[nhebb]

I hope you succeed. AdWords has become more complex over time, and I do think there is a market for a service that cuts through the confusion. I was priced out by high CPC's years ago, but my friends who have stuck with it and had success all say that it takes time to optimize your campaign - at least a few months. If you can shorten that period, your investment should pay off in the long term.

On a related note, I was looking at patio11's charts last week and noticed that he seems to have dropped AdWords in the past year. For 2012, BCC had $64k in sales and $29k in expenses ($13k of which was for advertising) yielding a net of $35k. In 2013, his sales dropped to $46k, but with little overhead it's almost pure profit.

[patio11]

I haven't dropped AdWords - we're just behind on bookkeeping for expenses. (Partly me being busy, partly due to some uncertainty as to how to alter our practices to be compliant with some Japanese requirements we'll be subject to from this tax year forward.)

[babs474]

It is interesting to see the complexity of strategies needed to play adwords increase over time. Big budget advertisers use predictive models and automated bidding to quickly react to changing conditions. I predict some years in the future we'll have crazy high frequency trading robots battling each other like in the stock market.

[joosters]

Isn't this what already happens with Ad Exchange auctions?

[babs474]

Yes, I think it is very much happening right now. I think that the sophistication will grow and grow as more ad dollars are converted to the digital world.

[lukekennedy]

Note to self - don't build an RTB platform.

[lukekennedy]

Thanks, @Nhebb I really hope we can build something that will give you more choices if you hit those same hurdles with Adwords in the future.

And thanks for patio11's stats you've encouraged me to have another look at them.