[boplicity]

> How do you know your ads aren’t just taking credit for customers who were going to buy anyway?

If you can't answer that question, then you're not running a proper advertising campaign. You're just throwing money around blindly. Plenty of people do have good answers to that question, though. Unfortunately, plenty of people don't.

[Strom]

> If you can't answer that question, then you're not running a proper advertising campaign.

What is this proper advertising campaign? Does it include turning off ads for terms that rank organically high anyway?

[boplicity]

> What is this proper advertising campaign

Well, for our business, proper advertising campaigns have opened new channels for growth, allowing us to reach new people, and build our email list significantly, with a predictable ROI. It's pretty easy to tell if an ad is working when you turn it on, and your email list growth rate instantly doubles -- and all the traffic is coming from a new traffic source. (Obviously, if we were to run Google ads on search traffic, we would check whether our organic search traffic dropped when we turned the ads on, but that's a different point.)

[Strom]

> It's pretty easy to tell if an ad is working when you turn it on, and your email list growth rate instantly doubles -- and all the traffic is coming from a new traffic source.

Maybe for a real tight definition of instantly, but generally this is not true. Imagine the following scenario:

1. You run an ad for ComapnyName.

2. An enthusiastic customer promotes your business in a local bar.

3. The bar attendees search for CompanyName and click on the first result.

Because you ran an ad for CompanyName, the first result is going to be your ad. You will see very nice ROI on that ad. What you won't see in any stats, is that these people would have probably found the organic link anyway, because they were already motivated and searching for CompanyName in particular.

> Obviously, if we were to run Google ads on search traffic, we would check whether our organic search traffic dropped when we turned the ads on, but that's a different point

That wouldn't help either in this imaginary scenario, because these bar attendees are a spike in traffic. Plus if the ad has been running for a longer period, then you won't have accurate organic search traffic stats anymore either, because it's already cannibalized.

[boplicity]

> Imagine the following scenario

"Imagination" is the core of the problem here. Plenty of people are imagining various scenarios, whereas people with successful advertising campaigns are just raking in the money -- no need for imagination.

I've turned off plenty of ads when they stopped working. I didn't need to turn them off to discover they stopped working.

Sure, you can imagine a dozen scenarios where an ad campaign doesn't work. Fortunately, I've managed to learn how to focus on the reality of the situation -- and have reaped the rewards in the process.

> you won't have accurate organic search traffic stats anymore either, because it's already cannibalized.

That' not true for us -- as I said before, a successful campaign for us brings in new sources of traffic from new marketing channels. One of the early lessons I learned was to not cannibalize what's already working. For example, we grew our Facebook Page (and email list) from scratch, when we had no Facebook traffic, by using Facebook advertising.

Operating under different brands -- even just for testing purposes, is a one another of the way we deal with this. Of course you can continue to imagine scenarios where we might be making mistakes. I do that as well -- it's called planning. Though, none of that really matters until money is spent (and made or lost).

[Strom]

First let me say that ads in general definitely work, I'm definitely not arguing against that.

What I'm talking about in specific is search ads where the ad is for a term that ranks organically high anyway.

It's not just imaginary either, I've done a lot of over-the-shoulder customer observing. Just recently I saw a friend search for "dropbox" and then click on the first result in Google, which is a paid ad by dropbox for dropbox. They rank #1 anyway!

Now in dropbox's case it might be worth it, because they have enough competitors who would like to steal that ad spot. However for most businesses that's not the case for their top terms.