We have reached the end of our Google Ads campaign. While the results are unsurprising, the numbers have been very enlightening.
Freezenet is an amazing website. That is something that no one can ever take away from me. It has excellent features including some of the best technology and digital rights news content on the web. It has an incredibly diverse and wide range of different video game reviews. What’s more, the selection of music offered both in the reviews section and the official Wiki is absolutely stunning both in the variety and depth. The fact that the content was entirely built by one person makes this website all the more incredible in terms of how big of an accomplishment it all is.
The problem is that building a news website in this day and age is exceedingly difficult. Between the propaganda outlets masquerading as news utilizing their monopolistic powers to squeeze out any and all competition, the troll farms that put out obvious disinformation, and the growing list of people who simply considers the profession of journalism to be something to be scorned at even though good journalism does still exist, it often seems that the quality of the content that gets put out simply doesn’t matter. When you publish truthful reporting, people frequently reject that truth on the basis that it doesn’t match with their personal beliefs or whatever the narratives say is happening. A great example is the link tax debate where pointing out the obvious failings of such a legal concept frequently gets you branded a “shill for big tech” rather than the reality of someone who sees an impending disaster unfolding (and the disaster did unfold, for the record). Often times, it just seems that truth really has no value any more.
Still, I’ve been told by others that truth still has value. If you build something that has value, you’ll be able to see success sooner or later. One area I have been repeatedly told that is just lacking in my strategy is a lack of overall advertising. Indeed, many people have a lot of beliefs about advertising and how advertising, while hated by almost everyone, is something that “just works”. It’s often presented as a dirty truth that no one wants to admit, but supposedly this is something that does work and allows people to be successful. It’s just the kick a business needs to get going in the right direction.
The problem is that these comments are typically made by people who have little to no business experience. Still, unlike most people who do advertise on things like Google Ads, Freezenet offers an actual high quality product. We offer content on music, video games, and, of course, news. If anything, Freezenet offers what most AI generated slop advertising doesn’t have – an actual valuable product. Even better is the fact that it is all free. So, this is what makes this project all the more interesting. What if someone out there puts advertising out for a product that offers an actual high quality service?
Well, if you have been following Freezenet since the very beginning of this experiment, you’ll already know that the value of advertising is highly questionable – at least as far as Google is concerned. Indeed, I’ve already published my results for week 1, week 2, and week 3 and the numbers already look pretty horrible. Overall, I’m already of the opinion that advertising on Google doesn’t work for an honest news business, though I’ve kept an open mind all the way to the end of this project.
Well, my campaign ended on the 29th and I now have the final results.
On April 20th, the ads campaign generated a mere 20 clicks. The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,912 clicks.
On April 21st, the ads campaign generated 19 clicks. The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,556 clicks.
On April 22nd, the ads campaign generated 26 clicks. The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,365 clicks.
On April 23rd, the ads campaign generated 26 clicks. The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,575 clicks.
On April 24th, the ads campaign generated 12 clicks. The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,360 clicks.
On April 25th, the ads campaign generated 5 clicks (yes, five). The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,105 clicks.
On April 26th, the ads campaign generated 19 clicks. The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,126 clicks.
On April 27th, the ads campaign generated 12 clicks. The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,121 clicks.
On April 28th, the ads campaign generated 9 clicks (yes, nine). The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,078 clicks.
On April 29th, the ads campaign generated 11 clicks. The internal statistics showed that the website generated 1,219 clicks.
