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Ask HN: Are PPC ads just legalized gambling for business?

1 pointsby boldpandaalmost 11 years ago
With FB &amp; Google raking in billions and no &quot;odds &amp; payout&quot; disclosures required on their advertising services, they are just cleaning out advertisers IMO.<p>And yes, FB &amp; Google are not alone. There are many other people offering ads with little chance of payout.<p>As a small business owner and fairly experienced online marketer, I still think most PPC ads are a ripoff, especially for non-sophisticated advertisers (I&#x27;ve had mild success w&#x2F; Reddit ads &amp; FB ads FWIW).<p>The fact that Facebook will construct a crappy ad for you by scraping your site is alarming (do they still do this?).<p>It&#x27;s like a casino offering to bring the black jack table into your room and play your hand for you (and ignoring the probabilities).<p>I&#x27;m just frustrated that there&#x27;s not a lot of transparency on what you should expect in terms of payout when you advertise on these PPC sites.<p>The advertiser bears almost all the risk of the ad and can&#x27;t get a refund if it totally bombs - which if FB is going to do the ad for me, why not offer a refund if it bombs?<p>The US government makes online gambling illegal but doesn&#x27;t take a second look at PPC ads? Hypocrisy, IMO.<p>The isn&#x27;t the most elegant prose I&#x27;ve written, but I want to see if others share my opinions and if there might be a good solution out there.

1 comment

Gustomaximusalmost 11 years ago
Either you&#x27;re doing it wrong, or your product is not made for PPC. You&#x27;ll find it&#x27;s massively successful for many companies.<p>And why would there be transparency on payout? There are plethora of variables that are out of control of the network. A why would they bear the risk of your conversion ability? I suspect you&#x27;re one of these people that &#x27;nothing is their fault&#x27;. PPC is no more gambling than Ebay is.