace) working for me and his mission was "Do whatever you want as long as it's net positive to the nodejs community, have fun!" so I guess "paying influencers" can mean few diff things. With youtube a lot of people use sponsor blockers now too so paying someone to shill your shit in the middle of their video is probably not as effective as it once was, tho I doubt the sponsor blocks are as widespread as ad blockers. If you're just getting started I think the best thing you can do by a mile is just attend conferences/events where your ICP is and try to bootstrap PLG with it.
codingdave 4d ago
This question is asked often, and the answer is always that it depends on who your audience is. Channels that work for one person might fail for you, and vice versa. Every product solves a different problem, which means different people who seek out information from different places. Step 1 is to understand who those people are for your product, and figure out which information sources they trust. As implied above, almost nobody trusts online ads.

dzonga 3d ago

this is why people are going native / retail media. & some people i.e those with a lot of money are going to CTV as well. search ads have negative ROI. Facebook/Instagram & linkedIn work to a certain extent.