So, let’s dial this back to the beginning. Clicks are one metric out of a number in an ad campaign. What about impressions? Let’s show the details of that:
- April 1 – 11,367 impressions
- April 2 – 39 impressions
- April 3 – 2,047 impressions
- April 4 – 21,643 impressions
- April 5 – 23,676 impressions
- April 6 – 37,079 impressions
- April 7 – 37,846 impressions
- April 8 – 30,118 impressions
- April 9 – 1,732 impressions
- April 10 – 20,185 impressions
- April 11 – 862 impressions
- April 12 – 46,046 impressions
- April 13 – 65,031 impressions
- April 14 – 35,457 impressions
- April 15 – 23,133 impressions
- April 16 – 37,670 impressions
- April 17 – 1,378 impressions
- April 18 – 927 impressions
- April 19 – 7,715 impressions
- April 20 – 418 impressions
- April 21 – 2,828 impressions
- April 22 – 6,232 impressions
- April 23 – 2,327 impressions
- April 24 – 121 impressions
- April 25 – 289 impressions
- April 26 – 770 impressions
- April 27 – 890 impressions
- April 28 – 264 impressions
- April 29 – 551 impressions
So, the click numbers were low towards the end of the campaign, but it wasn’t that it was because the ads quickly stopped generating clicks. It was because Google stopped showing the ads entirely. What makes this especially problematic is the fact that while the ads weren’t shown, Google had no problem charging me as if these days were no different than the earlier parts of the campaign. Let’s look at what I was charged on each day:
- April 1 – $50.35
- April 2 – $0.00 (payment issues were happening that day)
- April 3 – $6.66
- April 4 – $75.64
- April 5 – $88.36
- April 6 – $57.37
- April 7 – $55.97
- April 8 – $48.49
- April 9 – $2.12
- April 10 – $56.85
- April 11 – $3.15
- April 12 – $91.27
- April 13 – $89.62
- April 14 – $62.72
- April 15 – $31.62
- April 16 – $74.65
- April 17 – $51.62
- April 18 – $37.86
- April 19 – $96.56
- April 20 – $56.32
- April 21 – $43.21
- April 22 – $42.72
- April 23 – $50.88
- April 24 – $63.16
- April 25 – $12.01
- April 26 – $67.04
- April 27 – $71.28
- April 28 – $32.69
- April 29 – $43.72
So, lets look at one example here. On the 27th, I got charged $71.28 to get a measly 12 clicks and 890 impressions. Meanwhile, on April 5th, I got charged $88.36 to get 705 clicks with 23,676 impressions. Two different days, two vastly different outcomes, got charged a similar rate. This is far from the only discrepancy between the early days of the campaign to the later days of the campaign. It’s a similar story where I got charged the same, but got nothing towards the end of the campaign. This is both with impressions and clicks, meaning I got charged, yet didn’t have any ads showing anyway. To put it simply, Google more or less shut down my campaign on around the 24th, yet still charged me full price as if I had been running a full blown campaign. You can’t tell me 9 clicks is worth $32.69 (per the 28th). If I was getting that much in my Adsense account, I wouldn’t be sitting here still trying to turn this solo project into a full fledged business.
Another diabolical thing is the fact that as part of one of the advertisers “promotions”, I was told that if I reached a certain threshold in ad spending, I would get $600 in credit towards the account. I easily hit that early on in the campaign, yet somehow, the credit remained in “processing” throughout the entire rest of the campaign. As it tuns out, Google can sit on their hands for up to 35 days to redeem any credits. Either way, I got charged the full amount and the supposed “credit” never reached my account before the campaign ended. What is very likely is that they wanted me to keep spending my money through them through into a second month, hoping I wouldn’t notice the fact that part way through the campaign, they largely stopped showing my ads while still charging me the full amount anyway. It’s pretty obvious that it’s just a ploy to keep me spending insane amounts of money that clearly didn’t deliver on the value.
How do I know this didn’t deliver on the value? The answer is that I see the dollars and cents flowing in and out. In total, this whole campaign cost me $1,463.92. Assuming all of the value came from the ad campaign (which isn’t even remotely true), how much did my Adesense revenues generate? $3.01. Now, if I made maybe $700 or $800, I can see looking into what I could tweak or adjust to have a more successful ad campaign. It’s at least a promise that things can be improved. The numbers I’m seeing screams that there is not a snowballs chance in hell that this is a viable option for me. That’s not even getting into the fact that Google completely ripped me off part way through the campaign on top of it all.
At any rate, this whole experiment is an extremely enlightening one. Some people out there may think that the world has ultimately become a “pay to play” game. You want to start a business, you better buy into a lot of advertising to make it viable because there just isn’t any other viable way of finding success. Based on this experiment, even that isn’t being cynical enough. Not only is advertising stupidly expensive, but it also completely and utterly failed to deliver on the promised value. The only thing it accomplished was give me a few hundred more clicks that ultimately proved to have zero value otherwise. The only thing I can see this benefiting is people who are trying to sell a domain and website. In that case, yeah, but thousands in advertising to make the numbers look big. Spruce things up with fancy growth potential charts and you have quite the con job you created. From there, you can sell that website at a premium, ripping off the sap that bought it up with big dreams because after the person bought it, the traffic dries up and they have a nearly worthless domain and website afterwards that they paid mint for.
For the “advertising just works” crowd, consider this a massive response to your belief. I tried advertising and it was nothing more than just an exercise in throwing my money away.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Bluesky and Facebook.
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