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My concern with digital ads
It’s obviously in the interest of Facebook and Google to charge us as much as possible. I suspect that they are doing things behind the scenes to charge us more. One small thing I noticed is that Google won’t let me buy ad words with low volumes…. because I’d be the only one bidding and therefore should get a good price. I saw a post on another subreddit where someone noticed that Facebook was putting their ads largely into a time period where they got very few conversions. Google is taking away our control and forcing us to let them be in charge of more…like how exact match isn’t exact match anymore.
Fundamentally our interests are opposed to the interests of these platforms but they hold almost all the cards. You might say well don’t use them but where else can you go? Sure you can try some smaller options like nextdoor or bing or something.
I wonder if there is some way to fix this problem. Possibly a decentralized platform…I honestly don’t know how this would work and I’m not familiar with any at this time (there are scammy things but I don’t know of any legit ones).
I’m especially annoyed because we just started our business so we didn’t get to take advantage of any of the heyday…whether it’s social media platforms (I’m looking at you IG) severely limiting organic reach or the cost of digital ads exploding it feels like digital is kind of hopeless as a new small business. We are making a lot of plans to use non digital marketing because it feels like a huge risk to depend on digital.
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1 Reply
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I see and hear comments like these quite regularly, and one aspect they generally miss is that it is very definitely more in the interest of FB and Google to have happy advertisers, who are hitting their marketing objectives. If that is not the case, they become a dead platform and marketers move their advertising dollars elsewhere.
Digital advertising is not easy (no form of marketing is), but in comparison to most instances of offline marketing it’s absolutely miles ahead and certainly the best choice for most businesses.
It takes constant testing and ongoing evolution to find what works for your business, Google and FB don’t owe you results but they really do want you to get them (so that you spend more money on their platforms). It may be that digital marketing is not the right option for you, it doesn’t work for all, but the platforms are not actively trying to gouge money from you.
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Honestly not trying to minimise your experience btw. All advertising platforms can be very frustrating. I just think it’s important to remember that other angle.
– 2nd edit
Also, the whole thing with FB crippling organic reach, probably is a money gouge…
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