Business Ads Advice

[Jeromeke]

Hi All
I trust all is well, I have a new business "issue" recently I got my marketing team to organise a PPC google ad campaign, I put about £2500 into it and all of a sudden (over a few days) the whole budget was gone & I saw no results, I spoke to another small business owner friend who said it was rather peculiar & told me something about "bots" where as I'm sure you know they just spammed clicked my ads & rinsed my budget, so he told me to get a ppcshield to prevent it, so I'm confident it will prevent this issue. But my question would be am I able to claim some sort of refund from Google, and is there any advice which could prevent this in the future?

 

[fisicx]

Unfortunately as a business owner you get nothing from Google.

Your marketing team are totally at fault here as they didn’t set a daily budget or I suspect set up the campaign correctly. You need to get them trained up properly before investing any more funds into Google ads.

 

[ctrlbrk]

Can anyone explain the rationale about bots spam-clicking OP's campaign?

 

[fisicx]

Can anyone explain the rationale about bots spam-clicking OP's campaign?

All explained here:

Prevent invalid clicks and impressions - Google Ad Manager Help

This article explains how invalid activity on Google ads is prevented by employing both automated systems and human reviews to detect and filter out fraudulent clicks and impressions. On this page:

support.google.com

 

[YasmeenLondon]

I put about £2500 into it and all of a sudden (over a few days) the whole budget was gone & I saw no results.

Your marketing team should've put daily limits to prevent this from happening, a daily limit allows you to check the daily statistics and calibrate your campaign before the entire budget is blown away, the management of a campaign is just as important as the research that goes to create the campaign, adding keywords, removing keywords, filtering traffic etc.

I spoke to another small business owner friend who said it was rather peculiar & told me something about "bots" where as I'm sure you know they just spammed clicked my ads & rinsed my budget, so he told me to get a ppcshield to prevent it,

Better prevention would be highly targeting your ads, many assume it's better to appeal to everyone but a highly targeted ad converts better and reduces the chances of showing the ad to a bot (doesn't remove it entirely but definitely reduces it)

But my question would be am I able to claim some sort of refund from Google

I highly doubt google offers refunds for PPC ads, they do offer credit every once in a while so maybe that can offset the big hit you took.

 

[YasmeenLondon]

Can anyone explain the rationale about bots spam-clicking OP's campaign?

Competitor Click Fraud is when the competition sends bots to your website/ad to use up your budget/resources.

 

[WaveJumper]

New Year ........New Marketing team?

 

[ctrlbrk]

Unfortunately as a business owner you get nothing from Google.

Your marketing team are totally at fault here as they didn’t set a daily budget or I suspect set up the campaign correctly. You need to get them trained up properly before investing any more funds into Google ads.

Thanks, well says here

Our system uses sophisticated filters to distinguish between activity generated through normal use by users and activity that may pose a risk to advertisers, and advertisers are not charged for this activity.

So is OP's case something else?

 

[fisicx]

So is OP's case something else?

Only if they can prove the fraud. Which means talking to Google. If the spend is because the campaign was badly set up they get nuffin’

 

[Fagin2021]

Hi All
I trust all is well, I have a new business "issue" recently I got my marketing team to organise a PPC google ad campaign, I put about £2500 into it and all of a sudden (over a few days) the whole budget was gone & I saw no results, I spoke to another small business owner friend who said it was rather peculiar & told me something about "bots" where as I'm sure you know they just spammed clicked my ads & rinsed my budget, so he told me to get a ppcshield to prevent it, so I'm confident it will prevent this issue. But my question would be am I able to claim some sort of refund from Google, and is there any advice which could prevent this in the future?

There's a small chance it's click fraud and a big chance it's down to a badly set campaign. For example, handing control to Google with automated bidding, automated targeting, accepting all the defaults and recommendations, broad-matching all keywords and so on. The list is endless.

Anyone with even a basic knowledge of Google Ads will be able to tell you if this is the case and you'd be well-advised to investigate before assuming the clicks are invalid and making accusations.

I'd be a little wary of taking advice from a 'business owner friend' unless he's an experienced Ads practitioner.

 

[thetiger2015]

Thanks, well says here



So is OP's case something else?

It's usually automated. We get refunds all the time but for very small sums, 34p or 64p per week if they spot a pattern of unusual clicks. I've never had to claim a refund.

They don't allow hundreds of spam clicks either, it would set off a manual review of your account, as Google would think you're phishing or something.

I can't see £2,500 of spam clicks. It's more likely the daily budget wasn't set and it's just sent thousands of irrelevant clicks from people searching for all manner of things. Google Ads is horrendous for sending you rubbish traffic, so you really have to watch the search terms reports and remove irrelevant traffic to get the costs down. You also have to set a realistic daily budget, to drive traffic but not spend all your money in a day.

 

[siangana]

Google ads is like a black hole
You have invested your money and you will never see it again either in the form of money or in the form of results
Everything is very complicated there

 

[Paul Carmen]

Google ads is like a black hole
You have invested your money and you will never see it again either in the form of money or in the form of results
Everything is very complicated there

There's some odd answers/posts on here!

Is Google Ads like a black hole, did it suck all your money & marketing team in with its vast gravitational pull, or do you just not know what you're doing?

Rocket science is complicated, brain surgery is complicated... yet if if I have a problem or a traumatic brain injury, I get an expert to carry out the surgery, I don't saw the top of my head off and do it myself...

As Fagin2021 says, this is highly unlikely to be click fraud, certainly not £2,500 worth. If it is you can usually spot it really quickly; e.g. multiple clicks on the same keywords in a very short period of time, and Google will refund that without you having to do anything at all.

@Jeromeke assuming from what you've said that this is a search campaign, ask your marketing team to tell you what Campaigns, AdGroups and Keywords spent the money.

If, as all the Google Ads experts here suspect, they setup poorly targeted very 'broad match' campaigns, you can drill into the "search terms" report and see what irrelevant search terms resulted in all the wasted clicks. If that's the case, you don't need a click fraud solution, you need someone who knows what they're doing!

 

[m4hmo]

Should have done it yourself with small daily amounts. The company screwed up nicely here. Take back control of your account.

 

[fisicx]

Should have done it yourself with small daily amounts. The company screwed up nicely here. Take back control of your account.

It is their account. It’s their own staff that screwed up.

 

[m4hmo]

It is their account. It’s their own staff that screwed up.

Well now you can make your own account.

 

[HFE Signs]

I doubt it’s bots that have wasted your budget as Google don’t charge for invalid clicks, it’s more likely that the campaign wasn’t correctly targeted and therefore you generated traffic that was less likely to convert

 

[flaxtrade]

Hi All
I trust all is well, I have a new business "issue" recently I got my marketing team to organise a PPC google ad campaign, I put about £2500 into it and all of a sudden (over a few days) the whole budget was gone & I saw no results, I spoke to another small business owner friend who said it was rather peculiar & told me something about "bots" where as I'm sure you know they just spammed clicked my ads & rinsed my budget, so he told me to get a ppcshield to prevent it, so I'm confident it will prevent this issue. But my question would be am I able to claim some sort of refund from Google, and is there any advice which could prevent this in the future?

Hi there,

Any invalid clicks should be automatically detected and refunded to your account by Google. These transactions are normally visible in your billing [transactions] section in Google ads, and your team can also run monthly invalid click reports to show you month-on-month trends/what share of traffic has been affected.

If you cannot see any invalid click data in the invalid click report - this confirms that your budget has been spent incorrectly by the team. I would request a campaign and keyword report [including cost, revenue, clicks, cost per click and invalid clicks metrics to investigate]