I'm a coder, I know my software stuff and I occasionally had interaction with advertising tools. But I'm starting a new service and part of the advertising plan was to try google ads and social media ads (meta).
I started with google ads. I set up an account, I watched tutorials, read all of Andy Black's posts (thanks!) and so on. When I was ready, I created my campaign and ads and keywords and waited for some impressions. Nothing happened. I said maybe it takes a couple of days. The Ad diagnosis tool kept saying "your ads are not showing: We don't know why your ads aren't showing for this search". Thanks for the help, google! After a week of no impressions, I emailed support. A guy called me, very nice and helpful but in the end he told me to improve my ads and my landing page and my quality score and the keywords and so on. OK, I'll do that, even though with no impressions, there is no quality score, I have no idea if my "improvements" are actually improving or not. He also said I should not do manual, only maximize clicks campaigns.
But I had a suspicion my ads no showing is due to something else and I went through all the settings and options I could find, but nothing looked suspicious. Anyway, I removed the google ads account and created another one. Set up in the same way, the same campaign, ads and everything. 2 hours after, and it already looks different, the ad diagnosis now says "your ad is probably being shown at times, but your budget is too low". Ok, I went in and put the max CPC to "Raise bids to top of page CPC" and doubled the daily budget. Left it for a day, still no impressions and still the same "budget too low" message. I manually doubled the max CPC and doubled the daily budget again. Left it for a day, still nothing. I "improved" my ads, landing page, keywords some more and still nothing. Then after a few more days, I got ONE impression. Which I actually think it's a bug or something on google's side
No other impressions since then.
So I created a maximize clicks campaign, and went through the same process. After a week, no impressions, same message with "low budget" even though my budget is like 5 times what they recommended.
And now I'm back to "We don't know why your ads aren't showing for this search"! Google Ads FTW! After a month and many many hours trying to set up everything and I have 1 impression.
OK, so F*ck google ads, meta ads might be better anyway. I don't know why, but I didn't even registered the new instagram account that it got immediately restricted. I unblocked it by appealing the decision. Minutes later the meta business got restricted. I unblocked that after about a day and after giving meta my ID & selfie (I nearly cried for having to give meta that info). Then my Meta Ad account got restricted (because their machine learning systems figured out the account was created through automated means and that is against their policy. what?). Got the ad account unblocked, and then the instagram one got restricted again! It got unblocked after I appealed. Literally a shit show that takes way too much time and effort. And all this without doing one post that could be against their policy. I just threw my logo, a vanilla cover image and added some information
Then the icing on the cake came on Friday. I bought a phone number for the company, and did it online and by phone. I gave all the documentation they asked for and I was quietly waiting for a sign or a SIM to come my way. After a few days I call and they say they need more documents. Well how the duck should I give you more if you don't say anything?
I know nothing is ever easy in this world, but I think sometimes things are made hard unnecessarily. My experience of the past 2 months is too painful. Just take my money!
I started with google ads. I set up an account, I watched tutorials, read all of Andy Black's posts (thanks!) and so on. When I was ready, I created my campaign and ads and keywords and waited for some impressions. Nothing happened. I said maybe it takes a couple of days. The Ad diagnosis tool kept saying "your ads are not showing: We don't know why your ads aren't showing for this search". Thanks for the help, google! After a week of no impressions, I emailed support. A guy called me, very nice and helpful but in the end he told me to improve my ads and my landing page and my quality score and the keywords and so on. OK, I'll do that, even though with no impressions, there is no quality score, I have no idea if my "improvements" are actually improving or not. He also said I should not do manual, only maximize clicks campaigns.
But I had a suspicion my ads no showing is due to something else and I went through all the settings and options I could find, but nothing looked suspicious. Anyway, I removed the google ads account and created another one. Set up in the same way, the same campaign, ads and everything. 2 hours after, and it already looks different, the ad diagnosis now says "your ad is probably being shown at times, but your budget is too low". Ok, I went in and put the max CPC to "Raise bids to top of page CPC" and doubled the daily budget. Left it for a day, still no impressions and still the same "budget too low" message. I manually doubled the max CPC and doubled the daily budget again. Left it for a day, still nothing. I "improved" my ads, landing page, keywords some more and still nothing. Then after a few more days, I got ONE impression. Which I actually think it's a bug or something on google's side
No other impressions since then.So I created a maximize clicks campaign, and went through the same process. After a week, no impressions, same message with "low budget" even though my budget is like 5 times what they recommended.
And now I'm back to "We don't know why your ads aren't showing for this search"! Google Ads FTW! After a month and many many hours trying to set up everything and I have 1 impression.
OK, so F*ck google ads, meta ads might be better anyway. I don't know why, but I didn't even registered the new instagram account that it got immediately restricted. I unblocked it by appealing the decision. Minutes later the meta business got restricted. I unblocked that after about a day and after giving meta my ID & selfie (I nearly cried for having to give meta that info). Then my Meta Ad account got restricted (because their machine learning systems figured out the account was created through automated means and that is against their policy. what?). Got the ad account unblocked, and then the instagram one got restricted again! It got unblocked after I appealed. Literally a shit show that takes way too much time and effort. And all this without doing one post that could be against their policy. I just threw my logo, a vanilla cover image and added some information
Then the icing on the cake came on Friday. I bought a phone number for the company, and did it online and by phone. I gave all the documentation they asked for and I was quietly waiting for a sign or a SIM to come my way. After a few days I call and they say they need more documents. Well how the duck should I give you more if you don't say anything?
I know nothing is ever easy in this world, but I think sometimes things are made hard unnecessarily. My experience of the past 2 months is too painful. Just take my money!
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